Bay Observer Article On Hamilton Tiger-Cat Finances

The Bay Observer of all places (which sometimes seems like a Bob Bratina
mouthpiece) recently had an excellent article about the business side
of the Hamilton Ticats complete with numbers. Since Tigercatatonia has always been interested
in the business of the Ticats besides the football, it is worth going over
some of the numbers mentioned in the article.

Probably most interested to me was the claim by Ticat CEO about merchandise
sales:

"For merchandize we’ve gone from being the last team in the league were now close to a million and a half dollars a year"

The most recent numbers I've heard for Ticat merchandise sales were a million
dollars per year, so if the Cats are close to $1.5 million that's impressive,
especially considering the stadium delays have no doubt impacted
merchandise sales this year substantially. A figure of $1.5 million is also
impressive compared to other teams in the league. Obviously that figure
what be dwarfed by the Riders' number, but one would have to think that the
Ticats would be among the lead leaders. I'm not sure they would be above
Winnipeg or likely second place Edmonton, but they're probably within
striking distance. With a full year of the new stadium, one wonders if
$2 million in merchandise is possible in 2015 (or 2016 when the Ticats are
likely to host a Grey Cup).

I would also be curious to see where $1.5 million in merchandise places
the Tiger-Cats relative to other pro teams in Canada: the NHL teams,
the Toronto Blue Jays, the Toronto Raptors and especially the MLS teams
in Canada. Toronto FC when it started seemed to have excellent
nerchandise sales, but years of sucking and missing the playoffs seems
to have hurt their sales. Would the Ticats have bigger sales than
Toronto FC currently?

Mitchell also makes a statement in the article about corporate
sponsorships: "our corporate partnerships were the worst in the league and now we could be number two.”" Again the Riders are likely way out front, but
I seem to remember hearing that the Montreal Alouettes had great
corporate sponsorships, with the likes of CN as sponsors and Edmonton
and Calgary likely has extensive corporate sponsorship.

Another number Mitchell mentions in the article is the amount of money
an Eastern team requires in revenue to break even. I've heard $15
million bandied about for CFL operating expenses (with the salary
cap being around one third of that number), but in this article
Mitchell says it is $20 million.

Probably the most surprising item in the whole article is the news
that team would have turned a profit this year had it not
been for the stadium snafus, but will next year. That's certainly
good news for the Cats and impressive considering the revenue
needed to for that to happen.

One final number from the article:
"the fact that the tab that he has run up propping up the team is now at
$40 Million." So Tiger-Cats fans certainly have Bob Young to thank for the
team still being here.
  

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. 

Saskatchewan Roughriders Financial Report Numbers 2012

In the previous post I was pondering over the Ticats merchandise and how it sells relative to other CFL and Canadian pro sports teams. Saskatchewan has merchandise sales that are third overall in Canada behind the Leafs and Canadiens. However interestingly the Riders are a public owned team and make public their annual report.

This Regina Leader-Post article has the highlights of the report for 2012. Gross revenues were $34.4 million versus $32.2 million in expenses. These expenses would be a lot higher than any other CFL team and are unique to Saskatchewan.

Gate receipts were $13.1 million which again would be way higher than any other team, although Edmonton might not be far behind.

Football expenses were $10.9 million which is a useful number as it would be similar for other CFL teams. This would include the $4.4 million salary cap, coaches salaries, plus one would assume equipment expenses, travel, scouting and the other costs associated with running a CFL team.

Merchandise sales were over $7 million which I would assume would lead the CFL by a wide margin (I seem to recall something about the Ticats recently selling over $1 million in merchandise in a year (third best in the CFL)) and thus it is likely the Riders outsell all other CFL teams combined). I'm not sure if this is the total sales or the profit on the sale of the items.

Sponsorship was $5.2 million. I've heard that Montreal has high sponsorship revenues but I'm not sure how comparable these would be to the Riders. I've never heard a Ticat number, but obviously it would be significantly less.

Concessions sales were $3.8 million. Again I'm not sure if this is total sales or profits. All concessions have a pretty massive markup (i.e. beer).