{"id":640009,"date":"2026-05-01T04:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T04:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/640009\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T04:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T04:24:09","slug":"cfl-players-association-record-wins-through-2027-grey-cup-playoff-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/640009\/","title":{"rendered":"CFL Players’ Association record ‘wins’ through 2027 Grey Cup playoff expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto: Reuben Polansky\/3DownNation. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

The CFL Players\u2019 Association benefitted from the league\u2019s desire to expand the Grey Cup playoffs starting in 2027.<\/p>\n

Led by CFLPA president Solomon Elimimian, who has helped the union make major strides during his tenure, the board of directors went through a long but thorough process with commissioner Stewart Johnston and his colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to make sure we got things right on our end. There\u2019s a lot of wins for the membership in there from pre-season to post-season compensation,\u00a0still having the revenue sharing. Extra games of consequence with the playoff games \u2014 revenue for both sides, so a lot of wins in there, including the NFRS (non-football related services) money, and a few other things with the reserve roster and expanded practice roster,\u201d Brett Lauther, the union\u2019s first vice-president, told 3DownNation on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the player safety aspect to growing revenues and putting more money in players\u2019 pockets,\u00a0not only now but in the future, those were the main things we were concerned about.\u00a0After a lot of back and forth, it wasn\u2019t an overnight discussion. It was ongoing for quite a bit, to get it to where we were comfortable and bring it to the player reps\u00a0at our annual meetings. They voted unanimously to pass this and go forward. We got it to a very comfortable and great place that it\u2019s not only beneficial for the league but beneficial for all the players.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the 2026 CFL season, both sides agreed $50,000 will be added back to the salary cap, totalling $6,330,514 per team. The salary cap cannot decrease while the current collective bargaining agreement is in place and all revenue sharing growth will continue to get added to the cap. Meanwhile, the players received permanent increases to weekly training camp compensation \u2014 first-year veterans will earn $725, second-year veterans $825, and three-year plus veterans $925.<\/p>\n

Starting immediately, each franchise will have the ability to designate up to two players on a reserve roster each week with no changes to the ratio or roster composition, creating 18 additional fully-paid jobs. Practice roster sizes have been increased by two, with a Canadian filling one of those new spots. Also, language has been cleaned up when it comes to the injured lists, marketing money, and Nationalized Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom my own experience, not ever seeing any postseason or preseason money go up over 10 years, even though inflation is what it is, that\u2019s tough over time \u2014 the only gross was $50,000 of salary cap every year. Playoff money is almost doubling. The preseason money is almost doubled from when I came in.\u00a0The revenue sharing will still have 30 percent of any new revenue from TV deals or extra playoff money or anything like that will be going on the cap,\u201d Lauther said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTruly the future of this league is bright.\u00a0I was joking before saying I wish I wasn\u2019t on the back-nine of my career and wish I was coming into the league right now. But I really care about this league a lot, where it\u2019s going to be, especially even after I\u2019m done playing and trying to leave it in a better spot than what it was when I came in. There\u2019s a lot of indications, not only monetary ones, but off-the-field ones to\u00a0show that over the last couple years being the vice president of the Players\u2019 Association.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the CFL adds four postseason games in 2027, the playoff compensation will also rise. For first and second-round games, dressed roster players will earn $4,000. The money will increase to $4,200 in the third round, then Grey Cup losers will collect $10,000, and Grey Cup winners will be paid $20,000.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an increase from $3,400, $3,600, $8,000, and $16,000 pay levels in recent years<\/a>. That equates to roughly $6 million in additional postseason compensation over the length of the current collective bargaining agreement, which expires prior to the 2029 season unless the opt-out clause comes in to play<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWinning the Grey Cup, you now have the potential to make $32,200, which is close to half minimum base salary. As a traditionalist, I had similar thoughts, but then over time and thinking about things, especially the role I\u2019m in isn\u2019t about my own opinion \u2014 it\u2019s about what\u2019s best for the players in general as an association. That\u2019s to grow revenue and players\u2019 safety and it doesn\u2019t hurt either of those aspects,\u201d Lauther said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut as much as eight of nine getting in, I think there\u2019s potentially some foreshadowing\u00a0where hopefully there is expansion someday, whether it\u2019s on the East Coast, which I\u2019ve been a big advocate of, or somewhere else. I think that would help with how many teams are getting in. Not only that, toward the end of the season where you see a lot of teams resting guys, it makes the games more important.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old kicker knows home playoff games can be game-changers for franchises across Canada from a revenue perspective. If more teams have a chance to boost income, that could benefit all parties involved. Lauther understands fans who are concerned about the regular-season meaning less with eight teams \u2014 88.9 percent \u2014 in a nine-team league qualifying for the postseason, but believes people will become used to it after time to adjust.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess we\u2019ll see how it plays out from my personal opinion.\u00a0But for the most part my role is to grow revenues and players\u2019 safety. I feel like we\u2019ve handled all the issues on that end\u00a0and definitely got a few other things cleaned up that we needed to as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cStewart\u2019s not scared of change. There\u2019s been quite a bit of change and probably even more coming forward. He\u2019s definitely been trying to put the players first in a lot of aspects of what he\u2019s shown. There\u2019s a lot of things that he\u2019s potentially doing that could lead this league and set up for the future for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy: CFLPA\/Adam Stephenson.<\/p>\n

Johnston drove himself to the union\u2019s annual general meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake in late March to attend in-person. Randy Ambrosie never went to one in-person during his tenure.<\/p>\n

That along with other good-faith gestures has helped the sides build a professional relationship outside negotiation rooms, which bodes well for the league office, board of governors, and Players\u2019 Association working more effectively together in the future.<\/p>\n

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Football insider, reporter and analyst.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Reuben Polansky\/3DownNation. All rights reserved. The CFL Players\u2019 Association benefitted from the league\u2019s desire to expand the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[166835,166836,69896,49,48,7028,520,174315,68627,237426,36547,64388,82,16512],"class_list":["post-640009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-3down","tag-3downnation","tag-brett-lauther","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian","tag-cfl","tag-cflpa","tag-grey-cup","tag-grey-cup-playoffs","tag-playoffs","tag-postseason","tag-sports","tag-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}