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Clubs from Halifax, Port City, B.C., and York Region, Ont., also got the seal of approval at Soccer Canada’s annual general meeting this weekend in Yellowknife.

The Canadian Premier League was approved for league membership with Soccer Canada last year, along with clubs in Hamilton and Winnipeg.

“We’re very excited about it. If you were to look back at the Spruce Meadows story in 1975, a lot of the reasons that are compelling for us to do this were the same for our founding sport, show jumping,” said Allison.

“At that time, there was no place for Canadians to find a pathway to the top of the sport. We hadn’t posted very many top results internationally.

“When we look at where we are right now as a soccer culture, well we’re one of the top 10 nations in the world with respect to licensed merchandise and TV viewership and buying tickets. We haven’t done very well in the field of play with respect to the men’s national team. So our hope is we can emulate some of the things that have happened in our other sport, in show jumping, where Canada since Spruce Meadows started has won 25 medals on the world stage including Olympic gold and world championships and World Cup titles.”

The capacity of the Spruce Meadows soccer stadium would initially be 5,000 to 7,000 seats, although that would be subject to change in years to come.

“The nice thing about Spruce Meadows is we are scalable for the future,” Allison said.

He said it’s too early to say what the cost of the modifications would be, as discussions about a number of different elements are still ongoing.