Blazing a trail - the Canadian Premier League shows the way forward

On Saturday November 2^nd, Forge FC of Hamilton, Ontario beat Calvary FC of Calgary, Alberta to become the first Canadian Premier League Champions, capping a defining season in Canadian soccer. Eight months earlier, the country witnessed the inauguration of a brand-new association football league, a nationwide endeavour the likes of which had never been attempted before in Canada.

The game has never really gained a foothold in the country. While there were regional leagues, there had never been a domestic national league. Some Canadian teams had competed in US leagues in the past, notably the Toronto Blizzard and Vancouver Whitecaps who played in the now defunct North American Soccer League in the 70s and 80s.

Toronto FC sparked a revival in the game in 2007 when it joined the US Major League Soccer. They were then joined by the aforementioned Vancouver Whitecaps in 2011 and the Montréal Impact in 2012. Unlike previous attempts at establishing the game in North America, MLS has endured.

But these teams are Canadian outposts in a predominantly US league. With just three top level clubs in the country, opportunities for young Canadian players have been scarce. Despite the rising popularity in the game and the accomplishments of the three clubs, this wasn't translating into success for the national team. It became clear to many in the game that a home-grown league was needed to local nurture talent.

And so the Canadian Premier League was born. It is comprised of 7 teams from major cities in Canada, while avoiding direct competition in markets that already have an MLS presence. This provided opportunities for teams across the country such as Edmonton FC, Valour FC of Winnipeg, Pacific FC in British Columbia, Valour of Winnipeg, Cavalry in Calgary and York9 in North York in the north of the Greater Toronto Area.

This marked a new beginning for the game, and an opportunity to do things differently. One of the inaugural clubs that recognized this as an opportunity to be innovative was the Nova Scotian club Halifax Wanderers.

Extratime.ie had to opportunity to talk with the club founder and president Derek Martin about their achievements this year, and their plans for the future. This is a club that has the fans front and centre of everything they do. There are lessons from Halifax's (or HFX as they are more commonly known) first season for many League of Ireland clubs.

Consider how tough it would be to build a club from scratch. Doing so in a league that is also being built from the ground up is tougher. Then add to the fact that there isn't a ready-made stadium to move into gives you an idea of the challenges HFX faced in the run up to the 2019 opening season. The temptation to settle for an existing stadium just to get things up and running as quickly and easily as possible must have been immense. But that wasn't HFX's approach at all. As Martin explains:

"The first thing we wanted to figure out was the best location, not the best existing location with a stadium but the best location period.  Once we found that, we built the stadium around it. All of our research indicated that downtown stadiums are more successful than suburban stadiums and in Halifax we are on a peninsula, so being located in the heart of that peninsula surrounded by the business and entertainment district is ideal.

The land identified as the future home of HFX, Wanderers Grounds, is owned by the Halifax Municipal Authority. While the location is perfect for the club, this threw up some additional complications as the club was unable to build a permanent facility on the land.

"That’s when we looked at utilizing temporary bleachers, shipping containers and infrastructure that was moveable so that we could basically test this idea of having a downtown soccer stadium, without having to make a long-term commitment financially or address the political ramifications of public investment in a permanent sport stadium."

There is an upside to this. The ground is essentially modular by design. That means it can be expanded as required for future growth.

The immediate challenge was to fill the 6,200-capacity stadium before thoughts could turn to expansion. That was far from a given. Halifax, the picturesque yet cosmopolitan capital of the province of Nova Scotia has a population of around 400,000 and is the main hub and cultural centre for the Canadian Maritime region. There are hockey, lacrosse and rugby teams (and even a GAA club, the Halifax Gaels!) But it was an untested market for soccer at almost any level.  Engaging with the local community and building interest from the ground up was key to the strategy.

The approach was to build excitement around the idea of a downtown stadium and take advantage of the absence of any other professional sports in the city. By focusing the conversation around developing community infrastructure, HFX we generated significant media attention which then led to immediate grassroots support.

