Canadian Football League

• 1. Origins And Early History

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  Rugby football began to be played in Canada during the 1860s. Many of the first Canadian football teams operated under the auspices of the Canadian Rugby Football Union, which formed in June 1880. This organization reorganized itself in February 1884 and later became the Canadian Rugby Union in 1891. The Grey Cup trophy entered history when Governor General Earl Grey donated it in 1909 for the Senior Amateur Football Championship of Canada. By that time, the sport had diverged from its rugby roots through the introduction of the Burnside rules. It started to resemble the American game more closely than traditional rugby.

  For much of the early twentieth century, competition occurred within intraprovincial leagues or unions. In 1907, strong senior clubs from Ontario and Quebec created the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union, often called the Big Four. Almost thirty years passed before an elite western union emerged. In March 1936, stronger senior clubs from Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan formed the Western Interprovincial Football Union. From the 1930s to the 1950s, both the Big Four and WIFU evolved from amateur to professional leagues. An amateur team last won the Grey Cup in 1936. After World War II, both interprovincial unions turned openly professional.

• 2. Merger And Structural Evolution

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  In 1956, the Montreal Alouettes threatened to leave the Big Four and join the rival WIFU. This threat prompted the two groups to form a new umbrella organization called the Canadian Football Council. The CFC formally left the CRU and reorganized as the Canadian Football League on the 19th of January 1958. As part of this agreement, the CFL took possession of the Grey Cup. Amateurs were officially locked out of Grey Cup play, formalizing the championship structure that had been in place since 1954.

  Initially, the two unions remained autonomous with no intersectional play between eastern and western teams except at the Grey Cup final. The Big Four was renamed the Eastern Football Conference in 1960 while the WIFU became the Western Football Conference in 1961. Limited intersectional play arrived in 1961 when the West played sixteen games and the East only fourteen. It was not until 1974 that the East expanded its schedule to match the West. In 1981, the two conferences agreed to a full merger becoming the East and West Divisions of the CFL. With the merger came a fully balanced and interlocking schedule of sixteen games per season. Since 1986, the regular season has been eighteen games long.

• 3. American Expansion Experiment

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  In 1993, the league admitted its first United States-based franchise, the Sacramento Gold Miners. After modest success, the league expanded further in the U.S. in 1994 with the Las Vegas Posse, Baltimore Stallions, and Shreveport Pirates. For the 1995 campaign, American teams split into their own South Division. Two more teams joined including the Birmingham Barracudas and Memphis Mad Dogs. At the same time, the Posse folded and the Gold Miners relocated to become the San Antonio Texans.

  The 1995 Grey Cup saw the Baltimore Stallions win as the only non-Canadian team to achieve this feat. Despite all American teams having an advantage regarding Canadian player quotas, only the Stallions proved successful on and off the field. The establishment of the NFL's Baltimore Ravens and worsening financial problems among core Canadian teams prompted the CFL to abandon its American experiment. The league retrenched its operations back to Canada. The Stallions organization later formed the basis for a revival of the Montreal Alouettes. Post-U.S. expansion era returned the league to an all-Canadian format in 1996 with nine teams.

• 4. Modern Governance Eras

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  Mark Cohon served as commissioner from 2007 through 2015 bringing stability and growth to the league. New television deals, collective bargaining agreements, and stadium renovations highlighted his tenure. The 100th anniversary of the Grey Cup held the highest ever television ratings for a championship game in English Canada. During the 2000s, the CFL had the third highest per-game attendance of any North American sports league. A 2006 survey confirmed the CFL was the second most popular sports league in Canada with 19% following.

  Jeffrey Orridge took over starting in 2015 but announced his departure effective the 30th of June 2017 citing differing views on the future of the league. Jim Lawson served as interim Commissioner until Randy Ambrosie succeeded him on the 5th of July 2017. Ambrosie spent nine seasons as a player before becoming the first commissioner to have played in the league since Larry Smith left in 1997. He partnered with the Professional American Football League of Mexico for player development under his CFL 2.0 plan. In October 2018, the league began focusing marketing internationally again after the unsuccessful expansion into the United States during the 1990s.

• 5. Broadcasting And Media Rights

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  The Canadian Football Network operated as the league's broadcaster from 1987 to 1990. Since TSN became the exclusive broadcast partner in 2009, Paul Graham produced coverage for all Grey Cup games until 2024. The French-language network RDS broadcasts Montreal Alouettes games for the Quebec television market. Games typically schedule for Thursday through Saturday evenings during summer months. They switch to more Saturday and Sunday afternoon games during September and October.

  CBC and TSN drew record television audiences for CFL broadcasts in 2005. The 2006 season marked the first time every regular-season game was televised. In 2006, the league also began offering pay-per-view webcasts of every game on CFL Broadband. Until the end of the 2007 season, CBC and RDS were the exclusive television broadcasters for all playoff games including the Grey Cup. In 2008, the CFL began a new five-year television deal with CTVglobemedia valued at $16 million per year. This gave TSN and RDS exclusive rights to all CFL games including playoffs and the Grey Cup.

• 6. Financial Operations And Player Compensation

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  According to the new collective bargaining agreement, the 2025 salary cap was scheduled to be set at $5,650,000. On the 5th of February 2025, the league announced that the salary cap would grow by $412,365 to reach $6,062,365. The increase was driven by the revenue growth sharing model which first went into effect in 2024. The minimum player salary will be set at $70,000 remaining unchanged since 2023.

  The CFLPA agreed to include a provision allowing the CFL to enforce a salary cap in the 2002 Collective Bargaining Agreement but enforcement began only from the 2007 season. Financial penalties for teams breaching the cap range from $1 to $3 depending on how far over the limit they go. As of 2019, five of the nine teams are profitable while four operate at a loss resulting in a net loss overall. Only the four publicly held teams reveal their financial information as required under Canadian law. Mike Reilly and Bo Levi Mitchell were the highest paid players in 2019 after signing contracts averaging over $700,000.

• 7. Championship Tradition And Grey Cup

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  The Grey Cup is both the name of the championship and the trophy awarded to the victorious team. It stands as the second-oldest trophy in North American professional sports after the Stanley Cup. The game has been hosted in one of the league's member cities with recent years seeing it rotate locations annually. The Toronto Argonauts have won the most Grey Cups with nineteen wins total including their most recent victory in 2024.

  In 2016, the Grey Cup was won on natural grass turf at BMO Field by the Ottawa Redblacks beating the heavily favored Calgary Stampeders 39, 33 in overtime. This marked the first Grey Cup championship for any Ottawa CFL team in forty years. As Canada's single largest annual sporting event, the Grey Cup serves as an unofficial autumn festival generating national media coverage and large revenue for host cities. Many fans travel from across the country to attend the game and week-long festivities leading up to it. Since 2015, Shaw Communications has served as the presenting sponsor for the Grey Cup game.