Exclusive: CPL Club Owners Chipped In To Pay Eddies Player Salaries
The following story by John Jacques is courtesy of the Northern Tribune on January 2, 2022: https://northerntribune.ca/fc-edmonton-player-salaries-2021/
After months of rumours, this weekend saw it come to light that the Canadian Premier League had taken over day-to-day and football operations for FC Edmonton while helping club owner Tom Fath look for a seller for the struggling CPL side.
As it turns out, it hasn’t just been the league office helping FC Edmonton through its tough times.
Northern Tribune has now learned that multiple other club owners stepped in to pay FC Edmonton’s staff and player expenditures starting midway through last season’s summertime bubble. Fath – who had invested millions into the club since he launched it as an NASL franchise in 2010 – told the league that he would be unable to fund the CPL side just prior to the start of the bubble itself.
Pivoting to ensure the season remained intact, club owners from around the league stepped up big: the extent of intra-league aid is said to have reached a figure of over a million dollars, which goes well beyond what most would consider reasonable expectations from outside help.
To put it plainly: in some environments, it would have been more likely for FC Edmonton to simply fold and have its league license transferring elsewhere, just like the Ottawa Fury in the USL. Instead, there was coast-to-coast aid from the domestic league to keep the founding club afloat.
With the CPL set to continue running FC Edmonton until a new buyer is found and vetted, however, it’s unclear if other club owners will continue to chip in for player and staff salaries, or if the onus of personnel payment will fully transfer to the league’s head office itself. Fath is set to remain on the proverbial sidelines for the time being, with the league naming him as a strategic advisor.
While rumours of player non-payment have also cropped up of late, these appear to be false: the transition between player and staff salary payments from The Fath Group to league and club ownership appears to have been fairly seamless, and none of our sources from inside Edmonton or out knew of any specific non-payment issues.
For the rest of the story on the FC Edmonton adventures by John Jacques please go to the Northern Tribune story from January 2, 2022 at: https://northerntribune.ca/fc-edmonton-player-salaries-2021/.