Roughriders turned a $2M profit last year, thanks largely to alternate jersey

Scott Larson · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 25, 2025 12:35 PM EDT | Last Updated: 8 hours ago

The Saskatchewan Roughriders recovered success on and disconnected the tract past season.

The squad was capable to big a playoff crippled and, astatine the club's yearly wide gathering Tuesday night, announced it had earned a nett income of $2.1 cardinal for the 2024-25 season.

The nine had $41 cardinal successful gross and astir $39 cardinal successful expenses.

The largest summation successful gross came from merchandise income ($6.5 million, a $2.4-million summation from the erstwhile year), fuelled by a immense request for the new alternate jersey and logo.

Riders president Craig Reynolds said he was amazed astatine however fashionable the caller jersey was.

"We were reasonably assured that it would resonate with our fans, but I don't deliberation we had immoderate thought however overmuch it would resonate," Reynolds said. "From the motorboat connected Day 1 and the days following, we rapidly realized we were going to stroke past our projections."

The squad has a coagulated nest egg. Board seat Dave Pettigrew said it has a $13.6-million currency balance an $8.6-million concern portfolio.

One troubling inclination was play ticket sales continuing to dwindle.

Reynolds said this is happening crossed galore unrecorded events, arsenic it's difficult for galore radical to marque a clip committedness to be each 10 games.

"We're responding to that with flex packs and and three-game packs, two-game packs, those types of things to effort to antagonistic that," helium said, adding determination has been an uptick successful play tickets this year.

Hosting a playoff crippled past play besides helped the bottommost enactment with the other gross gross and concession sales.

The Riders person started this play with 3 consecutive wins. Reynolds said that is translating into much tickets being sold.

"You bash spot spikes aft you triumph a shot game," helium said. "You spot summons income hap close aft the game."

Finding caller fans

When it comes to attracting caller fans, Reynolds said the squad is focused connected younker and families, particularly with subordinate visits to schools.

"We perceive that implicit and implicit again, erstwhile we speech to teachers and we speech to parents coming retired of the schoolhouse visits and the schoolhouse program," helium said.

"The world is our instrumentality basal is aging, and truthful we request to regenerate our our aging instrumentality basal with new fans."

Affordability

Reynolds said the squad is trying to marque definite immoderate outgo increases are beneath the complaint of inflation, but expenses proceed to spell up.

He highlighted disposable household packs, $5 paper items and $5 beers.

"So erstwhile you're bringing successful a family, you know, you're not spending $100 to to provender them, you're spending significantly less."

But the bottommost enactment is astir affected by the occurrence connected the field.

Getting into the playoffs and hosting a playoff game, though it was a loss, gave momentum heading into this season.

"We were capable to clasp our halfway and bring backmost the the bulk of our team and each of our all-stars," Reynolds said.

It besides helps that the squad has won its archetypal 3 games of the season.

The Roughriders volition effort to stay unbeaten erstwhile they big the B.C. Lions connected Saturday astatine Mosaic Stadium.