Should the CFL expand beyond Ottawa?

Question

Or is Ottawa as far as the league can go? Is the support for Canadian pro football --- at the level required to support a pro team --- limited to the historic 9 CFL cities?

I have posted this on a board that deals with college football realignment because the posters there are very business savy, but am posting it here as well to try to get imput from CFL fans.

http://ncaasports.proboards10.com/index.cgi?board=nfl&action=display&thread=1987

Answer 1

they can't expand beyond ottawa. infact, they shouldn't have given the renegades back their team.

if they outside 'twa and into places where they're not going to get the revenue's they need, then they shouldn't bother to call themself a pro league, and they're then going to be easily conquered by the nfl, because the cfl would be stretched to the max.

if they're considering expansion, they need to be a sound organization financially, and they need to grow their game/get more fans.

brother. haha. i have to explain more. i don't think that the cfl to be viable needs to expand into the us market. look at how popular hockey is here. although football may not have the same roots as hockey, that doesn't mean that the cfl can't grow the game here...instead of having players in who play cis/highschool football wanting to go down to the states because they want to get discovered, have more oppertunity to tryout for more teams. the expansion you're talking about could work, but it can only work with a strong cfl organization now, which in my view it's not at the level it needs to be to even start thinking of expansion. they should wait and see how renegade football pans out before they even start making moves. another southern ontario franchise could work...but they should probably consider expansion in the east & west coast.

also what do i see that would suggest that ottawa can't support a team. i'm not saying they can't. i mean look the sens are still there, but the thing they have going for them is that their team doesn't suck. the renegades need to have a winning team, and also they need better marketing of football in that area, because if they're not going to get actual residents of the city to go to their own football games, then they might as well try to get all the fans from all the surrounding towns.

Answer 2

ottawa and halifax would be nice,  make a 10 team league,  but i wouldn't hold my breath,  and it isn't needed, would just be nice to have

Answer 3

i think if ownership is stable and committed the cfl can definitely expand to ottawa, Quebec City, Halifax, London and even Victoria.

Answer 4

The Ottawa experiment is on again. Let's hope this time the owners are not going to run with the gate receipts. The CFL should be back in Ottawa. I would like to see expansion to the Maritimes and southwest Ontario could support a franchise. The CFL must be a gate driven league. TV revenue would never be large enough to sustain the league. It would be nice to have 12 teams for balancing of schedules etc. But there isn't a 12th in the west. Quebec City would be a hotbed but changing geography to suit a business is futile.