The Global Appeal of Canadian Football in 2020

At first glance, to those not familiar with the sport, Canadian football can look very similar to American football. Both sports descended from Rugby and, in both sports, two teams compete for territorial control of a playing field, but despite this the two are distinctive and different sports. The main difference between American and Canadian Football is the size of the playing field. In American football the field is 100 yards long and 53 and 1/3 yards wide whilst in Canada the field is larger, at 110 yards long and 65 yards wide. What’s more, the goal posts in Canadian football are situated at the front of the end zone, rather than the back, which is also deeper in Canadian football: this is an obvious visual difference that many people notice straight away.

Aside from this, the two sports share many similarities. But despite this, American Football has a robust global appeal, whereas the support base for Canadian football tends to be more localised. We explore why this is the case, and how Canadian Football will increase its global appeal throughout 2020:

The CFL 2.0 Initiative

The CFL 2.0 Initiative is a grand scheme intended to expand the number of global players on each team’s roster throughout the season. Many of the nine CFL league teams will also add global players to their practice roster, further broadening the global engagement with the sport. The aim of the scheme is to see a growth in the number of fans both inside Canada and overseas, and although it’s early days it seems to be a success; players have already been recruited from both Mexico and the United States, amongst others. Where there is a convergence of overseas players, the overseas fans will so often follow.

The internationalising of the sport in this way has obvious attractions, particularly for the Millennials, Gen-X, and Gen-Y fans, who so often look to social media to increase their enjoyment and find mutual fanbases for their chosen sport. What’s more, the increasing popularity of football betting through websites such as Wildz means that younger sports fans, including Canadian football fans, are watching their chosen sports online in conjunction with watching the odds. The ability to watch sport online in this way means that sports fans are no longer bound by what is being screened on terrestrial TV in their areas.

Increased Media Exposure

Local media has always covered the CFL in a meaningful and significant way, but Randy Ambrosie, the Commissioner of the Canadian Football League, is targeting global media interest in the CFL for 2020. The goal is that players, coaches and alumni from the league will be brought into the CFL’s big tent in a more meaningful way than ever before, so that the media output offered by the sport has an increased global appeal, when compared to the exposure, and the offering, that has been made in previous years.

Effectively, the league wants to make media announcements that are actually worth listening to! And if this can be achieved, alongside a roster of new players and new talent being

nurtured in other countries, then the global appeal of Canadian Football will only increase in popularity in the future.