SportsPro caught up with Canadian Premier League commissioner David Clanachan to get his thoughts on the top-flight soccer league's inaugural season, and to find out where it goes next.

“I’d call it a very good start, but it’s only a start,” states Canadian Premier League (CPL) commissioner David Clanachan, reflecting on the competition’s debut season. “You can’t claim victory on one season, you’ve just got to get better the next year.”

When he dials in to speak to SportsPro, Clanachan is still fresh from the CPL’s inaugural finals, a two-legged affair which brought in more than 15,000 fans in total to watch Forge FC run out 2-0 winners against Cavalry FC and be crowned the first ever champions of Canada’s fledgling top-flight soccer league.

All told, the CPL got 400,000 fans through the gate during its opening campaign to record a modest average attendance of 4,279 - a figure that Clanachan (left) believes gives the competition a platform to build from.

“We’re very pleased with the way that the fans and the supporters have embraced the league,” he says. “There’s no doubt we were the hometown heroes, so everyone was rooting for us in the first year. I’m smart enough to know though that once you invest like that as a supporter you’ve earned the right to criticise in year two, so I’ve got our team kind of penned up for that.”

Muscling into the professional soccer landscape, however, is far from straightforward - not least because fans of the sport already have affiliations with leagues and teams that have more than 100 years of history on their side. And, as Major League Soccer (MLS) found out in its early years, establishing a league in North America – where the market is less crowded than on continents like Europe - does not always bring immediate success.

Clanachan, though, believes the biggest challenges during the opening season were logistical ones.

We’re ahead of where we thought we would be, we’ve been able to answer all the questions that were asked.

“Not so much there,” Clanachan asserts, when asked whether it was a challenge for the CPL to fashion an identity for itself. “Some of the bigger challenges are obviously we’re dealing with a bigger geography than most countries deal with. In England, teams are getting on buses to go to away games – we’re getting on planes. The team in Halifax, they logged over 106,000 air miles this year.

“This is stuff that happens everywhere, but for a new league you’re just getting used to it, the players are getting used to it. Look at Europe right now, teams are playing probably every three to four days with all the competitions. That’s part of the professional game; it comes with the territory.

“Overall I think we’ve performed well, and it shows in the crowds that we’ve had. We’re ahead of where we thought we would be, we’ve been able to answer all the questions that were asked. Now you go into season two, how are you going to get better, and what are you going to do for the next encore?”

Expansion, promotion and relegation

The CPL’s first season featured only seven teams after a franchise in Ottawa pulled out at the 11th hour, but it is unlikely to remain that way for long. Clanachan reveals that he eventually sees the league growing to “somewhere between 14 and 16 clubs”, adding that expansion is something “we’ve been working hard at”.

It was reported earlier in the year by Reuters that the CPL had received interest from 18 communities about acquiring an expansion franchise, which would suggest that there were no shortage of admirers who were impressed with what they saw in year one.

“The people that are willing to get into a startup are of a very different mindset than those who want to wait and see how you’re doing,” Clanachan explains. “So now we’re past that startup mode we’ve got people who say ‘OK. I can see it, I can touch it, feel it, it’s real, I want to get involved.’

“Of course that changes the economics, but there’s lots of them and we’re happy with that. The thing that we struggle from in this country – it is the longest pole in the tent – is that you don’t have the stadiums – they have to be built. That becomes the part that separates the men from the boys, so to speak, because when you actually start talking to somebody, they might be all in and have the financial wherewithal and a business plan, but when you start to ask about where they are going to play, that’s when it changes.

“The good news is that we’ve got lots of growth on our horizon, it just takes longer than what most people think.”

Indeed, Clanachan confirms that three potential expansion clubs “are getting very, very close”, although he admits it would require “a bit of a Hail Mary pass” to get one of those teams set up in time for the 2020 season, with 2021 more likely.

