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Photo by Gerry Kahrmann / PNG staff photo

It’s also true that customers in seats are an essential part of the CFL’s business model. Three of the league’s nine teams are publicly owned — the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Saskatchewan Roughriders and Edmonton Eskimos — and as such must disclose their finances. For the 2018 season, the last for which financial details have been disclosed, those three teams collected between 45 per cent and 55 per cent of their revenues from gate receipts and game-day concessions. With each of those teams reporting an operating profit of between $1.4-million and $2.6-million in that season, it is evident that without ticket sales, or without a massive cut in operating expenses, the franchises would operate at steep losses. The picture would likely be the same in Ottawa and Hamilton, where attendance has been strong, while franchises in Toronto and Montreal would at least be used to receiving a smaller portion of revenues from game-day sales.

As silver linings go, that isn’t much of one.

Where some pro leagues get the bulk of their collective revenues from national and local broadcast deals, the CFL could not rely on television money to buoy them through a season of empty seats: the community-owned teams report between 10 and 20 per cent of their revenues as coming from the league’s national broadcast and sponsorship deals. Simply having CFL games on television wouldn’t be enough to keep teams from losing piles of money.

The CFL has one significant thing going for it, which is that it has long shown a willingness to innovate

Does that make a fall-to-early winter sprint of a short season more likely? It might, but with the league already on hold, whatever happens will have to be worked out with the players’ association. It will not be easy. The teams will be looking to significantly lower their expenses — the biggest of which is payroll — if many games, and their accompanying revenue, is lost. But the players make modest salaries in pro football terms, with a few exceptions. Football is a dangerous game; how much of a salary cut would some players be willing to take before the risks outweigh the benefits?

The CFL has one significant thing going for it, which is that it has long shown a willingness to innovate. There are bright, successful people involved throughout the league. But they are going to need all that creativity and those smarts to find a workable way to play football in 2020. And, not a small amount of luck. Sometimes, the Hail Mary pass is completed.

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