The Saskatchewan Roughriders are the CFL’s marquee franchise when it comes to business, but even they are feeling huge impacts due to the coronavirus.
“We’re not unlike many, many businesses in Canada and certainly in Saskatchewan, where the harsh reality is we have no income, no revenue coming in right now,” said Roughriders president and CEO Craig Reynolds.
“So just like any business would have to when you effectively have no revenue coming in, you’ve got to make some adjustments to your cost structure.”
The Riders have already started to do that.
Due to the Grey Cup in Regina being postponed until 2022, the club is laying off six full-time members of the Grey Cup committee. Plus, the team has not renewed its store lease at Northgate Mall in Regina, resulting in more employees losing their jobs.
Current staff members have also seen pay cuts because no games means no income.
“We have a seasonal business as it relates to revenue. We have a year-round business as it relates to expenses,” Reynolds said.
“Our business is structured such that our revenue is entirely seasonal. So we only really earn revenue one way, and that’s playing football games.”
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Prior to the Grey Cup postponement, the Riders had already spent $500,000 on planning for the big game.
While they will be able to recoup some of those costs when 2022 rolls around, they won’t be able to get back some of it, like merchandise.
Even though the team has built up what Reynolds calls a “stabilization fund” over the years during the high economic times, it might not be enough to get it through the current low time, especially if the 2020 season is outright cancelled.
“That was really designed principally to deal with year-in, year-out challenges as you dealt with various ebbs and flows of your business or your win-loss record,” said Reynolds. “It was certainly not designed to see you through a pandemic and it certainly is not enough to see us through this.
“We would need support to see the other side should we lose the season.”
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