Barn Burner: Boomer & Pinder with Rhett Warrener - Mark Noonan (FULL INTERVIEW)

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Presented by Bet365 & Platinum MitsubishiPinder sits down with Canadian Premier League Commissioner Mark Noonan to talk about the upcoming CPL season, the growth of the league, future plans, and much more! Great insights on where Canadian soccer is headed. ⚽🇨🇦#CPL #CanadianSoccer #SoccerTalk #MarkNoonan #CPL2025Let us know what you think in the comments below!!BARN BURNER BLONDE https://originbrewing.myshopify.comFLAMESNATION MERCHhttps://nationgear.ca/collections/shirts/FlamesnationBARN BURNER SHORTS https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj_bcGtvvo-cW2DHEDZ6dEO5ePDmlhZc9&si=jo8iNGxT4ImhS2Y8INSTANT REACTIONShttps://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj_bcGtvvo-dO2AraHTeftSpPt00evo8M&si=lY5D3nk8zVtrQgql🚨 Subscribe to @Flames_Nation on Youtube 🚨➡️ / @flames_nation 🔥 Barn Burner with Boomer, Pinder, & Rhett Warrener➡️ • Flames Nation Barn Burner 🔥 After Burner ➡️ • Flames Nation After Burner @dailyfaceoff2563 LIVE with Frank Seravalli:➡️ / @dailyfaceoff2563 💻 Website: https://flamesnation.ca🐦 Follow on Twitter: @FlamesNation @960boomer @PinderReport @Warrener44📺 Subscribe on Youtube: @Flames_Nation Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are with the second commissioner of the CPL, Mark Noonan, coming up on a third year anniversary on the job. This is a Barnburner exclusive brought to you by Platinum Mitsubishi and Bet 365. Commissioner Mark Noon, and last time I saw you, I may have been glowing and smiling ear to year because the local club, Cavalry FC, had just hoisted the trophy at Spruce Meadows and what had to have felt like a pretty high water mark for the league with that crowd, that venue, and that incredible game. Why don't we start back in the fall here in Calgary for the championship, you know, gala's events, and then the game.

Take us back to that day and then we'll move to the current. Yeah, perfect. Thanks for having me on, Ryan. And that day was extraordinary. I mean, it was just such a great showcase for not just our league, not just the local club, not just one of our institutional clubs and for Jeff. but the sport of soccer in Canada.

When you see those fans, there was the authentic feeling in that stadium. The product on the field was terrific. It was on CBC so the entire country could see it. A great audience tuned in. It was dramatic. And well, we don't have any rooting interests in the league. It was nice to see the home fans get rewarded for cavalry to lift the first North Star Cup. Yeah, and those turkeys at forge have a few already.

So, you know, you want to share. That's important. I was, it's funny. I'm in a lot of little nerdy sports chats. This is not a normal occupation. But one specifically is a bunch of CFL fans. And we're always griping about attendance, venues, ratings. And I feel like a lot of those sort of conversations wouldn't be dissimilar in a CPL chat that you might be involved in.

Back to the championship game. I was blown away by the audience. I mean, you had really, really strong numbers on CBC, you know, not hockey night in Canada, but again, this is the first time the championship game had been televised in Canada. And I sort of thought, okay, well, here comes a flat, you know, not high interest event. That must have been a really, really big signal to your league. And did it help pave the way to getting some games on TSN this year, which we've already seen? No doubt.

I mean, there is a soccer audience in Canada for one of you, which should. perspective. We see it when the men's and women national teams play. We see it when we put our championship game on broadly near television. And that certainly is a signal to some of the other distributors that there is an audience here, and not just an audience, but an audience that is incredibly engaged, incredibly passionate with great demographics. It's a younger audience and most of the other sports in this country. And it's a highly diverse audience. And it's one that is only going to continue growing because there's never been in a better, better time to invest in the sport of soccer. We're on the cusp of hosting a World Cup. We've got world class players on the men's and

women's side. We got our league that's developing a great standard and, you know, starting to participate in the international market when it comes to player sales to more established leagues. And, you know, there is nothing but upside for this league. Okay. So what are you most proud of in the the two and a half years that you've been here and what remains your top priority, your biggest challenge moving forward? Yeah, most proud of the progress that we made and kind of every aspect of our business, whether that's attendance growth, whether that's revenue growth, whether that's, you know, creating icons, the trophies that we've got, obviously the product.

