Toronto BMO Field Renovations | ?m | ?s | MLSE | Gensler

Potentially going to 45,000 for the 2026 World Cup?


Now that Skydome is baseball only, Toronto would need to build temporary stands if it wanted to host the national football championship. 2016 was the last time we hosted. If this were a permanent expansion it would make hosting more viable as 45,000 is an ideal size. There's a roof over the south end zone though. I assume that would need to come down?

That said, I suspect Toronto won't host any 2026 WC soccer games. Edmonton, Montreal, Vancouver are the front runners & the US only tossed a few crumbs (games) Canada's way.
 
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The NFL is not a big fan of temp stands.
The NFL isn't a fan of expanding to Canada either. They already make all the money they need from Canada by way of merchandise sales in Canada and Canadian television contracts. A team in Toronto doesn't expand the pie at all., it just diverts dollars to 1 team from the other 36. The financial benefit is ZERO and the rest are all negatives.

It would destroy the oldest pro football teams in the world (Toronto and Hamilton), be the death knell for a league (CFL) that strengthens the NFL, and the optics of killing the CFL are horrendous. Canada would go from 9 pro teams to just 1, university football across Canada would either switch to US 4 down football or fold, and that would result in the elimination of football at the high school level nationally. The entire sport could potentially collapse. And why? All because some Torontonians want to play Dallas instead of Calgary.

Even if none of this were true, Toronto is the worst football market in North America. The city doesn't support any of its football teams but it wants another one? Ridiculous.
 
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The article is inaccurate (cp24 shocker). The expanded capacity was actually for the 2016 MLS Cup (the one we lost) which was originally placed for the Grey Cup that year and the total capacity was about 36,000.

Expanding it to 45,000 would likely involve reconstructing the West Stand, which seems very possible given the fact that the roof is a separate structure and it is overbuilt with respect to the stand.
 
That said, I suspect Toronto won't host any 2026 WC soccer games. Edmonton, Montreal, Vancouver are the front runners & the US only tossed a few crumbs (games) Canada's way.

This post couldn't be more wrong.

Montreal pulled out back in the summer - https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/montreal-withdraws-from-2026-fifa-world-cup-consideration-1.5498242

Vancouver pulled out in 2018 - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/brit...he-sidelines-for-the-2026-world-cup-1.4704024

Edmonton and Toronto are the only two Canadian cities who are vying to host the 10 games allocated to Canada.

FIFA have just completed a tour of all 22 cities looking to host games - that tour wrapped up in Toronto today - https://www.fifa.com/news/fifa-completes-visits-to-impressive-world-cup-2026-candidate-host-cities

Within the scope of three tours, the FIFA experts witnessed the excitement, along with the commitment of the bidding teams, in Boston, Atlanta, Nashville, Orlando, Washington DC, Baltimore, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, Miami, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Monterrey, San Francisco, Seattle, Edmonton, Mexico City, Guadalajara, Los Angeles and Toronto.
 
The NFL isn't a fan of expanding to Canada either. They already make all the money they need from Canada by way of merchandise sales in Canada and Canadian television contracts. A team in Toronto doesn't expand the pie at all., it just diverts dollars to 1 team from the other 36. The financial benefit is ZERO and the rest are all negatives.

It would destroy the oldest pro football teams in the world (Toronto and Hamilton), be the death knell for a league (CFL) that strengthens the NFL, and the optics of killing the CFL are horrendous. Canada would go from 9 pro teams to just 1, university football across Canada would either switch to US 4 down football or fold, and that would result in the elimination of football at the high school level nationally. The entire sport could potentially collapse. And why? All because some Torontonians want to play Dallas instead of Calgary.

Even if none of this were true, Toronto is the worst football market in North America. The city doesn't support any of its football teams but it wants another one? Ridiculous.

How would an NFL team in Toronto kill the entire CFL?
 
How would an NFL team in Toronto kill the entire CFL?
I don’t understand either. Since the argos switch owners every few years has almost no fan base and to which I got free tickets to a few years ago for buying a dozen donuts at Tim hortons. If the argos are the glue of this league then it’s just a matter of time till it all collapses.
 
Toronto folks too upscale for CFL NFL type stuff, give us soccer and hockey.
I would have nfl season tickets day one. A number of my friends would as well. Hockey might be upscale in Toronto with corporate suits but in general is hockey really upscale?
 
The NFL isn't a fan of expanding to Canada either. They already make all the money they need from Canada by way of merchandise sales in Canada and Canadian television contracts. A team in Toronto doesn't expand the pie at all., it just diverts dollars to 1 team from the other 36. The financial benefit is ZERO and the rest are all negatives.

It would destroy the oldest pro football teams in the world (Toronto and Hamilton), be the death knell for a league (CFL) that strengthens the NFL, and the optics of killing the CFL are horrendous. Canada would go from 9 pro teams to just 1, university football across Canada would either switch to US 4 down football or fold, and that would result in the elimination of football at the high school level nationally. The entire sport could potentially collapse. And why? All because some Torontonians want to play Dallas instead of Calgary.

Even if none of this were true, Toronto is the worst football market in North America. The city doesn't support any of its football teams but it wants another one? Ridiculous.
The NFL would do more damage then that Ottawa and Montreal would be gone as well leaving just the western division.
 
If they expand to 45K, we have a potential location for a temporary home for an NFL team, if that pipe dream ever happens. We know the NFL doesn't like the Skydome, but they do want to expand (especially beyond the US), so a 45K BMO Field seems like exactly what they would be looking for until we can build something bigger (The Chargers were playing in a smaller soccer stadium the last couple seasons, so it's not unrealistic). Plus you can actually have tailgating at BMO Field, since it has surface parking.

No idea if any of that would happen, but a bigger BMO Field makes it far more plausible.
I detest that the Argos rip up the field at BMO already.

NO to NFL.

Would prefer if the Argos found a home somewhere else. Maybe they can move to Mississauga.
 
The NFL is not a big fan of temp stands.
Adding a few thousand temporary scaffolding seats and porta-johns to BMO Field is certainly not going to lead to an NFL team showing up in Toronto. And all the naïve nonsense about 'it would hurt the CFL' or how many fans may or may not be interested is also irrelevant. NFL or MLB teams are located where a multi-billionaire owner wants to put them.
... Americans are far more willing to give absurdly rich people free money than we are after all.
Well, yes and no when you look at the two recent NFL examples. Nevada taxes paid for the Raiders' new stadium, while the new Los Angeles stadium for the Rams and Chargers was privately funded, and California in recent years has generally rejected the notion of spending public money for pro sports stadiums and arenas.
 
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The NFL would do more damage then that Ottawa and Montreal would be gone as well leaving just the western division.
What evidence do you have to support this claim. And I didn’t realize it’s one leagues responsibility to make sure another league survives. If the league is reliant on the argos to survive then they are already on a sinking ship. The argos are beyond irrelevant in this market.
 

Look at the third biggest market in North Americas stellar support for the cfl. 12000 a game while league average is 25000. Soon the argos can play in varsity stadium and there won’t be complaints of no parking lot for tailgating because no one goes anyways.
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