A Par Canadian Dollar Good for the Pro Sports Scene in Canada
The Canadian dollar’s current parity with its American counterpart will bring changes in the sports landscape - though not as profound as one might suspect.
Canadian-based professional sports teams and organizations no longer face revenue streams dripping down the pipe as 67-cent dollars while paying mammoth expenses in U.S. funds.
“It’s a bit of a windfall,” said Kevin Pendergast, the vice-president of hockey operations for the NHL’s small-market Edmonton Oilers. “It helps you keep good hockey players.”
It also makes the potential $1-billion outlay for a NFL franchise in Toronto not as daunting as when it took $1.50 Canadian to cover an American greenback - and long-time proponent Paul Godfrey has renewed fervour for that quest.
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CFL teams are now in a stronger bidding position for U.S. players when they can offer a dollar-for-dollar contract.
But a par dollar cannot turn back the clock and prevent what happened in the 1990s, when the NHL’s Quebec Nordiques moved to Colorado and the Winnipeg Jets were shifted to Phoenix.
Problems ran deeper than the dollar, which hit a historic low of about 62 cents against the greenback in 1992. No corporate angel wanted to take over and continue absorbing losses in the antiquated barns in which they played.”The currency issue was a contributing factor to the league not being able to find owners who wanted to own teams in Winnipeg and Quebec,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said. “But the dominant and overriding factor in the relocations of both the Jets and the Nordiques had to do with the lack of a modern, state-of-the-art arena facility in those cities and the lack of any short-term prospect of their construction.”
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