As pre-season play starts to ramp up — is anyone watching the paltry set of games that TSN is bothering to televise? — a lot of fans are feeling hopeful about the CFL.

New stadiums in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Hamilton, a new stadium on the way in Saskatchewan, a re-expansion into Ottawa, a successful (for the league) CBA with the players association, a huge boost in revenues from a renewed TV contract. For the first time in a generation, maybe two, people are feeling optimistic about the CFL’s chances of long-term survival.

So fans across the country are starting to ask: where next? Having reclaimed all of its traditional cities, where should CFL expansion target?

Atlantic Options

Halifax is the obvious choice: the city is considering a new mixed-use stadium, and there seems to be enough of a population in the catchment area to create a sufficient fan base. Moncton has also hosted multiple Touchdown Atlantic games (though with varying success, depending on how much the league is willing to invest in the event).

Two major drawbacks, though. First, the fan base is a gamble. Never having traditionally supported a football team beyond the university level, who knows if the gate would be big enough and consistent enough to support the team in the long term? The first season would be fine, but then the next seasons — especially if the team tanks the way expansions traditionally do — would be a lot tougher.

And second, there are travel costs to consider. The route out east would mean teams flying in and out every single game. There are no nearby CFL cities — Montreal is over 1200 km from Halifax — and the established travel corridors for each team would have to be rethought. And within the eastern division, Hamilton and Toronto would have huge extra travel bills to contend with to visit two or three times in the season.

CFL commissioner Mark Cohon has said that Halifax would be a good idea, in a few years. There are a lot of unstated “ifs” there, though.

Quebec Options

Quebec City in la Belle Province is another possibility that fans point to. Centralized, urban population, a province that knows and loves its football (university and professional), easy reach of Montreal. The Nordiques never shoulda left, they’ll point out too.

But the problems with Quebec are many. There’s no stadium, and no plan to build one. (If federal money comes along for some reason, that would change the picture, but the question of federal funding for a new arena was contentious enough already.)

The city’s population is large — roughly the size of Hamilton or Winnipeg — but again, you’re building a fan base from scratch. Whether Quebecers will create enough of a gate is questionable at best.

And finally, the TV revenues are questionable at best. French-language programming isn’t going to attract significant dollars, and the regional penetration achieved with Montreal won’t be increased much with a second team. At least with an Atlantic team, TV audiences from all of the maritime provinces would be increased, but Quebec City doesn’t create a new market.

Western Options

Regina. Saskatoon. Huge football fan bases to take advantage of. The most successful team in the league — in some years the only profitable team in the league — is in Regina. Why not take that massive audience and give it something else to cheer for? How about BC. What about a natural rival for the Lions, located in Victoria?

It sounds good at first, but with total saturation already for TV rights, the gate is the only new revenue that a new team in BC or Saskatchewan would bring to the league. And again, you’re putting football in a city that’s never had a home team before. Would the fans be there?

Furthermore, splitting the revenue for either the Lions or the Roughriders could put either team on much shakier footing. With the Green Riders’ community ownership model, the team could be in big trouble if revenues dropped by even a quarter; and in BC, the already tenuous value of the Lions would drop dramatically.

And of course, neither city has a suitable stadium. Where will the money will come from to build a venue anywhere in the west?

Bigger Problems

For any of these candidate cities, there’s a possibility that some miracle will happen. A new stadium for an international sporting event, unexpected provincial revenues, another Bob Young emerges. It could happen.

The bigger problems, though, are the league’s. This is why Cohon is so quiet about expansion possibilities, so wary of getting anyone’s hopes up.

The CFL isn’t going to expand anywhere until they’re one hundred percent dead certain that the team absolutely cannot fail. Because a failed expansion team could absolutely sink the entire league.

It’s true that the league is sitting pretty right now, and they’re acting responsibly to keep growing the markets they have and keeping a lid on new financial commitments (notably revenue sharing with the players). Things look good now, but they need to shore up to ride the waves, whether they’re going up (the way they are now) or down (remember the 80s?).

And imagine a well-heeled owner starting up an expansion team. Sinking a few million dollars just to get things underway, and then a few million more to keep things moving. A huge marketing blitz. Stadium improvements. Maybe attendance trailing off midway through the season.

We can guarantee that CFL ownership is a tough, tough row to hoe. And not everyone has the unlimited optimism and hundreds of millions of dollars, like Bob Young or David Braley.

If things didn’t go spectacularly right, any sane investor — or any investor whose pockets weren’t quite deep enough — would pull the plug as soon as the losses got too high.

They can walk away from a team mid-season. The CFL can’t.

Now those unpaid salaries and invoices, the staff and stadium costs, the travel expenses — those are the CFL’s problem. And the losses that the former owner couldn’t bear now have to be borne by the league.

The league’s expected profits are now in the sewer. Where does that money come out of? It comes out of the revenues that the league passes on to the teams, the sponsorship money and TV rights. So now every single owner in the league is under huge pressure to make up a shortfall. Any existing, non-expansion team that’s on the bubble could fold, too. And the domino effect could take out everyone.

The CFL Is Staying Put

We’re optimistic about the league. The product they’re putting on the field is second to none, there’s a deep, rich history in the league, and every CFL fan is passionately committed to the game and to their team. And the CFL is looking at long-term success, not the short-term surge of a new team in an as yet untapped market.

So if, in five years, there are no work stoppages, no team ownership problems, and a continuing increase in attendance, sponsorship, and TV revenues, and if there’s an owner who can absolutely guarantee to hang onto a team for ten years of losses (on the field as well as on the ledger), and if there’s a city who’s got a spare 20,000-seat stadium… well then, sure. They’ll expand.

But until all those things are in place, we’re in a 9-team league. There’s nothing wrong with that; the CFL can continue to grow and thrive. It’s better for everyone — fans, owners, cities, the CFL, the players, Mark Cohon — if we stay put, and enjoy what we have.

In five or ten years, let’s talk about it again.

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