Mark Goudie: OSEG fully committed to Ottawa Redblacks, no other changes imminent

Photo: Ottawa Redblacks

The Ottawa Redblacks made a fundamental change to their organization on Monday, as team president Adrian Sciarra left his post after less than four years on the job.

One might assume that Sciarra was fired given the state of the club, but that’s not true. He will remain at the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG) as president and alternate governor of the Ottawa 67’s of the Ontario Hockey League.

According to OSEG president and CEO Mark Goudie, it was Sciarra’s idea to step away from the Redblacks and allow a new leader to take on the role of president.

“Adrian came to me a couple weeks ago with, ‘I think we need dedicated leadership at the Redblacks’ — dedicated meaning somebody that’s full time, 120 percent on Redblacks only, and that wasn’t Adrian,” Goudie told 3DownNation on Monday.

“Adrian had multiple responsibilities within our organization, and so we talked about what that looked like, and we talked about timing, and agreed that we should do it now and not wait until the end of the season, so I can start putting together what the organization looks like going forward.”

As things presently stand, the Redblacks are a disaster.

The team’s losing streak, which stems all the way back to 2025, grew to a modern CFL record 15 games this past week. The club also became just the tenth team in CFL history to begin a season 0-9.

The Rough Riders had some bad years but never lost 10 consecutive games to start a season. Ottawa will do exactly that in 2026, barring a miraculous win over the red-hot Montreal Alouettes on Friday night.

Fans might be somewhat accepting of the team’s futility if it were a recent phenomenon.

It’s not.

Ottawa has only made the playoffs once since the start of the 2019 season, going 27-85-1 (.243) over that time.

The losses have taken a big toll at the gate, as the Redblacks have averaged crowds of 15,124 through five regular-season games this year, a 16.6 percent decrease from 2025.

The club’s previous average attendance low was 16,847, which occurred in 1996 — the last year before the Rough Riders folded.

Despite the team’s current challenges, Goudie was adamant that fans have no reason to fear that the Redblacks are in jeopardy.

“Ownership is all-in on Redblacks. It’s the reason (the original) Lansdowne (redevelopment) happened (in 2014),” he said.

“It started with, ‘Hey, we need to bring CFL football back to Ottawa.’ We realized that there wasn’t a stadium capable of hosting CFL football — part of it was condemned — so knowing that if we were going to get CFL football back, they needed to figure out how to rebuild a stadium, which we did.

“We then built all of the ancillary stuff around the football stadium here at Lansdowne, which has become a great place in our nation’s capital that has four million visitors a year, but at the nub of it is Redblacks football.

“I hate when I hear stories that OSEG and OSEG’s owners are not committed to football. It’s the only thing they’re committed to here. It’s the most important thing they’re committed to, but I think people make up the stories that are convenient for their beliefs right now.

“I’ve got an ownership group that is all-in, and I think I’ve got an ownership group that does sports ownership the right way. They hire people and they let them do their jobs, and they’re not meddling in their business. They like the people they hire, and they want them to be successful. They want to give them the tools to be successful.”

The south grandstand at TD Place Stadium was replaced during the first Lansdowne redevelopment phase in 2014.

The north grandstand, which was built in 1967, is going to be demolished and rebuilt for 2031. Other parts of the $419 million redevelopment project, known colloquially as Lansdowne 2.0, include a new event centre, new retail space, and two residential towers.

The capacity of TD Place Stadium, which is currently close to 25,000, will be around 24,000 when construction is complete.

“We’ll have a brand new football stadium in four years, and we need to fill that stadium. To fill that stadium, we need a winning team, so Redblacks is going to be here as long as the CFL is going to be here, which hopefully is centuries,” said Goudie.

“We were toying with the idea of whether a Grey Cup made sense here in 2028 before we knocked down the old stadium. I thought that would be an awesome farewell to this stadium that served us really well for the last 60 years, but logistically with the construction, it was not going to work. As soon as we’re able to open back up, we’ll look forward to hosting a kick-ass Grey Cup like we did in 2017.”

Sciarra’s departure is the latest of a long line of changes in Ottawa.

Head coach Bob Dyce was fired following the 2025 season and most of his coaching staff didn’t return. The club also allowed 22 free agents to leave in February.

Dru Brown, the club’s franchise quarterback of the last two seasons, was unceremoniously traded away in June.

Defensive coordinator William Fields, who previously coached under Ryan Dinwiddie for three seasons with the Argonauts, was fired at the start of August.

A slew of veteran players have also been cut, including Eugene Lewis, Amari Henderson, and Demerio Houston.

None of the changes have paid dividends as the club remains in search of its first win.

For now, at least, it seems the exit door has been slammed shut as the Redblacks plan to let the dust settle on Sciarra’s departure before making any further changes.

“I think we’re going to take some time and figure out what we do and how we do it and do it right, so we’re not back at this point again going forward,” said Goudie.

“There (are no other changes) that are imminent. I don’t want to go through person by person in our organization, but I will say that I think Ryan Dinwiddie is a very good coach, and I think he’s going to be the cornerstone to what we build around going forward.”

In a press release, the Redblacks indicated they’d like to hire a new president by the end of this calendar year, though it seems the timeline could be shorter if the right candidate emerges. Goudie indicated that he’d like to hire someone with a football background.

“I think we want to be creative and innovative in terms of what we’re looking for. It can sometimes be a very small pool of people in the CFL, and I want to make sure that we get outside of that and understand what we’re looking for, number one, and then figure out how wide the net needs to be cast to be able to get the person that we need in place,” he said.

“My expectation is I’m going to get a lot of inbound inquiries on this as well, and that’s one of the reasons that we made this announcement now versus in a couple of months. I want to talk to as many people as possible, and I want to be able to have open conversations about what we’re looking for going forward as well, so I expect that there’s going to be dozens and dozens of conversations and candidates.”

Goudie was born and raised in Ottawa. He grew up attending Rough Riders game on the north side of the stadium with his father.

When asked what he’d say to the team’s frustrated fans, he was candid.

“Right now, they just want to see wins. They don’t really care what I have to say. They just want to see wins. If I have their attention, what I would say is we are feeling this acutely,” said Goudie.

“We carry a burden with their expectations every week of the year, and it’s not going to go away until we start winning games and we’re able to give fans back what they deserve, which is a winning football team that they can be proud of.

“I think back to 2016 when we won the Grey Cup, and having 60,000 people line Bank Street just uber excited about the first Grey Cup that we’d won in decades was an amazing feeling, and the pride that they had in their city, the pride that they had in their football club, that’s what I want to get back to, and need to get back to.

“If you’re so inclined to be listening to me, I’d say stick with me. I feel it. We’re gonna fix this. I can’t tell you when exactly that’s going to turn, but it’s going to turn, and I’m going to do everything in my power, ownership’s going to do everything in their power to get the right infrastructure in place here to make sure that these years weren’t for nothing, and we get back to a place where we’re perpetually competitive, and we’re seen as a model franchise in the CFL.”