The 64-year-old facility is good enough to host the CFL’s crown jewel event.
It is not very often that you hear that a commissioner of a sports league trash the venue of that league’s crown jewel event but the outgoing commissioner of the Canadian Football League has trashed the site of the 2026 CFL’s Grey Cup Championship Game. The CFL, which is playing this year’s Grey Cup in Vancouver, British Columbia in a match up that features Toronto playing Winnipeg, has placed the 2026 Grey Cup in Calgary, Alberta at McMahon Stadium. McMahon Stadium opened in 1960 and there have been discussions over the years to replace the facility including one plan that would have funded a stadium in a package that would have included building an arena for the National Hockey League’s Calgary Flames franchise and the CFL’s Calgary Stampeders franchise. That never materialized. The city and the Flamers franchise owners did reach a deal to build an arena in town which is scheduled to open in 2027.
The outgoing CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie complained in 2019 when Calgary hosted the Grey Cup that McMahon Stadium was “terrible”. Five years later Ambrosie has not changed his mind about the facility even though the league’s owners awarded the 2026 championship game to Calgary knowing that the old stadium doesn’t live up to modern standards. “I’m not going to back away from the fact I believe the city needs a new stadium for the CFL, it needs a new stadium for the Calgary Stampeders,” Ambrosie told reporters. “It would be disingenuous to say anything else.” The stadium is owned by the University of Calgary, it is the McMahon Stadium Society that oversees its operations and upgrades. The University of Calgary told the Canadian Global News it “is not in a position to provide financial support” to upgrade the 64-year-old stadium. The stadium game has begun in Calgary.
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