2025 Cavalry FC and CPL thread

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by Mccree

I think having one truck and a bobcat to clear the field was poor planning. It should not have taken an hour to clear the field.

I think that's a fair point. Heavy snow was forecast a couple of days in advance. Having a few more pieces of equipment ready to go would've been prudent and still would've resulted in a winter spectacle, but with a more playable pitch.

Imagine if they had been able to give it a pass at half time, and then again before extra time. It would've been better soccer, for sure.

[Muta]

Shoulda done the right thing and moved the Final to tropical Calgary, and reserved a couple sections for Atletico fans with heavily discounted tickets for their last-minute inconvenience. Game would have been played in amazing weather, there would be no icicle kick, and the atmosphere would have been 10x better for both teams and the league. Tobias could have scored a real bicycle kick and the the billion views would have still been had.

[MegaErtz]

Valour FC folding. I'm sure their dozens of fans will be devastated.

[Bill Bumface]

If true, that's horrific news for the league. Not being able to make a go of it in Winnipeg or Edmonton is a telling litmus test.

They really need enough teams to get to a regional schedule to bring travel costs down. In equivalent European leagues, teams are taking buses and trains to away games without hotels being necessary. Here, you have travel 4000km to get from Victoria to Halifax.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

If true, that's horrific news for the league. Not being able to make a go of it in Winnipeg or Edmonton is a telling litmus test.

They really need enough teams to get to a regional schedule to bring travel costs down. In equivalent European leagues, teams are taking buses and trains to away games without hotels being necessary. Here, you have travel 4000km to get from Victoria to Halifax.

Yup. Very good points.

[Muta]

Here's hoping a Kelowna team joins soon; with Pacific/Vancouver/Kelowna/Calgary, that's a solid western conference, with flight accessibility into each city (and bus accessibility as well, although those are long bus rides for Calgary). I know for fact that the City of Kelowna is planning/moving on a renovation to the Apple Bowl, so that's good news.

[shermanator]

Similar to expansion news, I'll wait until it's official before I believe it.

But also, this isn't exactly hard to believe. Been saying for years that Valour are FC Edmonton 2.0. Poor ownership, unsuitable stadium for the game, bad results. But also, the motto of Winnipeg could be "I want a club, but not like that". If people don't want these clubs, they'll fold. Simple as that.

[Jimmy Stang]

Plopping a team in an oversized CFL stadium in a part of town that is far from... everything. And then crossing your fingers and hoping it works out. I wish I was surprised.

This is still very concerning news. Winnipeg (and Edmonton) are big enough markets for this league. There aren't many bigger. Bad ownership also plagued both franchises. Crappy stadium and/or location, owners who don't "get it", poor on the pitch. Recipe for failure.

[TheIronMaiden]

The most important thing about valour is that time we scored 8 goals against them.

[shermanator]

From what I've read Valour have people interested in buying the club, but the Bombers are playing hardball and throwing in conditions such as insisting the new club rent out the same stadium.

If that's the case, the club is done for, but perhaps a new club will form from the ashes and be done the right way.

[browna]

The CPL will have a pretty critical junction after next season.
I’m sure the plan back when Canada got the hosting rights to the WC before the CPL started up, the 5-6 year business plan was set up to have a lot of things up and running a lot more successfully by this point then it is. Covid of course derailed that for at least a year maybe two, but the unexpected WC from Canada maybe helped.

But my guess is that the hope would be that the CPL would be expanded, attendance well everywhere, and that it wasn’t if there was a TV contract, it would be how much.

Well, a few teams didn’t make it under that plan and going into the biggest soccer spectacle
in the country’s history and for a couple generations to come, the COL, outside of a couple markets, is not sustainable.

When the WC is gone, so soon will be the TV coverage (that isn’t likely making money) of the CPL from the TSNs, and the ramped up corporate sponsorship too, at least until the next lead up to 2030.

