You may look at the title of this blog and you may be puzzled, well fear not, let me explain. The initial thought of this piece was provoked by the recent talk of a 10th franchise in Halifax and it got me thinking why can’t anywhere in Canada have a team without needing a set of wealthy investors? I’m of course talking about places which may lack the complete infrastructure in order to put a bid together, such as funding / ability to build a stadium or just lack of capable investors. This could apply to places like Moncton (talked about but seems unlikely) or Windsor, or perhaps unlikely places such as Fort McMurray or St John’s of Newfoundland. I’m not saying all these places should start crowdfunding tomorrow. I’m talking about if you have some Canadian Football fans in an area where they are desperate to bring a CFL team too they could start crowdfunding and see what happens. The great thing about crowdfunding is until the amount is met you don’t have to pay, meaning no commitment from anyone for a while to be honest you will need to raise a lot to fund a team’s operations. These costs will include things like a 25,000-capacity stadium, 55 player roster along with various backroom staff and other costs. One of the appealing things about crowd funding from a league perspective is that it would open up the league to a global audience as anyone in the world could invest. Potentially you could get 50,000 shareholders worldwide which would be great for the CFL and help them target new customers. Crowdfunding a sports team is a fairly new idea, but one which has been tried before. About four years ago Spanish football side (soccer) Eibar now in La Liga, were struggling financially and needed a way to raise cash in order to avoid going out of business. They successfully did so and doubled their revenue in the process to over €1.2 million and today they have over 11,000 shareholders in something like 60 different countries. This just illustrates the power of crowdfunding and why I think it should be under consideration in the CFL in order for fans to achieve dreams of their city hosting a team as well as the ability for the league to expand their international fanbase.
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