And when you see our clubs go toe to toe with MLS clubs and the Canadian Championships, when you see cavalry beat Humas with, I think, a 40 times delta in salary in the Conco Cav champions Cup, you know, those are the things that, you know, you establish a league on. And those are the, you know, the priorities that we've got has continued to get better. We're not satisfied, you know, losing on away goals in the Canadian championship or not being able to close out the tie down in Mexico, you know, our goal is to win the Canadian championships. Our goal is to advance them to the Concord Calf Champions Cup.

And we're making no excuses about that. And that's our ambition. And that's why these events are so great for us. It gives us a measuring stick. And again, we're a baby in the grand scheme of football. But to do what we've done in six short years is

absolutely incredible. Yeah, season seven upon us. Tonight, cavalry opens their home half of the schedule against Vancouver FC. That is the most recent addition to the league. There were eight teams. They're down to seven and now eight again with Vancouver.

How has the expansion process gone there? And what have you learned from that as maybe you can outline some of your expansion plans? There's been many different expansion plans laid out by the CPL since, you know, it's beginning. And there was also COVID in the middle and a lot of other challenges. I'm sure that you don't see until the league gets started. But what have you learned in Vancouver? And where can you apply that to help the league? No, I mean, we're further along in our expansion plans than we ever have been.

And, you know, I'm incredibly bullish about our ability to expand the league. We're going to do it. I've been very consistent saying this is that when we have all the conditions to be successful, we've learned some hard lessons about whether it was starting too early or not having all those conditions in a place like Edmonton. But we will expand this league. I think we can double the size of the league in the next eight to ten years. You saw us go to Colonna last year with our on tour match. Discussions in that community are ongoing and really moving in a great direction.

We're bringing on tour down to Quebec City later in May. That will be a TSN game. We're expecting a big crowd there. The municipality there has been incredibly supportive. There's a number of other markets that we're working on as well. So I'm really bullish about where we are, but we're going to be incredibly thoughtful and careful because if we don't have the right conditions to be successful, it won't be successful.

I experienced that in MLS. I experienced that when I started here at CPL. And that's why we're being incredibly thoughtful about it. Okay. So when you talk about conditions, the first two things I think about are ownership and venue. And I think there's a lot of great markets with a lot of fans, but you need the right place for them to go.

I don't know that you want 3,000 fans in a 30,000 seat football stadium or in the wrong part of town or where infrastructure is not able to handle the number of people or it's not current enough. And ownership, it's just you need someone that's going to be able to, you know, be in it for the long haul and survive COVID like you did with your original ownership group or the vast majority of them because, you know, if you don't have deep pockets, that the league folds when COVID hits. So, you know, kudos to the original ownership group for getting through that. But what else is important?

Or are those two just the most important thing, venue and ownership? Look in your backyard. You guys are so spoiled. We as a league are spoiled by Cavalry FC. It starts at the top with the Southern family, an incredible, incredible ownership group, ingrained in that community, incredibly committed to the long term. You have great leadership in Ian Allison and Tommy Whelden, Jr.,

both on the business operations, the football side. I'm a big fan of natural grass. You can't always do that in Canada, but you have natural grass. You've got a great, intimate venue where you control 100% of the sketch. and what happens at that place. And the closer we can get to that setup in any of our expansion markets, the better off we're going to be. And so infrastructure seems to be the largest challenge.

