The Canadian Football League hasn’t expanded its revenues in five years. If the CFL’s Commissioner has his way, the league will double in size within 10.
One idea? Infiltrate Mexico.
“There are [over] 100 million fans in Mexico,” Commissioner Randy Ambrosie told the Vancouver Sun. “We have to stop thinking small. I think that’s part of what’s happened to us. We’ve been small and we have to think big. Part of that is reaching out to the international community. That, to me, is part of building the CFL on a more ambitious platform.”
It’s unclear whether the CFL would play games in Mexico or put a team there. The NFL currently plays one game per year in Mexico City.
In the early 1990s, the CFL placed several teams in the United States, including a franchise originally known as the “Baltimore Colts,” before a legal challenge by the NFL resulted in the team being called the Baltimore Stallions. The experiment ended after only a couple of years.
The CFL currently has nine teams.