I’m smart enough to know though that once you invest like that as a supporter you’ve earned the right to criticise in year two.

Further down the line, once the CPL has hit its expansion target, the league will turn its attention to introducing promotion and relegation. Clanachan points out that in November last year, the CPL acquired League1 Ontario, a semi-professional league that will grow to 18 teams next season. The 57-year-old says “almost a third” of the CPL’s players came from that division, adding that it would make sense if the league eventually became a pathway for those clubs to reach the top flight.

“Organically there’s no doubt that that could become the beginnings of a second division if you want to call it,” Clanachan declares. “You could take the best of the best coming out of that, but it’s an interesting way of looking at it. You kind of have to work things through in parallel; you can’t do them in isolation because otherwise it will all be long gone before they ever get to that.

“The whole idea here is that if we get to where we need to be by 2026 when the [Fifa] World Cup comes to North America, we’d like to be in a position to announce promotion-relegation, which we all think is one of the most exciting things in sport. It’s the only sport that does that that I know of, so it adds another dimension that other sports can’t get to.”

The CPL's inaugural season saw more than 400,000 fans attend games

Making a name for yourself

The challenge for any new sports league is to convince fans that it is more worthy of their time than anything else. MLS, for example, managed to get peoples’ attention through shiny new stadiums, celebrity owners and allowing its franchises to sign star-studded talent such as former England captain David Beckham, Spain’s retired Fifa World Cup-winning striker David Villa and the always-entertaining Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Clanachan, however, sees the CPL having a different draw.

“We focus much more on the promise and it’s part of our mission to develop Canadian players,” he says. “We think it’s an obligation - much the same way a lot of the leagues do in Europe – that you have to contribute to the national team.”

To make sure that the CPL keeps its Canadian identity, the league has a number of rules geared towards giving players from Canada as many opportunities as possible. A minimum of six Canadian players must start each game and no franchise can have more than seven foreign players on their roster. There is also a rule dictating that each team should have three domestic players under the age of 21 who complete a certain number of minutes each season.

The people that are willing to get into a startup are of a very different mindset than those who want to wait and see how you’re doing.

“The other thing, too, is we’re the only top-tier league in Canada,” Clanachan continues. “The three MLS teams that play in Canada are playing in an American league – they’re not seen as Canadian, so what happens with the supporters in this country, it’s amazing. They like to see the rivalries between cities within their own country, not uncommon to any other country in the world, so we’re seeing a lot of that.

“We made sure that the product on the field was right and we built it at community level, rather than push it down from the top from a league perspective. We actually identified with Canadians, we identified by community, by city and by region, so that those supporters own the club from day one, because they’re the ones there for the long run – that was key.

“That’s where I see some of the key partners that we have coming back into the mix; they look at it and understand here’s a league that’s actually building from the community up, and that changes the dynamic for sponsorships and partnerships. I think we’ve understood it well and now we’re planning for it properly.”

Clanachan describes it as an "obligation" for the CPL to contribute to the national team

Support from Europe

Given the pillars upon which the CPL has built its foundations, it is tempting to conclude that some lessons might have been learned from the Bundesliga, another league with a fan-first approach that has become renowned for player development. As well as Germany’s top flight, however, Clanachan reveals that he has been having talks with leagues across Europe about ways to grow the Canadian game.

“We’ve had some interesting discussions with the Bundesliga,” he confirms. “Truthfully, the big leagues have all reached out to us. We’ve had conversations with La Liga, and everyone just wants to help. The global fraternity of this game is unbelievable. On the pitch, it’s no holds barred, but when you’re off the pitch it’s a giant fraternity, everybody wants to help everybody else - it’s all about the succession of the game.

“We’ve had lots of contact in the UK, lots of contact in Spain, Italy obviously, and then in Germany as well, so I think you’re in good company when you’re talking to some of the top leagues in the world. I came out of the business world where you look at the best companies and you say ‘I want to be like that company’, and then eventually when you get like that company you want to be better than that company and the others are looking at you.”