"From the beginning we had a very committed, albeit small group of supporters, but they quickly started garnering their own support from other fans and their numbers grew.  Organically the group gained momentum, starting with five people and then it was ten and then twenty and forty until gradually over a year it built up to the point where when we launched a season ticket campaign, we already knew we had a core group that was ready to support the club.

We made a strategic effort to hire people in the organization that were connected with the soccer community and we focused on building great relationships with the provincial soccer body and all the individual clubs.  Our goal was to remove as many barriers as we could.

Our partnership with Soccer Nova Scotia led to a black out of youth soccer games during our home games which was really important for parents to make a commitment to buy a season ticket knowing they wouldn’t have to miss their kids' games."

HFX focuses on fan experience, and that goes far beyond making sure the team on the pitch is entertaining. The club president's background is in event management and this has clearly influenced his approach. Nothing is left to chance, and the club is very responsive to the fans – paying customers on whom the club depends after all – and their needs.

"How easy was it to buy tickets, find a parking space, enter the game, how quickly could you buy a beer and how quickly could you get your food, was the food hot, was it easy to get to your seat, etc?... We’ve worked on every one of those elements as some we didn’t do perfectly at the start of the season, but we just keep evolving and trying to learn each game what works and what doesn’t work.

Live events are all about the shared experience of being with thousands of other people and sharing a moment in time that connects you.  That is something you can't get from watching a game on television and for us, improving the game day fan experience every single time will always be at the core of what we do."

HFX is conscious the importance of being rooted in the community. For instance, the club's motto is Ar Cala, Ar Dachaigh, Ar n-Anam. Our Harbour. That's Gaelic for "Our Harbour, Our Home, Our Soul." The choice of using Gaelic for the motto harks back to Nova Scotia's strong Scottish heritage. The Gaelic language and culture are still an important part of the province's identity today.

While the results haven't been everything the club would have hoped for, there is much to be proud of off the pitch. The club enjoys the second highest average attendance in the league at just over 6,000 and Wanderers Grounds has become well known around the league for its boisterous atmosphere on game day. But the club isn't going to be complacent. It wants to be a long-term part of the community.

We have to be respectful of our fans and value their commitment to our club.  We need to invest money in improvements to the product both on and off the pitch as we know we have to earn their support every season and never take it for granted."

Whatever the future holds, expect HFX to stick to their main principles of being part of the community and putting fans first; being innovative and implementing change incrementally; never compromising on the quality of their product.

"The biggest challenge will be keeping our momentum. We also need to keep growing at the right pace, we have to be careful not to get too far ahead of ourselves, we can’t take it for granted we were successful this year, we have to keep following all the same principles that we had in year one but show incremental improvement in every area.

No matter how hard HFX work, the product on the pitch has to be worth supporters' time and money. It helps that the quality of play has generally been impressive. There have been some genuine highlight-reel contenders among the goals scored this season, such as Kadell Thomas's solo effort for Forge FC against Valour. The CPL has not been shy in promoting their product. All games are streamed live on the OneSoccer service, and the CBC shows a number of live games free to air.

There have been some notable successes to further burnish the league's reputation; Forge FC’s run in the Concacaf Nations League, Cavalry FC defeating the Vancouver Whitecaps of the MLS in the Canadian Championship, and Canadian national team call-ups for Cavalry goalkeeper Marco Carducci and FC Edmonton defender Amer Didic.

Canada has seized the initiative and begun to build up its own soccer infrastructure in a country where Ice Hockey reigns supreme, and Canadian football (the gridiron variety) and basketball also compete for attention. This was only possible through the concerted efforts of the Canadian Premier League which has worked to market the league extensively and provides the clubs the support they need to make an impact in their communities.

But the clubs have had to step up themselves and do the hard work in their own communities. This will be an ongoing endeavor given the competition from other sports. In this regard, HFX is showing the way for other clubs in Canada and further afield.