When I look at, you know, Canada versus other countries, and it's funny because I watched the women's game on Wednesday night or cut a bit of the pregame. And I'm not sure if it was the commissioner or someone of power, a similar role to yours, but they were basically saying, like, we have an infrastructure issue. And it's funny because that's what we do. talked about in the past and I know there's been a lot of groups interested in bringing the CPL in and it's like okay now we need the infrastructure piece and whether it's you know saskatoon is it public funding in this market is Colonna city council going to get on board with some dough where are you going to

play if you're in elsewhere in the greater Toronto area you know there's been a lot of markets bandied about over the last five years bigger than the CPL and maybe inclusive of the CPL how does this country address these infrastructure issues it just seems. seems like there's no ROI on a mid-sized sports venue that you can only use for half the year with our winners. Like, how do we get over this hurdle? And is it the biggest challenge the league faces? I mean, it certainly is a massive, a massive challenge that Canada has for the sport of soccer. You need these mid-sized stadiums to be able to grow, to be able to showcase, to be able to schedule and do those things.

But you don't have to build a Taj Mahal either. We're working with a related company called 6-5, which can build a month. modular stadium for 20 or $25 million Canadian, which is a fraction of what some of the buildings are being built. And it has every amenity, a fan would want, every amenity that a professional club needs, has a great pitch, has great lighting, all the standards that you need for FIFA Concord Calf matches. And so we're looking at it from how do we cost effectively build stadiums and go into community and show the ROI. And the ROI is absolutely critical because you know, unlike a lot of sports, every time we light up our games is going to 40 countries

and it's showcasing that community. And it's marketing a place like Halifax or Calgary, you go up to BAMP and, you know, just there's when you build these things, it's more than just, you know, a bunch of regular season games. It's a showcase for the community. It's inspiration for the next generation of athletes and fans and, you know, provides role models in the community. It creates jobs, permanent full-time jobs. It creates an incredible platform in which to communicate health and wellness. And so we need to figure out that economic equation. And each market is different.

Every market we go into, there's a different puzzle that you have to put together. And that's what we're working on right now. Yeah, you mentioned the modular stadiums. I remember being in Vancouver at Empire Field or Empire Stadium where I think the Whitecaps and the Lions played when BC Place was under renovation. I was blown away that the facility was as functional as it was for the price tag. And then when it needed to be disappeared, it was gone. To your point, it might not be glamorous, but gosh, do they work?

And when you start looking at the hundreds of millions of dollars that are required for permanent stadia, is this something you're taking to most markets as an idea? Yeah, I think that's, it definitely is a wave of the future. they keep on getting better and better, as does the astroturf, or however, the artificial surfaces are getting better and better. And there's still, I think, if you ask any soccer, football player, you know, would they prefer natural grass versus artificial? They're going to say natural grass, but would you say, would you prefer a crappy natural grass field versus artificial, then there's an interesting discussion to take place? And, you know, some of the stuff I'm seeing in the,

the artificial world are getting more and more grasslike. And that's encouraging for a northern climate like Canada. How comfortable are you talking about potential expansion markets? Because we hear a lot of stuff float out. You've been very public with obviously the on tour stuff. When you go to Colonna, people are going to think about that. When you're going to Quebec this year, people are going to mention that. We've also heard about different proposals in Ontario.

None of them really have landed as of yet. But do you have other markets you want? on high alert or do you like keeping this in the back? Yeah, I mean, we've got, we're not going to list every single market, Ryan, because there's a lot of the usual suspects. Obviously, we have to get into the province of Quebec. You know, we would like to have, you know,

a relatively easy even west and east expansion because we may want to split in two divisions because of the massive size of this country. Sure. And the cost and difficulty of traveling in this country, it would not only help us economically, but it would also help the players in terms of the wear and tear on their bodies as they go from Halifax to Victoria and Victoria to Halifax. And, you know, that's where we are today. But we think about long term, you know, how do we perhaps split into two, two divisions and, you know, play a little heavier weighted schedule in your division, but also continue to have those games and then your inner division rivals too?

