CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie is in Calgary to launch the 2019 Grey Cup festival, which will take place during Grey Cup week in November when Calgary hosts the game.

He'll be at Olympic Plaza Tuesday morning hosting a free pancake breakfast between 8 and 10 a.m. Ambrosie stopped by to talk to Doug Dirks on The Homestretch Monday.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: What goes into hosting a Grey Cup game these days?

A: Now it's so much more than just the game — and in fact, you kind of point to Calgarians for that, because in 1948 they famously got on a train and brought a horse along and rode it through a hotel lobby. An annual festival was born.

So now we're talking about really welcoming everyone, coast to coast — in fact, now welcoming the world into this thing called Grey Cup. They're going to do it downtown, in November, at the Stampede Grounds. There'll be all kinds of activities for families and for kids, as well as a chance for grown-up kids to come out and have some fun as well.

Calgary Stampeders' Don Jackson, shown celebrating his team's Grey Cup victory in November, is one of a number of players pledging not to report to training camps without a new collective agreement with the league. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

Q: What's the economic impact of hosting a great cup for a city like Calgary?

A: About $100 million. In fact, we're going to be announcing and releasing the economic impact from Edmonton [hosting the 2018 Grey Cup] I believe tomorrow. It's a great stimulant for a local economy and this is a great city to host at.

Q: You've been signing all kinds of deals with European leagues to try and develop players and all kinds of other broadcast agreements internationally — but you can't give away this trophy unless you have a new collective bargaining agreement with the players.

Where are we at with that, because training camp is scheduled to open shortly?

A: I'm sure you are a student of the realm of CBA negotiations — look in the world of collective bargaining and it's very seldom that these things get decided weeks and weeks out. They almost all come down to the wire.

I don't think we expected anything different.

Q: You met with the Players Association last week. So what's at the core of this right now? What needs to be hammered out? What do the players want?

The Grey Cup has added a third layer. Above CBC's Dave Will and Keeper of the Cup Jeff McWhinney point to where the 2018 champion Calgary Stampeders are engraved on the cup. (Stephen Hunt)

A: There's lots of issues and the one thing that I've learned in this is that you really just best not negotiate the issues in public. Get behind closed doors, show respect for your partners by being in the room talking about the things that matter.

In the end, I want our players to do better. I want our coaches to do better. I want our teams to do better and ultimately, for our owners to do better as well.

Q: How do you attract younger fans to the game, because that that has been a challenge for the Canadian Football League. It's also been a challenge for Major League Baseball. Also, how do you get new Canadians involved and interested in the game?

A: Stampeders head of business operations Mike Franco was talking earlier, telling a story about about Grey Cup in his family.

He was recalling how his father's birthday was at the end of November and they used Grey Cup as kind of a family party and how his grandmother as a first-generation immigrant didn't know anything about football — but she was part of the Grey Cup.

They had pool tickets and they had food and they had family — and we've got to welcome this next generation of Canadians into that same reality, that the Grey Cup is something special that they ought to celebrate.

I saw some research recently and what it said was that part of creating fan engagement is what they call the cool factor.

International sports are considered cooler than non-international sports.

It adds interest and if you think about how we might be able to use this international opportunity to kind of re-cool ourselves, and get into the psyche of a younger generation of Canadians, especially in our biggest cities.

You know — in places like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, where we've got work to do.

That's where some of these opportunities lie: to use these international players to re-energize a whole new fan base for our league, we think, given that our biggest cities are the cities that attract the vast majority of the immigrants.

What better strategy than to try to bring that international mindset into into our league?

Q: You have the Grey Cup with you and next to the Stanley Cup, of course, these are two of the most coveted pieces of hardware in Canadian sports and it's getting a bit of a makeover. How about that?

A: It's going to be at the the official kickoff tomorrow.

I expect our fans to say, commissioner Ambrosie, we want to see our players play — so I'm going to get ready for that tomorrow morning.

And look, why wouldn't I want that? To me, that's an opportunity to get with people who love our game and want to see us play.

With files from The Homestretch