If you build it they will come...but should you build it?

We all want there to be a team in Saskatchewan, but it has to make sense for the city

Photo by Scott Blake on Unsplash

As I wrote yesterday, the PrairieLand stadium proposal in Saskatoon is getting closer to a council vote. Once there, we will find out if Saskatchewan is getting a CanPL expansion team for, likely, 2024.

As this is a soccer blog, I suspect that most people reading this want the proposal to be accepted. Also, the submissions to Saskatoon council speaking to the project at the public meeting last month were positive.

If you were only to read soccer media, or talk to those in soccer circles, you might come away thinking that this is a no brainer.

How could Saskatoon not want a stadium and a team in the CanPL?

Soccer-bubble thinking, I call that. It’s a dangerous path to go down. I understand the instinct to be a booster to every soccer plan that surfaces, but we need to be critical in our thinking sometimes.

So, let’s take a step back and evaluate the proposal on its merits.

The market

The easiest piece of this puzzle is whether Saskatoon is a good market for the league.

It is. When we look at the most successful markers in the CanPL so far, what we find is that they tend to be the smaller centres.

In cities like Halifax and Victoria the clubs are treated as if they are big time. Although there are decent crowds in larger centres like Ottawa, Hamilton or Calgary, the acceptance of the teams as being “major” there are less established outside of the soccer bubble.

Saskatoon is closer to a Halifax or Victoria than an Ottawa, Calgary or Hamilton. With limited pro sports competition in place there is a potential for the Living Sky team to be the biggest show in town.

Saskatchewan has shown that it will support the Riders as a province, as well. Although, it is ambitious to think that would immediately translate to a soccer team, the template is there for it to happen. Certainly, the Riders power in Regina is why the Saskatchewan team should be in Saskatoon rather than the capital.

Saskatoon, at least in my experience, is also a bit more of a bohemian place as compared to Regina, so soccer might be a better fit there. I’m saying there’s more hipsters in Saskatoon and that hipsters tend to like soccer.

The fans

If you’ve followed the Canadian national team for a while, you’ll be aware of the infamous “Saskatchewan boys.”

They’ve been a fixture at games for years, travelling long distances to watch both the men and women compete. Although you’d need more than the old school fans to show up, I have been assured by those very fans that there is a thriving soccer scene in Saskatoon and that it is excited for a team.

For what it’s worth, there were several voices supporting the proposal at the town meeting in December.

It’s also a town that has shown that it will support USports, which, to me, is a good indicator of a market that will be openminded about a league like the CanPL.

So, all signs here are promising.

The opposition

It doesn’t matter how good your arguments are, if the opposition to the stadium is organized and loud enough.

It’s hard to say what that will look like. It’s likely that more sceptical voices will emerge as the proposal gets closer to going before council.

A quick survey of local media found only one negative article in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix. Back in June, local columnist Phil Tank published a takedown piece titled Saskatoon taxpayers asked to foot bill for private soccer team.

That’s paywalled, so I’ll only clip a portion here:

If you can’t name a single player or team in a league, as is no doubt the case for most of Saskatoon and this soccer league, it ranks as a highly questionable investment

I don’t know Mr. Tank’s work, but I’ve read a lot of local columnists over the years. I doubt his opinions on this matter are going to be unique. It’s my experience that guys like him have a great deal of power in cities like Saskatoon and those cities tend to not throw money around at private sports teams without a damn good reason.

Ignore Mr. Tank at your own peril, Saskatoon soccer friends.

The proposal

Here’s the thing. As much as many of you will want to dismiss Mr. Tank’s words as that of an old school, anti-soccer crank, he’s got a point. You and I might think a Saskatoon team will be successful and that the CanPL will be with us for generations, but the truth is we don’t know this for sure. We just had a CanPL team fold in December, after all.

There is a legitimate question to ask of Living Sky Sports & Entertainment, and that is, “Why aren’t you paying more?”

If the answer to that is “We can’t afford to,” then we need to evaluate whether this is the right group to lead the project.

Yes, we all want a team in Saskatoon. That’s not in question. But, we should want a team with solid ownership in a community that is fully behind it. If a stadium deal is forced on Saskatoon and it turns out to really just be part of a real estate play by LSSE then that’s going to make it difficult for the Saskatoon team to be successful and it’s going to muddy the waters in other potential expansion markets.

All that said, I’m not universally opposed to public money going into stadium builds. There just needs to be a legitimate benefit to the community to justify it. A benefit that isn’t magical thinking in one of those economic impact studies that always get pulled out.

The one for this project claims the stadium is going to generate $6.07 million a year in tourism for Saskatoon. Sure. Let’s go with that. Why not.

I’m being sarcastic, of course. The numbers are nonsense. They always are. It’s impossible to know what, if anything, will be generated economically from a stadium. It is hard to defend these projects when the people behind them throw out these silly figures.

Instead they should focus on the more intangible benefits of having a facility like this in the city — how it could be aspirational for kids, offer community use and just make the city a better place to live and raise a family in. No, you can’t put a financial benefit on that, but it’s why you should want to build it.

Everyone likes nice things. It comes down to balancing priorities. Can the city afford to build a nice thing right now? If it can, then it should look at it and make a decision that makes sense to Saskatoon.

Of course, none of this would matter if LSSE, Prairieland, the CanPL, or someone else, were to just build the facility themselves, or, failing that, at least take on the majority of the risk.

That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, so we will wait and see how it plays out.

On a personal level, I really want to see Saskatoon get a team, but I don’t live there. It’s up to the people that do to decide whether this project makes sense for their city.

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