The CSL, hoping to capitalize on the WC appearance and getting some of that WC money to start up, lasted 4 years post 1986 WC. Of course that was a bit different, with eastern centric shady business practices from the league and the CSA, but bottom line is that public interest waned or was never there, and clubs they were holding on to hopefully get a 1990 WC appearance from Canada to help once again fund the league further, didn’t materialize and the league fell apart.

Things are different now, but issue remains; popularity of the league isn’t enough country wide to make this a longer term venture, and unless the WC in this country can directly affect positively the CPL attendance on 2026 and maybe 2027, more teams wills fold.

This, because the 2018/19 hope of how the lead up to 2026 would have the league look and how the business strategy was structured to capitalize on the WC, is vastly different and some teams just can’t sustain losses when this was their best chance at capturing interest and attendance.

Calvary and Forge and Halifax will probably be ok but you can’t have a 3 team league.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by browna

The CPL will have a pretty critical junction after next season.
I’m sure the plan back when Canada got the hosting rights to the WC before the CPL started up, the 5-6 year business plan was set up to have a lot of things up and running a lot more successfully by this point then it is. Covid of course derailed that for at least a year maybe two, but the unexpected WC from Canada maybe helped.

But my guess is that the hope would be that the CPL would be expanded, attendance well everywhere, and that it wasn’t if there was a TV contract, it would be how much.

Well, a few teams didn’t make it under that plan and going into the biggest soccer spectacle
in the country’s history and for a couple generations to come, the COL, outside of a couple markets, is not sustainable.

When the WC is gone, so soon will be the TV coverage (that isn’t likely making money) of the CPL from the TSNs, and the ramped up corporate sponsorship too, at least until the next lead up to 2030.

The CSL, hoping to capitalize on the WC appearance and getting some of that WC money to start up, lasted 4 years post 1986 WC. Of course that was a bit different, with eastern centric shady business practices from the league and the CSA, but bottom line is that public interest waned or was never there, and clubs they were holding on to hopefully get a 1990 WC appearance from Canada to help once again fund the league further, didn’t materialize and the league fell apart.

Things are different now, but issue remains; popularity of the league isn’t enough country wide to make this a longer term venture, and unless the WC in this country can directly affect positively the CPL attendance on 2026 and maybe 2027, more teams wills fold.

This, because the 2018/19 hope of how the lead up to 2026 would have the league look and how the business strategy was structured to capitalize on the WC, is vastly different and some teams just can’t sustain losses when this was their best chance at capturing interest and attendance.

Calvary and Forge and Halifax will probably be ok but you can’t have a 3 team league.

You make a good point. That said, the league/owners are crazy to back out right now, the league will grow after the buzz of a world cup. Especially if Canada plays well. Peoples anticipation for the world cup will be small compared to the hype after it.

I think the league is in fine shape, they have 5 of 8 teams that are stable if not growing, 1 new team coming into the league.

[TheIronMaiden]

here are the league totals for attendance

https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadianPL/...port/#lightbox

[MegaErtz]

Valour claiming 3213 average attendance is hilarious. We've all watched their matches, that might be tickets sold but there's simply no way they had more than a few hundred people to most games.

[Julio]

And its official:

https://www.canpl.ca/valourfc

[shermanator]

When Winnipeg gets a club back, and it's when, I hope the new ownership puts a better club forward. And I hope people support that new club with their wallets.

[Johnny199r]

I was a former season ticket holder in Edmonton AND Winnipeg. Edmonton was 100000% more fun than Valour was. Hell, I gave up going to Valour matches in 2023 out of frustration.

[shermanator]

IMO the success or failure of Supra makes or breaks the league. You can only go on for so long with 4 strong clubs.

This league will be around as long as people want it to be around. Canadians show up for big events or the big 4 leagues, but everything else will continue to struggle I guess.

[M*A*S*H 4077]

As if I didn’t need another reason to hate the Blue Bombers. They used the team to help get loan forgiveness on the stadium and then bounced at the first opportunity.

As for the fans, give them a decent product (good team or strong match day environment) and they will come.

[Slava]

Yikes. You lose Winnipeg and with the issues in Victoria and Vancouver things get bad pretty quickly.