It isn’t just the leagues in Europe that have reached out to the CPL. Clanachan says he found it “interesting” that the likes of German car giant Volkswagen were among the founding partners of the CPL, while he also admits that the league’s kit supply deal with Italian sportswear brand Macron was one he “didn’t expect to happen”.

We focus much more on the promise and it’s part of our mission to develop Canadian players.

Most eye-catching of all, though, was the CPL’s first global media rights partnership with Mediapro, a ten-year agreement which saw the Spanish agency launch a new Canadian over-the-top (OTT) platform called OneSoccer. The tie-up, which Mediapro agreed with the league’s commercial arm, Canadian Soccer Business, sees the agency handle the production of every CPL fixture, all of which air domestically on the new streaming service.

“They wanted to do a longer term deal with us, and that kind of fit the bill,” Clanachan says of the partnership with Mediapro. “For a new league, you’re looking for stability, you’re looking for a partner that can build with you - you’re also looking for one that has unbelievable credentials.

“In a country the size of Canada, where it’s six hours by plane coast to coast, you’ve got to make something accessible. So accessibility is the big thing because that allows people to check in and see what it’s like, and then they start to form their own opinions, but more importantly they can follow their teams away and not just worry about home games, so that helped us tremendously. You’ve got to engage, and you need people to engage with you, so that’s what we’re preaching.”

Since launching OneSoccer, Mediapro has built out the OTT platform’s offering to include coverage of the Concacaf Nations League, Mexico’s Liga MX and the Chinese Super League (CSL). Clanachan does not go as far to reveal the viewership for the CPL’s inaugural season on the platform, but says the figures have been positive.

“I know they (Mediapro) are very happy with their results so far in the country for the first year – it’s above their expectations,” he states. “Of course, like anything else, it’s never enough. You want more and more and more, but they’ve done some great work.”

Looking ahead

If ever there was a time to be building up a soccer league in Canada, this is probably it. The country will host the 2026 Fifa World Cup alongside the United States and Mexico in just under seven years’ time, giving the league a unique opportunity to capitalise on a runway where the sport will be in the spotlight.

Interest in the Canadian national team is already on the rise thanks to the likes of Alphonso Davies, who is currently on the books of Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich, but Clanachan says he wants to see even more players make the step up from the CPL to ply their trade in some of the top leagues around the world.

“We also recognise that we’re a development league,” he states. “I want to see Canadian players spread their wings and move onto other markets as well. I’d like to see many more Canadians than there already are playing football around the world, but that they’ve had their beginnings learning their trade here, that we’ve helped develop them.

We actually identified with Canadians; we identified by community, by city and by region, so that those supporters own the club from day one, because they’re the ones there for the long run.

“But also that we see the national team climb back to its rightful place in the top 30 countries in the world. We’re there at an amateur level, when you look at the growth of football here, it’s the number one participation sport, which is why we’re growing today. So all the indicators tell you this should be an unbelievable sport in this country, but it needs – and I think this stands to reason – a pinnacle, somewhere for young people to look up to and find their own local heroes.”

That objective also extends to growing the women’s game in Canada. Clanachan notes that when the CPL purchased League1 Ontario, it acquired both the men’s and women’s teams. He concedes that there is more work to be done on the women’s side of the game, but is hopeful that the CPL could one day have a female equivalent.

“We have to walk into this, we have to do it properly,” Clanachan explains. “We need to do that in this country as well, but we’re kind of starting from a position further back than others. When I look at the way the women’s game has been built outside of North America they’ve done a great job with it, but they’ve also had a great base to start from with the professional teams and leagues. It doesn’t mean that you can’t catch up, it just means that you’ve actually got to push the boat away from the dock and get moving.

“We’ve started doing that, I can’t make any promises about when, but I know one thing, we will move forward, because for me it’s about moving forward every year.”