rdavies
06-03-2018, 01:59 PM
JONES: New Grey Cup era with elimination of money grab (http://edmontonsun.com/sports/football/cfl/jones-new-grey-cup-era-ushered-with-elimination-of-money-grab)
Terry Jones Edmonton Sun June 2, 2018
Going, going, going are the last of the Edmonton 2018 Grey Cup tickets.
Gone is the great Grey Cup money grab.
The 106th Grey Cup is the beginning on a new era in the hosting of the event. Edmonton and 2019 host Calgary, your correspondent has learned, have quietly combined with new CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie to create a new Grey Cup Era that begins NOW.
Gone are the days of teams pocketing $6-to-$8 million while spending as little on the Grey Cup Festival as they can get away with.
CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie used the timing to inform your correspondent that the Grey Cup was about to enter a new era here this year.
For most of the new millennium the Grey Cup has been a major heist by the host city, in many cases to make up for losses incurred by owner and to get individual teams out of the hole.
“It wasn’t all about the profit when we came to the table,” said Grey Cup co-chairman and Eskimo president and CEO Len Rhodes. “We knew we could milk it and deliver more profit. But it wasn’t about the profit. It was about the Grey Cup Festival. We decided we wanted to think long term and how do we turn this property into the golden gem?”
Ambrosie believes that Rhodes, co-chairman Brad Sparrow and organizing committee general manager Duane Vienneau, in attempting to one-up themselves from the Doug Goss, Rick LeLacheur co-chaired 2010 Grey Cup, are about to send the event down a new road to the future.
“I think that’s the story,” said Ambrosie as ticket sales passed the 49,000 mark at 2 p.m. Saturday to leave only 6,819 available 24 hours they went on sale.
Ambrosie said there’s an Edmonton-Calgary combination in the works behind the scenes happening here followed by the 2019 edition in Calgary. And Edmonton 2018 is establishing the template for the future.
“What these guys have done is to have the vision that when you make the Grey Cup bigger, the future of the Grey Cup and the future of the league will be bigger.”
When the dust settles from the second Edmonton Stampede of Grey Cup tickets to go in less than a week — indeed only the second Grey Cup to be sold out before Labour Day — the Edmonton organizing committee will concentrate on delivering the greatest festival leading up to the game in history and do so with an ample budget. They won’t be holding bank to insure a massive cash infusion.
“It can’t belong to one city. It can’t belong in any given year to one team. It has to be an asset in any given year that everybody contributes to. The league has to own Grey Cup,” said Ambrosie.
Quietly, behind the scenes, the Eskimos and 2019 Grey Cup host Calgary Stampeders agreed to take far less than, say, the $5.1 million the Eskimos banked in 2010 even after deciding to upgrade the festival part of it by a couple of million after the six-day sellout.
“In 2018 the Eskimos are stewards of the Grey Cup,” said Ambrosie. “In a way we haven’t done before, the league is working with the host committee to make sure we’re constantly learning and constantly making the Grey Cup experience better than the year before. Instead of the host committee not doing the best they can, they’re holding themselves higher, more enlightened, standard.
“One of the things that people don’t know is that we’re actually putting together an evaluation methodology. We’re taking the bid document, the plan document, and basically creating a scorecard.
“I give Brad, Len and Duane full marks for not only being supportive but being enthusiastically supportive of being held accountable to what they promised they would do.
“That’s a game-changer for the league. The Grey Cup is our greatest asset as a league and we have to make it bigger.”
The dispersal of profits will be entirely different now.
“There will be a sharing of the proceeds,” said Ambrosie. “After the covering of costs there is a percentage that will go to the host, because they’re the ones doing the work, then there’s a percentage that will go to the other teams. Previously all of the proceeds went to the host team.
“It’s literally an end-to-end change in mindset. It’s a much bigger role for the league. It’s a collaboration with the host committee. It’s an accountability to your other partners. It’s all of those things wrapped into one momentous change.
“Both Edmonton, with Brad, Len and Duane embracing it, but further than that going to John Bean and John Hufnagel and they have similarly embraced it in Calgary.
