Ottawa Redblacks ownership remains committed, but ‘didn’t think we’d be losing quite this much money’

Photo courtesy: Steven Chang/B.C. Lions

The season of Roger Greenberg’s discontent is finally over.

The managing partner and executive chairman of the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG) watched his football team for the final time in 2026 on Saturday afternoon, when the Redblacks fell 35-22 to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

The result dropped Ottawa to 1-17, tying them for the worst record in CFL history and completing a trajectory that their ownership group has been grappling with for months.

“(To say it has been difficult) would be an understatement. This would be the worst summer of my life, without a doubt,” Greenberg told the media earlier this week. “I think people stopped talking to me because they didn’t know what to say. They just knew that all three of us — John (Ruddy) and John (Pugh) and I — it just sucked the joy out of going out afterwards. I wouldn’t go out. It was a really, really difficult season.”

The Redblacks set a CFL record with 16 consecutive losses to begin the 2026 season, reaching depths of despair never before seen in Canadian professional football. That was part of a longer streak of 22 straight defeats, a run of ineptitude unequalled since the Great Depression.

Embarrassment has been compounded at the box office, where average attendance at TD Place Stadium dropped to 15,617. That marked a 16.4 percent year-over-year decrease and the lowest number for a CFL team in Ottawa since 1970, excluding the 2021 season where COVID-19 restrictions were in place.

The dramatic drop-off has had both financial and emotional ramifications for those in the owners’ box.

“The money’s one thing. We were never in it for the money. We’ve said that since day one. Didn’t think we’d be losing quite this much money,” Greenberg acknowledged.

“We’ve lost a lot of fans over the past five years. I get it. I understand it. To me, if winning isn’t number one or number two for fan engagement, you’ve got to have a competitive team. I don’t blame the fans. We’ve been unlucky with the weather at times. It just seemed like everything was conspiring against us. We’ve got to get a competitive team.”

The Redblacks began play as an expansion franchise in 2014. After reaching the Grey Cup three times in their first five years and winning the CFL title in 2016, they have qualified for the playoffs just once over the last seven seasons. Since 2019, they have gone a combined 28-93-1, firing three head coaches in the process.

Pinpointing the root of the difference between the franchise’s contradictory eras is challenging. Some have suggested that the departure of quarterback Trevor Harris following the 2018 season jump-started the decline. The lack of a definitive franchise pivot has certainly proven devastating, though so too have other penny-pinching roster decisions.

More recently, the Redblacks have wildly overspent at non-premium positions, such as interior offensive line, running back, and linebacker. The river of incoming American talent has dried up to a trickle, and those who have cracked the roster have struggled to stay healthy. After losing 281 man-games to injury in 2025, Ottawa finished 2026 with 18 individuals on their six-game injured list and eight more on the one-game.

All of those issues culminated in arguably the darkest chapter in the football history of the nation’s capital this year, with only a single positive scoreline providing solace.

“I call last Friday night’s win the most improbable win I think I’ve ever seen us do. I thought for sure we had figured out another way to lose a game that I thought we should have won,” Greenberg said, referencing the improbable 40-39 upset of Toronto in Week 20. “We’ve been competitive in some games. I do look back and see that there were bits and pieces of almost every game where we had some absolutely brilliant plays by some of the players. We just couldn’t bring it consistently for the four quarters. Having a perfect season the wrong way is not a record that I relished.”

For Ottawa football fans — at least those that are still around — the vibes surrounding their team feel disturbingly familiar. This is a city that saw the Rough Riders succumb to incompetence on and off the field in 1996, and witnessed the Renegades go up in smoke after just four fitful seasons.

While OSEG have invested long-term in the form of the upcoming Landsdowne 2.0 renovation, that will come at a substantial financial price for a team that is already bleeding at the turnstile. That has led to a growing worry that the Redblacks might be on a path to mirroring their predecessors.

However, Greenberg has publicly insisted that whatever the current losses, the demise of the franchise is not a serious possibility.

“I also wanna be clear about our commitment as owners. We believe in the Redblacks. We believe in Ottawa. We believe this city can support a perpetually competitive football club. We have invested a great deal in building this organization, and our commitment to this team, this city, and its fans has not wavered. We want to win, and we are committed to doing what it takes to give this club the best opportunity to succeed. We know how much this team means to the people of this city,” he emphasized.

“We actually had that argument thrown at us when we were starting the team. Why would we wanna start a team when (two teams before have failed)? I remember on the radio before we actually started, the CFRA early morning show, I said, ‘We have passionate fans here. We just have to produce a winner.’ I’m confident that with all the work that we’ve done with our friends at City Hall in terms of creating facilities for people and all of the good things that we’re doing here, we have to create a winner. As long as we create a winner, and we think we’ve got a winner between us here, we’re gonna figure this out. We did last time when we started; we had it from an expansion team. We’ll figure this out, and we’ll get a team, and the fans will come back. I’m not worried about where we’re going.”

Change has already begun in earnest towards resetting the direction of the franchise. Vice president of football operations Shawn Burke was fired mid-season, and team president Adrian Sciarra stepped down from his role. On Tuesday, the club announced the hiring of Mike Morreale as their new president, touting his previous experience as commissioner of the burgeoning Canadian Elite Basketball League. It will be up to the former Ticats and Argonauts receiver to determine the fate of head coach and general manager Ryan Dinwiddie, as well as Jim Popp, who was brought in as a temporary consultant to salvage the season.

Greenberg emphasized his faith in Morreale, promising that ownership would not meddle in the direction he chooses for the team.

“As owners, we’re interested. I ask a ton of questions, but as I’ve said to each of the general managers and the coaches that we’ve had, the day that I start telling them who to put on the field, what play to call, that’s the day they should be handing in their resignation because it means I’ve lost confidence in them, and that’s not a good thing,” he explained.

“He’s a football guy. What could I possibly tell him as a football guy? I’m here to support him in everything that he does. We have to reconnect with our fans. We have to reconnect with our sponsors. There’s so much that we need to do, and my comment to Mike is, ‘Tell me what I can do to help out.’ That’s our role. I don’t tell him; he tells me.”

Greenberg understands that Redblacks represent more to the people of Ottawa than just a football team. However, sentimentality won’t get you very far in professional sports, and he knows the novelty of the return of the franchise can no longer cover all the warts.

“I don’t really quite believe what Ted Lasso says when he says he doesn’t care about wins and losses. He just cares about how he treats the players, whatever, and that’ll follow,” he said, referencing the popular Apple TV show. “I sort of understand that. But I do believe at the end of the day, the fans want to see wins. They want to see us in the playoffs.”

No matter how much he wants to forget this year, 1-17 is beyond what even a goldfish is capable of purging.