For now, visit somebody else's house; then throw open your own doors.

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats still have a chance to play in this year's Grey Cup in Edmonton, but they also want to host the 2020 game and festival in Hamilton. This is first time they have been in a position to bid for the cup since the new stadium was completed in 2015.

Last Monday in Toronto, the Tiger-Cats made a presentation to the CFL's Grey Cup subcommittee as part of a multi-step bid process to determine who will host 2020's prestigious — and profitable — league championship.

"We presented a vision of what a Grey Cup in Hamilton would look like," Ticats president of business Matt Afinec told The Spectator. "We spoke about the facts: that we just came through a municipal election; that we're working with great spirit and co-operation with the city, but that we're still establishing the exact details of that partnership in light of the fact that the municipal election has just concluded."

Afinec confirmed that Mayor Fred Eisenberg had provided the Tiger-Cats with a letter of support.

Negotiations over a new stadium came with the expectation of two CFL championship games within a decade. But shortly after the new stadium opened, a series of construction-related problems — and eventually competing lawsuits — made it impossible for the city and football team to do business. Those issues have now largely been settled.

Neither Afinec nor team CEO Scott Mitchell would reveal any concrete details of the bid, but both talked of a downtown-based festival from Wednesday through Saturday of the November Grey Cup week centred around city-owned venues like the Hamilton Convention Centre and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. The festivities would move to the "stadium precinct" on game-day Sunday, and could involve events at Gage Park.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders, considered by many CFL observers to be the current front-runners, and the long-shot Montreal Alouettes also made bids for 2020.

Regina last had the Grey Cup in 2013, a wildly successful event which featured the home team beating the Tiger-Cats, but has built a new state-of-the-art stadium since then.

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Unlike the former rotation system, Grey Cups are now awarded through a bid process that involves an undisclosed profit-sharing formula on Grey Cup income between the CFL and the host team.

So the ability to create maximum income is vitally important to a bid and Saskatchewan, with its wide fan base, new stadium and homecoming diaspora ranks high in profitability.

But the Ticats also have also shown a consistent capability to generate revenue at Tim Hortons Field, even without the roughly 12,000 temporary seats which would be installed for a Grey Cup Game, bringing stadium capacity to 35,000.

And what cannot be underestimated is the CFL's desire and need to regularly profit from, and also seed, the lucrative southern Ontario marketplace. Hamilton is in the heart of the country's corporate and population power base. The 2012 Grey Cup in Toronto succeeded in that regard but for various reasons, which don't apply to Hamilton for 2020, the 2016 Cup in Toronto had no significant wider-market impact.

Mitchell said the Ticat bid is specific to 2020 and the team would "have to think about it" should the CFL suggest they settle for 2021 instead. It is extremely unlikely the Ticats would not be awarded one of those two dates.

Tourism Hamilton is handling the Grey Cup file for the city and will bring a report on the prospective bid to the new council on Dec. 12. But tourism manager Carrie Brooks-Joiner refused to say what recommendations, if any, are included in the report until it is made public ahead of the meeting.

The Edmonton Eskimos are receiving $1.5 million from the province of Alberta to help with its Grey Cup, as is Calgary for the 2019 Cup week.

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City support, whether in cash or in kind, is estimated to be roughly equal to that of the province.

Hamilton put up $550,000 as part of its most recent bid for the Junos, which traditionally have a much lower economic impact than a Grey Cup.

"There hasn't been an ask of the city other than a general discussion of what a Grey Cup here could look like and what kind of things we could do together," Mitchell says. "But no team is going to ever get a Grey Cup without specific support from the city. It's an aligned partnership with that city and the team."

Mitchell said there is "no drop-dead date" for a formal commitment from the city because the CFL had not yet set a deadline for finalized bids. The team would work backward from that to establish a deadline for an agreement with the city.

Hamilton already meets the CFL's requirement for number of hotel rooms, without going beyond the formal city limits, Mitchell said.

In the last 46 years there has only been one Grey Cup held in Hamilton: in 1996, a year in which the Ticats struggled for fan and sponsor support and the CFL itself came within weeks of bankruptcy. That event lost $1.2 million but did have an audited $23-million impact on Hamilton's economy.

Both Ottawa, last year's host, and this year's host, Edmonton, estimate local economic impact at $100 million. Unlike most other events, Grey Cups tend to attract a large migration of fans who make the trip regardless of whether their home team is in the game or not.

The 2020 Grey Cup coincides with the 70th anniversary of the amalgamation of the Hamilton Tigers and Hamilton Wildcats to form the modern-day Tiger-Cats.

smilton@thespec.com

905-526-3268 | @miltonatthespec

—With files from Matthew Van Dongen