Canadian Soccer Business, a private company accused of incapacitating the board’s finances, has stepped up to defend its contribution to the game in the country.

Two days after Jason DeVos, interim head of Canadian football, told TSN’s Rick Westhead that his organization may have to consider filing for bankruptcy because of worsening cash flows, Canadian Soccer Business (CSB) took issue with the nature of somehow holding the national program back.

“I told the CSB that we were involved in this together,” DeVos said in an interview. “I know how important it is to have a professional league for men and women in this country, but it can’t come at the expense of our men’s and women’s teams.”

“We respectfully disagree with those comments,” CSB spokesman Laura Armstrong wrote in a series of emails to SportsNet. “CSB is contributing at every level of the game and this will ultimately benefit our national team. To say the opposite is simply to ignore the facts.”

Under the terms of the contract, CSB pays Canadian football a set amount per year (currently about $3 million) to maintain all revenue generated from media rights and sponsorship of national teams funding the Canadian Premier League (CPL). The CSB is owned and controlled by the CPL team owner.

“The annual guaranteed payments and bonuses for Canadian football represent a single source of the organization’s many available revenue streams,” Armstrong said.

The contract was signed in March 2018 for a 10-year term and has the option of CSB extending it for another 10 years until 2037. At the time, Canada was part of a bid to co-host the 2026 Men’s World Cup with the U.S. and Mexico, which probably ensured participation in the quadrennial event, increasing the value of men’s rights. The three countries’ bids came three months later in June. Soon after, the men also qualified for the 2022 Qatar World Cup.

“CSB has invested heavily to develop the Canadian football ecosystem when others don’t take any risks,” Armstrong said, citing 322 Canadians employed by the CPL and 10 Canadians called up to the men’s national team. “This pipeline is just the beginning, considering the two seasons that are adversely affected by Covid, especially the CPL is only playing its fifth season as it continues to expand into new markets.” 토토사이트먹튀

Asked in a TSN interview if CSB was aware of the suggestion that Canadian football would go bankrupt before DeVos mentioned it, Armstrong did not directly answer or comment on how this could affect the deal.

“We are not involved in the management of the organization at all,” Armstrong said.

Both men’s and women’s teams are engaged in labor disputes with Canadian football and are negotiating player contracts. The women’s team will report to the pre-World Cup camp on the Gold Coast of Australia on Wednesday. The men played their first game of the Gold Cup in Toronto on Tuesday.

Armstrong says CSB is willing to revise agreement “well over a year”

“Given the recent leadership changes, we are working on these discussions again with the new president and interim secretary-general of Canadian football.”