What is the change of, I guess, leadership at Soccer Canada or Soccer Canada business meant to you? We've seen Kevin Blue come in and now Jesse Marsh is the new national men's head team, men's head coach. Obviously, the men's program, incredible run with Copa and some of the recent, I guess, results from Nation's League, Gold Cup coming the summer. But from your chair, what have those two gentlemen done to help or change the landscape you're in? Well, certainly it's not just Jesse. It's Casey Stoney as well. I think both of those leaders have brought a breath of fresh air into both of those programs. And we are the biggest fans of Canada soccer in those programs, obviously, as their business partner.

And we'll do anything we can to support them. Jesse's been fantastic. And Jesse gets it in that he understands the role of CPL because he played an MLS when he was a young player. and needed the reps to get better and better and better. And so he calls the kid like Shola Jimo into camp, knowing that Shola is probably not going to be on the roster for this Nation's Cup, but he's going to get that experience. He is going to get the reps with the full national team so he can see what it's like.

And so, you know, Jesse has been terrific. And we really enjoy working with him. Yeah. We talk about harnessing the World Cup. We're like, what, a summer away, 14 months, whatever it is. 25 days or something like that, yeah. It's going to take over North America. It's easy to say everyone's going to get soccer fever.

It's going to be good for the league. But like what are the tangible plans to really take that excitement and turn it into revenue, turn it into stadia, turn it into Jersey sales? Yeah, I mean, you're going to see it tangibly touch every part of our business within what we can do. So we don't own the World Cup. That's a FIFA event. There's local organizing committees. There's intellectual property that we can't touch. But we're going to do everything we possibly can to lean into it. Even like our brand campaign this year, we're talking about, we're here for all the world to see. You know, we, this is Canada's version. And this is a

made in Canada. It's played in Canada. But we are part of this world's game. And you'll see everything from, you know, what's happening with our uniforms in 2026, what's happening with our ball design in 2026. We'll do things to celebrate one year out of kick. We'll do a bunch of things to celebrate the draw. So when it comes really, really tangible. And so we're going to do everything we can to ensure that, you know, the communities that don't host World Cup games, you know, you have Toronto and Vancouver, but we want to make sure every one of our communities is, you know, connected to this event via viewing parties, viewing all sorts of things that we're going to do at the club level.

And we really want to embrace the world's game and just show what place that we have in it. And I get to ask, you know, your next question is, are you going to play games during the World Cup? Because it's a good question. And the answer is yes. Our plan is to play games within the World Cup. The eyes of the football world will be in Canada. and we have a short window, short playing season.

We're going to be very respectful. We're not going to play games the same day as same place as Canada. We're going to be very careful. We'll definitely change our schedule. But we believe it's going to be highly beneficial to showcase our product when the world is here. And you're going to go to a World Cup game one day. Maybe you're going to travel up to Halifax and watch a CPL game. Yeah, you got soccer tourists, you know, tens of thousands of them I imagine coming into to the country.

You may as well have the local offering for them as well. And I imagine they'll be a little more price. We got, we got a great kit. And I think they're going to want to take a local, local souvenir home. And hopefully we'll sell a bunch of our beautiful kit and send them home with a souvenir. Totally. Okay. And that's cool.

I hadn't really thought about that angle. But, you know, yeah, you don't want to try to get in the way, but you all. also want to take advantage that that is a bit of a dance but it sounds like you guys have a plan for that yeah and FIFA and Conccafs they want to build the sport in Canada we are we are still a very immature sport and the other stronger and bigger and more popular that soccer gets in Canada it's better for their business as well so we'll work in partnership with both those organizations and Canada soccer to uh you know to do whatever we can to tie into it is there an expectation that these camps that these national teams will have prior to the World Cup,

that some of them will be held in Canada at CPL venues. Is that something that has already been locked in, is further down the road in terms of organizing? I mean, I think of if you were going to play in Denver, you know, would Calgary be a substitute? I don't know that's, you know, necessarily. Denver's not a World Cup market, unfortunately.

