Kelowna’s hosting of a Canadian Football League game might accelerate plans for the city to get a professional soccer team.
Mayor Tom Dyas says the required temporary expansion of the Apple Bowl stadium to 17,500 seats will be challenging and costly.
“That’s what makes it fun,” Dyas told AM 1150 radio show host Phil Johnson on Wednesday. “That’s what makes it challenging and that’s what makes it fun. If it ended up being, if it was very easy, then every other municipality throughout the province would do it.”
Kelowna will host two Lions’ regular season games next year as the football team has to move out of BC Place for the World Cup soccer tournament.
The Lions games will be the “largest sporting event ever hosted by the City of Kelowna,” Dyas said. The economic impact will be in the “tens of millions of dollars”, he said.
While trumpeting the event, municipal officials and Dyas have not released any information on how much the games could cost the city. The biggest expense will be the addition of temporary seating to bring the 2,200 seat Apple Bowl up to 17,500 seats.
In response to a query last week from The Courier, the city said the costs “have not yet been fully determined”.
Dyas told Johnson the “buildout will be a partnership between the city and the BC Lions”, but did not provide any additional information.
“To get into the fine, specific details, we haven’t ironed them all out,” Dyas said.
The CFL has held games outside its nine franchise cities on several occasions in the past, and the financing arrangements have varied. In 2019, the City of Moncton provided $55,000 plus in-kind support of an undisclosed amount for a CFL game played in a 16,000-seat stadium in that city.
Last year, the City of Victoria said it was providing only in-kind support of up to $350,000 for the Lions to play a game at Royal Athletic Park on the Labour Day weekend. But it emerged after the event the city’s total expenses, consisting of both in-kind support and a direct cash payment to the team, amounted to $443,430, CHEK news reported last November.
Victoria officials said the cash payment was to reimburse the Lions for the purchase of new goalposts, which were permanently added to Royal Athletic Park. For the CFL game in Victoria, the provincial government provided $700,000.
In his interview with Johnson, Dyas noted the Apple Bow is an older venue and the city has been considering various upgrades to the stadium for some time.
“It’s an asset that needs a little bit of love,” Dyas said. “It needs to be upgraded a bit.”
Dyas went on to suggest such upgrades might make it more likely that Kelowna gets awarded a future soccer franchise in the Canadian Premier League. A CPL game between Calgary and Vancouver last year drew a crowd of 6,200 after the addition of temporary seating.
Dyas said municipal officials were talking with the CPL about the possibility of Kelowna landing a team.
“There is still discussions, and we need to make certain that everything is correct before advancing, but there is still discussions happening with regards to CPL, and those continue,” he said.
The staging of sports events draws people from outside Kelowna, helps support local businesses, and contributes to the city’s economic prosperity, Dyas said.
This year, the City of Kelowna has provided more than $1.3 million in cash and in-kind support for the hosting of the Montana’s Brier and the Canadian Country Music Awards.