After the NFL playoffs this year featured a multitude of fantastic games, can the CFL adapt to stay afloat with viewership divided?
According to TSN, 17.6 million Canadian televisions were tuned into the Super Bowl Sunday night. The Canadian Football League championship game, the Grey Cup only managed to attract 7.9 million viewers.
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A staggering statistic considering they provide a similar product.
“We were starting to see signs in the 2019 season that support was diminishing (for the CFL),” said Leader-post sports writer Rob Vanstone. “Saskatchewan (Roughriders) were a first-place team, but they only sold out one regular-season game out of nine.”
This has been an issue for the CFL in recent years, and moreso considering they lost the 2020 season to COVID-19. The NFL season continued.
“It doesn’t help to go dark, especially when you’re a league that doesn’t have a lot of momentum sometimes.”
Riders season ticket-holder Marty Bechard believes the NFL simply has a leg up on its northern competition.
“They’re putting a better product on the field. Your feet and your eyes do the shopping for you,” Bechard said, “If you don’t like what you’re watching (CFL) up here, you’d watch (NFL).”
There is still a demographic of die-hard CFL fans. For many, it’s engrained in Canadian culture, especially in Saskatchewan. Richard Pander has been a Rider fan for 66 years and has no intention of jumping on the NFL bandwagon.
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“The CFL is a very exciting game, a wide open game,” said Pander.
All three agreed the CFL was losing viewership to the NFL, and each had good reasons why.
Not appealing to the younger generation was the most common cause provided.
“There’s a lot of hype around the NFL,” said Pander, “The tailgating they do before the game, the promotions.”
“That attracts the younger crowd, the ones that they have to entice to get to the game.”
Vanstone attributed it to lack of effort on the League’s part. He believes they’ve stopped trying to push their product on Canadians.
“There’s one thing the CFL has to its advantage that the NFL will never have, and its accessibility,” he said. “It’s really easy to meet Cody Fajardo. You just go to practice.”
It’s imperative for the league to be more aggressive instead of just passively accepting that there’s going to be an interest in the CFL.”
“It’s not uncommon to walk around and see kids or adults wearing NFL stuff instead of CFL memorabilia or CFL merchandise.”
While getting youth interested in the game is a priority, Bechard provided a unique reason he would begin watching CFL over NFL that differs from the die-hard fans like Vanstone and Pander.
“Gambling is a bit of an addictive trait,” he said. “It gives a quality that you have some skin in the game.”
“Get them involved, you’ve got to get people involved in the game.”
A different perspective, and while the CFL and Canada law has made strides in making sports betting legal and more accessible, the NFL is leading the charge when it comes to legal sports gambling.
Sports Management Degree Hub states more than 40 million people play NFL fantasy football. The CFL also has fantasy football, but only through a website, no phone applications, and is only weekly fantasy, where the NFL has a multitude of apps and league types including Yahoo, Fanduel, and the NFL’s own fantasy app.
