CFL commissioner Ambrosie touts balanced schedule, market growth ahead of Grey Cup

As the CFL prepares for its championship game, Randy Ambrosie is celebrating the successes the league saw in 2023, and explaining some missteps.

Ahead of the 110th Grey Cup in Hamilton, the CFL’s commissioner delivered his annual state-of-the-league address, covering topics like rising attendance, a major misstep on statistics, the possibility of an Atlantic expansion and the switch to Saturday playoff games.

“Without arrogance, but certainly with some confidence, I think 2023 was a rather remarkable year for us in many, many ways, and perhaps one of the most successful in CFL history,” Ambrosie said.

The Grey Cup will be contested on Sunday, with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers taking on the Montreal Alouettes. Kickoff for the game at Tim Hortons Field is set for 5 p.m.

League saw major growth in major markets

One of the big successes Ambrosie pointed out was growth in what the league views as its three big markets: Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

“Game-day revenue across those three teams is up 10 per cent, and in Toronto it’s up 40 per cent,” Ambrosie said. “The Toronto market is the one that we’ve all been watching … They had an incredibly successful year.”

The B.C Lions had a 12.3-per-cent jump in game-day revenue when compared to 2022, with Toronto’s revenue rising by 41.1 per cent and Montreal seeing an increase of 13.5 per cent.

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The Argonauts finished the season with a league-leading 16-2 record, but were bested 38-17 by the Montreal Alouettes in the CFL East Final.

Ambrosie pointed out that attendance numbers at playoff games were a positive sign, with around 30,000 fans in the stands in B.C. for the CFL West Final. Meanwhile, the 26,620 who attended the CFL East Final represented the most fans the Argos have had at BMO Field.

The commissioner also indicated league-wide television viewership was up nine per cent, and saw a 34-per-cent jump in the 24-to-55 age group.

“More than 14 million Canadians watched some CFL this year, so that’s roughly one in three Canadians,” Ambrosie said.

Playoff games staying on Saturdays

The commissioner said he believes moving the CFL’s playoff games to Saturdays paid off for the league in a big way this season.

“It feels like a permanent move,” Ambrosie said. “We are seeing so much progress being made, and our schedule seems to have really resonated with CFL fans.”

He said the change turned out to be a great success.

“The results were, frankly, spectacular. I think it’s safe to say we are now a lock for Saturdays going forward.”

Ambrosie said about 110,000 fans attended playoff games this season. Television ratings were around 1.35 million for the showdown between the Argos and Alouettes, while around 1.12 million fans tuned in for the B.C. and Winnipeg game.

Back to a balanced schedule

After the league and fans missed out on a couple of high-intrigue games this season, a balanced schedule will be returning to the CFL in 2024.

This season, Cody Fajardo moved from the Saskatchewan Roughriders to the Alouettes while Bo Levi Mitchell’s long and successful stint in Calgary as a Stampeder came to an end as he made the move to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

But neither pivot played a game in 2023 in the market they formerly called home.

“One of the things we are going to go back to now is the balanced schedule,” Ambrosie said. “We made that change coming out of COVID, and there was a lot of pressures we were feeling financially coming out of COVID, but we have decided to go back to the balanced schedule format.”

In addition to the financial pressures of the pandemic, Ambrosie said scheduling those high-demand rematches was tricky in 2023.

“One of the biggest challenges we face is stadium availability. We are not, in some cases, the primary tenant so we have to ask for dates to play those games,” he explained.

The change in 2024 means every team will play each other at least twice, with each getting a home date.

The balanced schedule in 2024 means every CFL team will play each other at least twice, with each team getting a home date. (980 CJME file photo)

Stats risk didn’t pay off

While Ambrosie saw a lot of successes with the league in 2023, one of the failures this season was the implementation of a new stats system.

The league changed over to Genius Sports for statistics for the most recent season.

The system had issues throughout the year – sometimes not providing any stats at all for games – while historical stats were completely wiped from the CFL website.

Even ahead of the Grey Cup, only statistics going back to 2016 were available on the league’s site.

“Could we get it done in time and launched to the standard that you should expect from us? We were hopeful that we would, but clearly we missed that mark. It didn’t take away from the fact that if we were going to continue to build this and grow for the future, we needed to make the change,” Ambrosie said.

“It was a calculated risk and one that didn’t go in our favour.”

Ambrosie said the league is heading in the right direction, and the work isn’t done.

Atlantic expansion talks ongoing

The Atlantic Canada expansion saga continues for the CFL.

Ambrosie said there are currently conversations being held with a qualified potential owner for the proposed expansion team.

But the CFL commissioner said he believes the long-running saga needs to come to a conclusion at some point.

“No matter how much we want to be there, and it would be great to have our 10th team in Atlantic Canada … the conversation with this phenomenal ownership candidate will continue,” Ambrosie said.

“If we’re going to do it, let’s do it. If we’re not, then you have to at some point fish or cut bait.”