Kansas City, maybe. Yeah, like, is that something that the league's getting involved in, or is it just? Yeah, there's, there may be opportunities there. That's still TBD. Typically, you know, the national federations, you know, make those decisions. And, you know, a lot of it depends on where a club, a national team gets drawn, right? And until the draw happens, it's tough to kind of have those conversations.

But I think we certainly would welcome, you know, one of the challenges is facility. We go back to it. A place like Spruce Meadows certainly could host one of the participating, teams would be my guess because they do have grass facility and a ton of ton of grass around that uh around spruce meadows and echo field so we'll see stay tuned on that one yeah and you know it's a good point by you like i imagine that all these national bodies are very organized but at the same time it's like oh yeah there's still like 30 teams to qualify for the tournament or whatever it is so and a draw yeah exactly uh okay

one of the things i want to ask you about and i you know there we talked about some the challenges of growing, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I do want to give the league a ton of credit. I don't know that six years in we'd be talking about the number of players transferred to bigger leagues over to Europe playing on our men's national team. Are you surprised at how world class that some of the young top-end players in this league are and have proven to be so desirable that you're getting nice transfer fees from Europe? Yeah, I'm not surprised. I mean, the whole There's a couple of reasons for CPL being. First is, you know, it was paramount to have a pro league in order to host the World Cup in 2026. So check that box, right? And the second is how do we create a better national team? And how do you do that is to have a bigger pipeline. And CPL has created a bigger pipeline where more kids are getting opportunities that and hopefully won't be slipping through the cracks. You look at a kid, he didn't come through our system, but Moise Bombito, he went to the U.S. college system.

and not even at a high level in the U.S. college system, but got discovered, got drafted by MLS, and now he's, you know, absolutely, I think the best defender at this side of Alfonso Davies and Concaf. And we provide that opportunity. We're the league of opportunity for more and more young players to come in, play games against real men, and then go on at when they're ready to perhaps a more established league. And that's the way we see it is a league of opportunity. Yeah, that's fair. Do you have plans of getting out to Calgary this year? What does the commissioner's duties involved?

I imagine you make your rounds. When are you out here and what do you look forward to when you come out west? We don't have a definitive date, but it's absolutely one of my favorite places to go. And I love spending time out there. And so you will see me absolutely in Calgary. and I love spending time at Aco Fields and Spruce Meadows because it's such a special venue, but also like getting out a little bit as well. So maybe get up to BAM for some of the outskirts.

It's such a beautiful area. I wouldn't recommend going to Edmonton for the tourism, but I would love to see a team there because Calvary had such a great time pummeling them when they were in the league. How do you get Edmonton back in? I'll go back to the venue and ownership. What's the bigger challenge there? And do you think you have solutions? Yes and yes.

for working on it. You know, and you also have the need a municipality that really wants you there. That's what we love about Colonna. That's what we love about Quebec City. Both of those communities have said, we want to work with you. Can we figure this out together? And you need that municipal support as well. And yeah, we're working on that in that market. And, you know, we feel Edmonton will be a great CPL market one of these days. And we obviously love the proximity. The only thing you lose if we add Edmonton is you won't, you will no longer be the northernmost club in Concaf.

They'll take that title, take that title from you. I think the fan base here would swap that honor for that Wild Rose Cup we were holding on to every year that the eddies were in the league. Commissioner, thanks so much for your time. I do appreciate you. You're very generous with it. Let us know when you're out west. And we'll have to find a watering hole and some footy on the tube.

That sounds great. I appreciate your coverage. And hopefully everybody will show up tomorrow. It's a good Friday tomorrow. It's a way to make it a great Friday is to head out to Aco Field and cheer on your cavalry. Yeah, defending champs. Everyone's excited in this market. Thanks for time, Mark.

Thanks for time, Mark. Thanks, Ryan. Cheers. Hey, guys. Thanks for watching. Be sure to check out more of our content right here on the Flames Nation, YouTube. page. We had a bunch great long-form interviews. You can check out some videos we've done as well outside of the studio. And of course, if you want more writing or merchandise stuff, flamesnation.ca or nationgear.ca. Appreciate you watching.