Post by mikecubs on Jul 31, 2013 8:06:09 GMT -6
Gallagher: Pro basketball no longer a Canadian pipe dream
A professional Canadian league is being proposed — again — but this time, it might just work
A Canadian professional basketball league has long been something of a pipe dream in this country, particularly when the number of good players developed here was so few.
Import quotas would have to be high so as to make the standard of play entertaining if there was to be something on a CFL model.
Those days are gone. Canada is producing enough great players and solid coaches to render the actual personnel of such a league a non-issue. That’s why there’s a move to get one launched again.
But the real nut to crack of course is finding owners with some risk-taking capacity and in enough regions with enough interest to support attendance at the 4,000 level or more.
The cudgel is again being taken up by Cary Kaplan, the president of CosMos Sports in the Toronto area, who has been working for over a year to gauge interest in such an endeavour with a view to having somewhere between six and nine Canadian players to a team.
If all goes well at a meeting in Edmonton in the next couple of weeks, it would form sometime in September, thereby leaving a full year to get up and running with play starting in September of 2014.
Kaplan says he expects somewhere around 15 groups from between 12-15 regions around the country, mostly in Western Canada, to be represented at the meeting with lots of details to be hammered out.
Kaplan and his group have approached the Aquilini group to see if there is interest in filling between 20 and 30 dates in Rogers Arena at that time. With the NBA something of a long-shot these days, given Seattle can’t even retrieve its team, it would seem unlikely that the group would not at least send a rep to the meeting to see how feasible such a league might be with respect to keeping the building active on those nights when a concert or the Canucks aren’t going.
Kaplan has spoken to every NHL team about the concept and every junior hockey team in Canada with interest at lots of different levels.
“In terms of B.C., Vancouver would be nice, but it doesn’t have to be there, it could be Kelowna, Burnaby or Victoria just as easily,” says Kaplan. “There would be no franchise fee, I think that’s where there are a lot of mistakes made. There are enough expenses with this sort of thing without that. We’d probably start off with a very humble salary cap of between $150,000 to $300,000 per team (to be determined) with a view to growing that as the businesses succeed. But stability and success are the key. Leagues like this never fold because of lack of players or coaches, they go under because owners get sick of losing money.”
Needless to say, other than the obvious choices, Kaplan isn’t tipping his hand as to whom any of the owners who have expressed interest might be. And this league, if it goes, will never keep the country’s best players home, at least not to start.
The good ones will still be going to the NBA or Europe to make the bigger money. But for those playing the game because they love it in the lesser countries in Europe, South America and Asia, it will mean they will be able to come home and work at another career at the same time.
If it did get going, there would most assuredly be a big difference between the rich and poor teams, very much like the National Lacrosse League with the crowds and revenues generated at vastly different levels depending upon enthusiasm, sponsorships and size of market. And with the appetite for Canadian content on sports television being what it is, some help in exposure might be a possibility. Possible rights fees might come later depending upon the number of viewers.
Much more will be known after the meeting of course, but Kaplan is optimistic going in.
“If everything goes really well, we would have the announcement of the formation of the league,” he says. “That would give us some time to sort out the teams and then to name franchises in September so everyone had the same one year to be prepared.”
Not much else to do but wait and see if there are enough interested, deep-pocket types to get this thing off the ground.
www.montrealgazette.com/sports/basketball/basketball+longer+Canadian+pipe+dream/8703402/story.html
A professional Canadian league is being proposed — again — but this time, it might just work
A Canadian professional basketball league has long been something of a pipe dream in this country, particularly when the number of good players developed here was so few.
Import quotas would have to be high so as to make the standard of play entertaining if there was to be something on a CFL model.
Those days are gone. Canada is producing enough great players and solid coaches to render the actual personnel of such a league a non-issue. That’s why there’s a move to get one launched again.
But the real nut to crack of course is finding owners with some risk-taking capacity and in enough regions with enough interest to support attendance at the 4,000 level or more.
The cudgel is again being taken up by Cary Kaplan, the president of CosMos Sports in the Toronto area, who has been working for over a year to gauge interest in such an endeavour with a view to having somewhere between six and nine Canadian players to a team.
If all goes well at a meeting in Edmonton in the next couple of weeks, it would form sometime in September, thereby leaving a full year to get up and running with play starting in September of 2014.
Kaplan says he expects somewhere around 15 groups from between 12-15 regions around the country, mostly in Western Canada, to be represented at the meeting with lots of details to be hammered out.
Kaplan and his group have approached the Aquilini group to see if there is interest in filling between 20 and 30 dates in Rogers Arena at that time. With the NBA something of a long-shot these days, given Seattle can’t even retrieve its team, it would seem unlikely that the group would not at least send a rep to the meeting to see how feasible such a league might be with respect to keeping the building active on those nights when a concert or the Canucks aren’t going.
Kaplan has spoken to every NHL team about the concept and every junior hockey team in Canada with interest at lots of different levels.
“In terms of B.C., Vancouver would be nice, but it doesn’t have to be there, it could be Kelowna, Burnaby or Victoria just as easily,” says Kaplan. “There would be no franchise fee, I think that’s where there are a lot of mistakes made. There are enough expenses with this sort of thing without that. We’d probably start off with a very humble salary cap of between $150,000 to $300,000 per team (to be determined) with a view to growing that as the businesses succeed. But stability and success are the key. Leagues like this never fold because of lack of players or coaches, they go under because owners get sick of losing money.”
Needless to say, other than the obvious choices, Kaplan isn’t tipping his hand as to whom any of the owners who have expressed interest might be. And this league, if it goes, will never keep the country’s best players home, at least not to start.
The good ones will still be going to the NBA or Europe to make the bigger money. But for those playing the game because they love it in the lesser countries in Europe, South America and Asia, it will mean they will be able to come home and work at another career at the same time.
If it did get going, there would most assuredly be a big difference between the rich and poor teams, very much like the National Lacrosse League with the crowds and revenues generated at vastly different levels depending upon enthusiasm, sponsorships and size of market. And with the appetite for Canadian content on sports television being what it is, some help in exposure might be a possibility. Possible rights fees might come later depending upon the number of viewers.
Much more will be known after the meeting of course, but Kaplan is optimistic going in.
“If everything goes really well, we would have the announcement of the formation of the league,” he says. “That would give us some time to sort out the teams and then to name franchises in September so everyone had the same one year to be prepared.”
Not much else to do but wait and see if there are enough interested, deep-pocket types to get this thing off the ground.
www.montrealgazette.com/sports/basketball/basketball+longer+Canadian+pipe+dream/8703402/story.html