This Tuesday, the Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation (CSE) will finally reveal their vision for a new arena and stadium for Calgary. Rumours have been floating around for a while about what will be announced. While most people will be looking what this means for hockey and football in the city, I'm going to look at what it might mean for professional soccer in Calgary.
First, it's probably best to provide a bit of background information. CSE owns the NHL Flames, CFL Stampeders, WHL Hitmen, and NLL Roughnecks, giving them a virtual monopoly on professional sports in the city. All of these teams are in need of a new facility. The hockey and lacrosse teams currently play in the Saddledome, which was constructed in 1983 and is one of the older arenas in use in the NHL. The Stampeders play at McMahon Stadium, which was built in 1960 and is also one of the oldest stadiums in the CFL. CSE is a private corporation and doesn't reveal financials, it's reasonable to speculate that the Flames likely make a decent profit even in an older facility. The Stampeders likely also show a profit. However, these teams and the others would be much more profitable in newer facilities. New facilities would also provide Calgarians with the modern comforts and features that have been lacking at existing sports venues in the city.
Most rumours and reports suggest CSE wants to build an arena/stadium/field house project in the western part of downtown Calgary referred to as the West Village. This area of downtown is a prime area for redevelopment, with access to Bow River, an LRT station, near major roadways, and is walkable to the main downtown core.
So how does soccer fit into the equation? CSE doesn't own a pro soccer club, at least not yet. But if this project has a gleaming new outdoor stadium attached to it, I don't think the owners will be satisfied with it only being used for 10 or 11 CFL games each year. They will want to maximize usage as they have in the Saddledome by adding a WHL team and pro lacrosse. The obvious addition to an outdoor, football field shaped stadium is soccer.
Using soccer for adding dates to the stadium is a pretty reasonable assumption. But I suspect there could be more than in the equation. CSE has a lot of financial resources available to them, but as we see time and again, wealthy owners prefer to get taxpayers to foot the bill for their sports venues whenever they can. You just have to look up the highway to Edmonton to see one of Canada's wealthiest businessman negotiate a deal that provides public funding for his arena. However, there seems to be little appetite for public funds to go to a stadium/arena in Calgary. Calgary's mayor and most aldermen have stated they don't support public funding for a project like this. Calgarians have also shown little interest in having their tax dollars fund an arena or stadium. So CSE has their work cut out for them to access public money. I suspect one method they will try to access public funding is through the potential Canadian World Cup 2026 bid. If Canada was to win this bid, there would likely be a lot of stadium building cash available, and a new venue in Calgary would be an obvious choice.
The 2026 bid process is stuck in limbo right now as a result of corruption charges within FIFA. But I expect CSE may be helping the bid committee as much as they can behind the scenes. This stadium/arena project is going to take a lot of time to get off the ground as there are significant issues at play regarding urban planning and environmental clean up of the area. Even though it's being delayed, the 2026 bidding will be done well before this project is completed. So while I expect this project will not live or die based on FIFA 2026 being awarded to Canada, there could be a very strong financial incentive for CSE to align itself with soccer.
So what does this mean for Calgarians wanting to see some high level pro soccer in our city? I think it's not as far away as we might think. I don't see this new arena/stadiium project being completed probably for 4-5 years at least. But I can see reasons that CSE would want to start their soccer program sooner as opposed to later. The first is to start building the relationships with Canadian soccer officials in regards to World Cup bid. The second is to maintain their monopoly on pro sports in the city. If CSE starts a soccer club, it will keep others from trying to do so. The third reason is if CSE can pull off a successful lower league club at McMahon Stadium, they could possibly approach MLS about moving up when they get to their new stadium. The big money in soccer in North America is in MLS, and I think CSE would want to at least try to make it happen.
MLS in Calgary? Sure it seems like a bit of a stretch. There hasn't exactly been a string of soccer success in Calgary over the years. But there were numerous failed pro clubs in Toronto before a wealthy sports entertainment company made Toronto FC work. TFC had the advantage of getting into MLS before expansion interest (and fees) exploded. It's also the largest market in Canada, which was an easier sell to the American MLS. CSE is similar in many ways to MLSE in Toronto. They know pro sports in their market. They have the financial resources to join MLS. Calgary would not be the smallest market and would certainly have a larger population, better demographics, and more corporate head offices compared to some current MLS cities. But in this era of MLS expansion, I think adding a fourth Canadian MLS club would be a tough sell, even if the owners had the reputation and cash and a stadium plan. They would need to show support like Orlando did and Sacramento has been doing. And how you do this is by setting up a lower league club and start to build support.
We'll see what happens on Tuesday. I expect soccer to be mentioned at the announcement at some point, but realistically this day will belong to hockey and football. But I won't be surprised to see CSE moving to a pro soccer announcement in the near future, with a launch date as soon as 2017 at McMahon. Could it be NASL, or the rumoured all-Canadian pro soccer league, or some other league? Who knows, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
No comments:
Post a Comment