Roughriders turn attention to financial troubles after cancelled 2020 season

The Saskatchewan Roughriders are now turning their attention to navigating through an impending financial crisis the team faces.

The CFL officially cancelled the 2020 season on Monday after being denied a loan from the federal government.

“I feel for everybody involved. I certainly feel for our players and I feel for our fans,” Roughriders president and CEO Craig Reynolds said. “You know how much the CFL means to Saskatchewan. It’s disappointing and it’s sad to know we’re not going to have Roughrider football in 2020.”

Reynolds said up until late last week, the league’s board of governors felt confident about having a season. Reynolds said four things had to happen for the season to go ahead: A new CBA had to be ratified, a plan had to be created with the CFL’s broadcast partner, a health-and-safety plan had to be finalized, and financial support had to be arranged from the federal government.

“We were very, very close on all of those and the government had led us to believe that there was going to be some way to access the much-needed capital,” Reynolds said.

“It was late Friday or early Saturday where the federal government informed us that outside of existing programs, they weren’t able to provide support. It was at that point that I knew it would be a real challenge to move forward with everything other than a cancelled season.”

Now Reynolds and the Roughriders organization will focus on what the future holds. In June, Reynolds said the loss of a season could lead to a $10-million deficit and referred to it as the biggest financial crisis the team has faced.

On Monday, Reynolds doubled down on that.

“We essentially have zero revenue and that has been the case for a while now,” Reynolds said.

The team hasn’t dug into its stabilization fund, which contains about $7.6 million, but it’s expecting to shortly.

“By the end of 2020, that will likely be exhausted,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds said the team has made moves to reduce expenses, such as implementing shortened work weeks for employees and layoffs in their retail sector as well as layoffs to part-time staff within the ticket office.

Reynolds remains confident the team can get through this time because of the support fans have shown in the past. He referenced the 1987 telethon year.

“We’ve been through crises before and every single time, our fans have rallied. I think our fans understand what we’re going through. None of us saw this coming,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds said fans can help the team by keeping their season-ticket money with the team to roll it over to 2021, buy gift cards and give gift card credits to the club. Reynolds said the club could also go to a bank or governments and request loans and money.

Reynolds said the team will look at its business plan, as will the league as a whole. He said this could include more revenue sharing between the teams.

Reynolds said as he looks back on it, there were probably some things the CFL could have done differently during this time.

“There’s really no playbook for a global pandemic. The league hasn’t been through this before,” Reynolds said. “It’s easy to look back now. I think about this in a football game perspective. It’s easy to go back and wish you didn’t have that play called but at the time you did, it just didn’t work out.”

Reynolds said the team will be having a meeting with staff on Tuesday to answer questions and give some context to what the future will hold due to the cancelled season.