Loonies Attack Canadian Sports Teams

In this week's issue of the Sports Business Journal there is an article about the Canadian and American currency values.  Canadian Currency, known as the loonie has hit a recent low, with it being worth about 80 cents to a US dollar.  The problem that most Canadian teams in pro US sports are facing has to do with pay rolls.  For example, the Toronto Blue Jays have a $98 million pay roll which they pay their players in the American dollars; 65% of their income is in the Canadian loonie and 85% of their expenses are in the US dollar.  Obviously this is showing that in order to combat this they will have to take in a substantial amount of income.  Last year though there was a time where the Canadian loonie was above the US dollar and some teams like the Blue Jays were allowed to save up to $4 million because of this.

This is really bad for the Canadian Teams because they are losing a lot of money right now.  Hopefully the Canadian currency recovers and teams don't take too big of a hit.  It would be really unfortunate if any of the Canadian sports teams get sold or whatever, but I think that that would be an extreme case.  Most Canadian teams like the Montreal Canadians have a large fan base so they should not have to worry about income.  But some teams like the Toronto Blue Jays, who, if you have watched their games don't seem to have a very large fan base could take a big hit, especially since there is no revenue sharing in the MLB.

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