Jason Gregor recently joined The Markcast to talk about the latest CFL news and the league’s struggles to connect with fans. He hosts ‘The Jason Gregor Show’ weekdays from 2-6 pm on TSN1260.
On The CFL Shutting Down the 2020 Season
“Well, I wasn’t surprised when the CFL didn’t play last year, they don’t have a billion-dollar multimillion-dollar TV contract. So how can you play without fans like the NHL played this year without fans and they lost like 3.6 billion and they’ve got billionaire owners? The CFL doesn’t have that.
The CFL to me is is no different than a lot of other businesses that had to shut down.
My only concern I don’t know if the CFL has done a great job of outlining and being very honest and upfront and just say, you know what, if we can’t play without fans, that’s our financial model. And I think most people would understand most businesses can’t thrive without customers.”
On The CFL Not Connecting With Its Fans Base Over That Last Year
“The mistake I believe that the CFL has made in all of this is they haven’t connected to their loyal fan base in some cases. I feel they’ve turned them off. And that’s a real big challenge because if you turn enough of them off because they don’t have a ton of new fans coming. So if you’re not at least connecting with your loyal base, what’s going to happen when you come back and play? If you lose 10 to 15 percent of them, that’s a massive blow to this league.”
On The Fans Reaction When The CFL Returns
“I think the CFL is going to have a big image problem when they come back because I think they’ve really annoyed some of their loyal fan base. Like I have so many people that were diehard fans of my show for years are like, man, I’ve kind of lost interest in the CFL. Out of sight, out of mind is a dangerous thing in any walk of life.”
On The Lack Of Online Digital Presence Of The CFL
“The CFL is going to have to do a much better online presence to connect with their fans. And they didn’t do it beforehand. Hey, guys, what have they had to do for the last year and a half? If they haven’t thought about an online digital presence to engage with their fans, then they’re clueless.
TSN, has their free-agent list, but the CFL releases their free-agent list two weeks after the regular season. What, like why? So now you’re only allowing your fans to have thought about it from the middle of December until the middle of February. Like that’s lunacy. Why would you have it year-round and just updated?
You should have independent sites doing it and you can’t get that information anywhere. It’s close-minded by the league. The NHL works with some of these sites. Other leagues do as well. They release that information and the protected list like guys. How is that not out there? The great part about the protected list is it changes literally every week, every week. So you’re getting new information for your diehard fans to go, oh, they just dropped this quarterback.”
Mark Perry is the founder and editor of CFL News Hub. A dedicated and experienced football analyst, he has been providing comprehensive coverage of the sport since 2018.
