Saint John sets sights on landing CFL game

Saint John is now chasing a Canadian Football League game less than two weeks after Moncton sold out a regular season tilt between the Toronto Argonauts and Edmonton Eskimos.

Saint John hosted two CFL exhibition games in the late 1980s.

Barry Ogden, the president of the University of New Brunswick in Saint John's Seawolves Football Club and the chairperson of the city's leisure services board, said the city is chasing a regular season game but would settle for an exhibition matchup.

"It would be tremendous public relations. It would mean a lot of new tourist dollars," Odgen said.

"And I think one success leads to another and this could lead to other things: international rugby, international soccer … all kinds of things and I think once you put a formula in place with a network of people then you can keep building on that. And that's what we were doing in the '80s and we kind of lost it."

Ogden has already called the office of Mark Cohon, the CFL commissioner, to find out what the city would need to do to lure professional football to southern New Brunswick.

In an email to CBC News, Jamie Dykstra, a CFL spokesman, said Cohon is focussed on getting government support to host future games in Moncton right now and it's too soon to speculate about Saint John.

The federal government pumped $800,000 into the CFL game in Moncton to raise awareness of the region's capacity to host major, national and international sporting events.

Meanwhile, the New Brunswick government invested $700,000 to cover marketing and other infrastructure costs.

Field comparisons

Saint John would host any potential CFL games in the newly refurbished Canada Games Stadium that has a capacity of 5,000.

The stadium was originally built in 1985 but was upgraded recently to include artificial turf.

When the CFL landed in Moncton, the teams played in the new $20-million stadium at the University of Moncton, which also hosted the IAAF world junior track championship.

The stadium's capacity grew to 20,000 with the addition of temporary seating. The game was sold out in 32 hours.

Ross Jefferson, the executive director of the city's Destination Marketing Organization, said the next step for Saint John in its quest to convince the CFL to come to the city is to put together a package to sell the city and line up corporate support.

"We're looking at this opportunity with much interest and we think that Saint John actually would be a great place to host one of the next games," Jefferson said.