It's complicated

The national team players, the CanPL, fairness and the CSB deal

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Emotions were running high all weekend, after the CanWNT threatened job action against the CSA for failing to properly fund the program in the lead up to the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

Pointing to a financial audit that showed a significant difference in funding between the men and women in 2021 and 2022, the women have accused the CSA of gender inequality.

As I wrote on Friday, the CSA has claimed in the past that you need to look at their budgets over a four year period to determine whether the genders have been balanced. That said, the numbers from 2019 and 2020 have surfaced and, although they are more or less equal, the 2021 and 2022 numbers are considerably tilted towards the men.

From speaking to a few people who have an understanding of the funding, the disparity is mostly to do with a difference in needs: men’s World Cup Qualifying is incredibly expensive compared to the women. For those unaware, the women play a two week tournament to qualify for a World Cup. The men played three rounds of qualifying spread out over two years. All rounds involve trips to remote locations. It truly is an apples to elephants comparison and it makes calculations of equality difficult.

The principles of equal funding are unquestionable. They must be met. The formula to get there is not simple, no matter how much we might want it to be.

It’s complicated.

What’s not complicated is that the CSA has a revenue problem. The truth is that they don’t generate enough money to properly fund either program, really. For years, they struggled to attract corporate support in any real way. Even now, many of the CSA partners were with the organization prior to the success of the men. Those deals are just not worth the money that many people think they are. (Note: the morning after this was published, TSN’s Rick Westhead Tweeted that the total amount of sponsorship is between $15-$20 million currently. Considering that is for both national teams, the Para team and all youth teams, my point stands…).

One can argue that the CSA should have done a better job at attracting more money. That’s fair, to a point, but it’s also not as easy as snapping one’s fingers. There are a lot of Canadian sports federations out there all chasing a limited pile of money. Further to that, the COC sucks up a lot of the oxygen. In fact, the issues with the women likely would have boiled over sooner if it wasn’t for the Olympic funding that the program generated.

It was because of these funding challenges that the CSA was willing to enter into the partnership with Canadian Soccer Business. It was a simple trade off of guaranteed money over the potential of a bigger payday down the road.

Bluntly, the deal didn’t look that bad in 2019. Especially since next to no one was looking at it. I’m not sure the CSA is to blame for that because the information was out there. I know this because I talked about it at the time.

As best as I recall (note: I might spend some time digging through the archives to find the show I did, but I’ve recorded well over 2,000 podcasts so finding stuff isn’t always easy. I welcome anyone that wants to look to send me the link if you find mentions of CSB from back in the day), my position back then was that the deal was a clever way to get the funding needed to start the Canadian Premier League.

That was pretty much everyone’s opinion. It was widely believed that the CanPL was desperately needed and that this was possibly the only way to make this dream happen. It wasn’t conventual, but nothing we do here is when it comes to this sport.

What I do know with certainty is that no one thought the CSB deal was some shady way to funnel money away from the players to line the pockets of rich businessmen. It just wasn’t the case. It’s revisionist history to suggest otherwise.

But, is the CSB in the best interest of Canadian soccer now?

It’s complicated.

It’s clearly not in the best interest of the elite players that make up the national team, but it’s also clear that we need a healthy pyramid in place to ensure that the next generation of elite player gets found and developed. For that to happen, we need pro clubs. The establishment of the CanPL, when combined with the three MLS sides, finally gives us that.

If you believe that the CSB deal is vital to the success of the CanPL then it’s difficult to advocate for the complete scraping of that deal — not if it’s going to put the league at risk of folding.

The league is about to start its fifth year. It’s already lost a team. It’s struggling to expand. There’s no Quebec interest still. Yes, there’s good stories too, but let’s be honest here. We are still a long way from the point where the league is too big to fail. The loss of CSB would be a significant and potentially fatal blow.

Here’s the thing though: What are the women getting from this deal? The CSB did say today (Monday) that it was willing to “play [their] part” to ensure that the women have the resources they need. However, that’s a reactionary move that is likely at least partly P.R. motivated.

Outside of gestures, the women are having revenue taken from them in exchange for, well, nothing. They still don’t have a league. There still isn’t even an announced plan for a league, despite a promise in year 1 that the CanPL would have a women’s side.

The recently announced women’s league project is fully independent of the CanPL. It’s also very much a concept — the announcement last month was designed to seek out investment. We are still a very long way from that project being real. That the women felt the need to try and start a league themselves speaks to how little movement we have seen on the women’s side of CanPL.

There is no defending CSB here. The biggest mistake they made was not starting a women’s side. If you are going to include the CanWNT revenues in the CSB deal, you need to be providing the same benefit to them that the men got.

This fight now is a direct result of CanPL dragging its feet on the women’s league. It’s difficult to see the benefits CSB provides the sport when it’s only benefiting half of it.

So, where do we go from here. Million dollar question, that. As I wrote on Friday, it likely starts with getting new voices in the room. It’s not even about right and wrong when it comes to that — there’s just no way forward right now if the same leadership stays. They need to step aside.

Further, CSB needs to step out of the shadows and start talking directly to the players. I think if they do that there might be a better understanding of the benefits that they provide and a greater willingness to work with them.

Right now that willingness isn’t really there. I exchanged messages this weekend with an individual who has direct contact with the men’s national team. I asked them a straightforward question: Do you want to CSB deal voided.

Their answer?

“Basically yes, but…

“It’s complicated.”

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