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Toronto Councillor Doug Ford told Brad Gagnon of TheScore.com that his city is looking to lure an NFL team to Toronto as soon as the vacancy situation is resolved in Los Angeles.
“They have to take care of the problem in Los Angeles first,” Ford said. “Two teams are kind of in play here: Jacksonville’s number one; New Orleans is the other. So there’s two teams. Once they take care of Los Angeles, we’re going to fly over to New York, set up a meeting with [NFL commissioner Roger] Goodell and give him our pitch.”
Canadians already enjoy a taste of the NFL with Buffalo just across the border and at least one Bills game played in Toronto during the season. Canadians already wager heavily on the sport and online bookmakers are hoping the trend will explode should an NFL team relocate to the city.
On its radar: the Jacksonville Jaguars. Toronto also has the New Orleans Saints on its short list, however, that idea is all but being written off post-Katrina and post-Super Bowl win of two years ago, not to mention the Saints look like the team to beat in 2011.
Toronto has already been told it will need a better venue than Rogers Centre.
“Their current stadium is a multi-purpose stadium, has a relatively small capacity by NFL standards,” Goodell said at his pre-Super Bowl press conference in February.
- Don Shapiro, Gambling911.com