“This is an important moment for the Grey Cup.”
Terry Jones Edmonton Sun June 2, 2018
Going, going, going are the last of the Edmonton 2018 Grey Cup tickets.
Gone is the great Grey Cup money grab.
The 106th Grey Cup is the beginning on a new era in the hosting of the event. Edmonton and 2019 host Calgary, your correspondent has learned, have quietly combined with new CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie to create a new Grey Cup Era that begins NOW.
Gone are the days of teams pocketing $6-to-$8 million while spending as little on the Grey Cup Festival as they can get away with.
CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie used the timing to inform your correspondent that the Grey Cup was about to enter a new era here this year.
For most of the new millennium the Grey Cup has been a major heist by the host city, in many cases to make up for losses incurred by owner and to get individual teams out of the hole.
“It wasn’t all about the profit when we came to the table,” said Grey Cup co-chairman and Eskimo president and CEO Len Rhodes. “We knew we could milk it and deliver more profit. But it wasn’t about the profit. It was about the Grey Cup Festival. We decided we wanted to think long term and how do we turn this property into the golden gem?”
Ambrosie believes that Rhodes, co-chairman Brad Sparrow and organizing committee general manager Duane Vienneau, in attempting to one-up themselves from the Doug Goss, Rick LeLacheur co-chaired 2010 Grey Cup, are about to send the event down a new road to the future.
“I think that’s the story,” said Ambrosie as ticket sales passed the 49,000 mark at 2 p.m. Saturday to leave only 6,819 available 24 hours they went on sale.
Ambrosie said there’s an Edmonton-Calgary combination in the works behind the scenes happening here followed by the 2019 edition in Calgary. And Edmonton 2018 is establishing the template for the future.
“What these guys have done is to have the vision that when you make the Grey Cup bigger, the future of the Grey Cup and the future of the league will be bigger.”
When the dust settles from the second Edmonton Stampede of Grey Cup tickets to go in less than a week — indeed only the second Grey Cup to be sold out before Labour Day — the Edmonton organizing committee will concentrate on delivering the greatest festival leading up to the game in history and do so with an ample budget. They won’t be holding bank to insure a massive cash infusion.
“It can’t belong to one city. It can’t belong in any given year to one team. It has to be an asset in any given year that everybody contributes to. The league has to own Grey Cup,” said Ambrosie.
Quietly, behind the scenes, the Eskimos and 2019 Grey Cup host Calgary Stampeders agreed to take far less than, say, the $5.1 million the Eskimos banked in 2010 even after deciding to upgrade the festival part of it by a couple of million after the six-day sellout.
“In 2018 the Eskimos are stewards of the Grey Cup,” said Ambrosie. “In a way we haven’t done before, the league is working with the host committee to make sure we’re constantly learning and constantly making the Grey Cup experience better than the year before. Instead of the host committee not doing the best they can, they’re holding themselves higher, more enlightened, standard.
“One of the things that people don’t know is that we’re actually putting together an evaluation methodology. We’re taking the bid document, the plan document, and basically creating a scorecard.
“I give Brad, Len and Duane full marks for not only being supportive but being enthusiastically supportive of being held accountable to what they promised they would do.
“That’s a game-changer for the league. The Grey Cup is our greatest asset as a league and we have to make it bigger.”
The dispersal of profits will be entirely different now.
“There will be a sharing of the proceeds,” said Ambrosie. “After the covering of costs there is a percentage that will go to the host, because they’re the ones doing the work, then there’s a percentage that will go to the other teams. Previously all of the proceeds went to the host team.
“It’s literally an end-to-end change in mindset. It’s a much bigger role for the league. It’s a collaboration with the host committee. It’s an accountability to your other partners. It’s all of those things wrapped into one momentous change.
“Both Edmonton, with Brad, Len and Duane embracing it, but further than that going to John Bean and John Hufnagel and they have similarly embraced it in Calgary.
“This is an important moment for the Grey Cup.”