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HALIFAX, N.S. —

The Canadian Football League has launched a Hail Mary pass to help fund its July regular-season game in Halifax.

“At first blush, $200,000 is a lot of money compared with a lot of requests that come to special events advisory,” said Lisa Blackburn, deputy mayor of Halifax regional council and a member of the municipal special events advisory committee.

That first blush actually consists of a $250,000 CFL ask from the municipality, including a $50,000 in-kind request presumably for cosmetic field upgrades at Huskies Stadium where the league proposes to host its July 25 game between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Toronto Argonauts.

Duane Vienneau of the CFL was in town this week to make a presentation to the advisory committee that included its funding request from Halifax Regional Municipality, along with a $100,000 ask of the province, to offset an estimated $1.5-million overall expense for the 2020 Touchdown Atlantic game.

Read the CFL document presented to the advisory committee

The $1.5-million budget calls for 10,000 tickets sold at the 3,500-seat stadium. The money the CFL requests from the city and province would help in bringing in temporary seating for 6,500 fans, along with construction of food and beverage outlets, portable toilets and fencing.

Proposed budget for July's Touchdown Atlantic game. - From presentation to Halifax council

The City of Moncton hosted its fourth Touchdown Atlantic game on Aug. 25, 2019, attracting 10,126 fans to the stadium on the University of Moncton campus to watch the Argonauts play the Montreal Alouettes.

A Moncton city councillor says the city did not ante up any funding for the game and he is not aware that the province contributed anything, either.

“The game last year, the City of Moncton did not contribute any money to that event,” Coun. Greg Turner said. “We did do some in-kind services to the field to prepare the venue for the event.”

Turner said some sections of artificial turf had to be put down in the endzones to adapt the track facility for football and some painting and other cosmetic improvements were carried out. The funds to do the small makeover came out of the general operating budget of the stadium.

“We own the stadium but it’s on university property so we share in the expenses of operating the stadium,” Turner said. “For events like this, unless there are some major alterations to be done, it’s not that costly for us to adapt to football or soccer.”

Turner said the city would have contributed funding for added bleachers in previous Touchdown Atlantic games that drew in excess of 15,000 fans to the expanded Moncton stadium.

In Halifax, tickets to the general public will be available on March 10. There will be 2,000 seats for sale at $30, 4,000 seats will go for $45, 2,000 midfield seats on the stadium side will sell for $65 each, 1,000 platinum seats across the field from the existing stadium will sell for $70 apiece and 1,000 VIP seats at midfield will go for $95 each.

Blackburn said the CFL has already applied for a grant from the municipality.

The manufactured hoopla surrounding the Jan. 23 announcement of the game at Rogers Square in downtown Halifax, however, made no mention of municipal or provincial contributions.

“Usually, big announcements like that are just the arching overview and you get to the nitty-gritty and meat of it later on,” Blackburn said. “But this is certainly, from an optics perspective, not good. I wasn’t expecting this announcement to come with a price tag, but I guess it has.”

Blackburn said she wasn’t left with the impression during the CFL’s presentation to the events committee that it was a case of pay up or forget about the game.

“The vibe that I got wasn’t if we don’t get this money we don’t come,” Blackburn said.

Turner said Moncton’s analysis found a significant number of fans came from outside the region to last summer’s game and the CFL anticipates half of the 10,000 spectators for the Halifax game will come from out of town, including many from the rabid Roughriders fan base.

The festival portion of the event will kick off on the Thursday before the game along the portion of Argyle Street that is closed to pedestrians only. The festival will run until midday Saturday as fans begin to make their way to the stadium.

“I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer about it, certainly this is going to be a huge event, it’s going to pump millions of dollars into the coin purses of businesses in this city,” Blackburn said. “There are going to be a lot of heads in beds, a lot of people out at restaurants and a lot of these people aren’t just going to come for one day to see the game and go back, especially that fan base from Saskatchewan. If they are coming in, they are staying three, four, five days.

“But that $200,000 in grants, that can fund a lot of smaller events. It’s up to staff to weigh it out and make a recommendation.”

A spokesman for the provincial Communities, Culture and Heritage Department said the province has not received a formal application to support the game and street festival.

"If we receive a request, we will give it careful consideration," Brett Loney said.

After its review, municipal staff will make a recommendation to the events committee about whether the $200,000 request should be granted and then it will go to regional council for final say.

“I’m going to wait and see what the staff report says before going one way or another,” Blackburn said.

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