Quote:
Originally Posted by Thunderball
I understand the need to build a base, but North American fans are pretty fickle though.
I’m not saying that the cap should suddenly rise to MLS levels, but a bit of growth (say 5%) to allow teams that can afford to keep their players and add to them for Canadian Championship and CONCACAF League is important too. That amount, while relatively small (probably $50k or so) could mean the difference between a Pasquotti or Borges being a CanPL star or MLS sub. If people see stagnation, or too much of a revolving door of their favourite players, they may walk. Even fans willing to pay today.
MLS didn’t start taking off until teams began to splash cash on names within a salary cap environment (and not every team did it). That should be the medium term goal here too.
North Americans seem obsessed with parity, but a better playoff system will be far more exciting to fans than parity and holding every team down to the lowest team’s abilities. York might have been healthier if they had something to play for in September and October.
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This is not necessarily true, there are two marketing models in North American sports. There is the ' this is an important game because it matters' and there is the ' come see the stars play' model. The NFL is come see the stars play, because the best Athletes play in the NFL, the NBA same thing. The issue with the CPL, is unless the league gets bought by billionaires the top 500 athletes aren't coming over to play. There simply will not be star power. I'm not saying this model doesn't work in the NFL or NBA, but its a case of knowing what you are working with
Now, if you look at the other model. That is the every game matters model, it has proven to work as well. College Foot ball, and College Basketball have proven that if you can makes teams competitive with one another and you can create a structure so that rivalries, and game results feel like they matter, people will go to games.
It's a bums in seats league, and the bottom line people are not paying to come and watch Zator, or Carducci, they are paying to watch a team from Calagry beat a team from Edmonton, and if that isn't happening, they are paying to watch Cavalry FC play in a game where if they win it matters. That is why league attendance declined at the end of the fall season. The results didn't matter any more.
Not every team has to be good, they don't need to make every team as good as the worst team. The league needs there to be enough good teams that there is a race to the top, so teams are competing with each other in the standings as well as on the pitch.