Canada’s university football championship is without a home next season and it won’t be able to rely on the University of Laval to play host for a third straight season, per a report from TVA’s Stephane Turcot.
La coupe Vanier est orpheline. U-Sports n'a toujours pas trouvé un endroit pour présenter la prochaine coupe Vanier. U-Sports s'est tourné vers Québec qui a présenté les 2 dernières éditions, mais UL refuse de s'investir à nouveau #tvasports
— Stéphane Turcot (@StephTurcotTVA) March 5, 2020
The tweet translated from French reads: “The Vanier Cup is an orphan. USports has still not found a place to present the next Vanier Cup. USports turned to Quebec, which presented the last two editions, but UL [Laval] refuses to invest again.”
USports reportedly requires a 150 thousand dollar deposit from the host, as well as 30% of sponsorship revenue. The Rouge-et-Or clearly feel unable to justify the expense given that attendance at last year’s contest fell to 8,376, down from 12,380 the year previous. The game hasn’t surpassed the 20,000 mark for attendance since Montreal hosted in 2014.
The CFL has been in active talks with USports to pair the game with the Grey Cup. The last two times the games occurred at the same venue were tremendous successes, with Vancouver drawing 24,935 fans in 2011 and Toronto playing host to 37,098 in 2012.
While both sides have interest in reuniting the two championships, it has been called an impossibility for the 2020 season due to the short timeline. 2021 is the earliest fans could attend both contests in the same city.
