Thursday, May 22, 2014

CFL 2014 Collective Bargaining and Ticat Merchandise

I haven't commented at all about the CFL bargaining process so far, although I'm definitely interested in it. Certainly with the new TSN television deal I can appreciate that the players would want to get a significant raise after years of stagnant increases (which I'm sure are even below the poor average performance of the Canadian worker since 2000).

I thought this blog post from Ridley Scouting was a good take on the issues.

I was interested in one thing in particular from a Ticat business perspective:

"The third portion of the NFL equation is based on merchandise sales. In the CFL the leader is the Saskatchewan Roughriders who generate $7 Million each year in sales but they also account for 70% of the total meaning the League overall is only at $10 Million."

I'm not sure that is entirely accurate. Certainly the Riders generate a massive amount of sales relative to the other teams, but I've heard the Ticats bandy about selling more than a million in merchandise. That would mean the Ticats would sell half the other six teams combined which strikes me as unlikely. I do think that the Cats sell a lot of merchandise for the size of their fan base as measured by television ratings, ticket sales and Internet following. The Argos measured by Google trends seem similar to the Cats, but I'm sure the Cats sell way more merchandise. 

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