The CFL Blue Bombers maintain that they are "on track to make" a $4.5M (all figures Canadian) stadium-building loan repayment this year after President & CEO Wade Miller on Monday said that the team "posted a $2.1-million profit last year" in its first season at Investors Group Field, according to Kives & Owen of the WINNIPEG FREE PRESS. Miller said that he is “confident the club's profit margin will rise enough to cover the first of 45 expected annual repayments of a pair of loans that helped build" the stadium. The Blue Bombers are “on the hook for repaying” $85M of a $160M provincial stadium-building loan and the entirety of a $10M loan taken out by BBB Stadium Inc., the non-profit behind the facility. The “combined principal and interest on these two loans places at least” a $180M burden on the Blue Bombers over the next 45 years. Miller said that the Blue Bombers are “poised to make” their first $4.5M payment this year, citing the prospect of $2M in additional league revenue, an approximately $600,000 reduction in game-day transportation costs and “no additional costs associated with opening the new stadium or any further severance payments for departed club executives” (WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, 5/13). In Winnipeg, Kirk Penton wrote, "The financial figures are pretty good when you consider the Bombers posted a 3-15 record and won more games in Quebec (two) than it did in its brand new stadium (one) last season." The CFL’s new broadcast agreement with TSN “kicks in this year, bringing in an extra” $2M. Miller also is “confident the team will be paying much less for transit to and from games once it reworks its deal" with the city. The Blue Bombers have "paid off all of their fired presidents, general managers and coaches, so none of those severance packages will be on the books" in ‘14 (WINNIPEG SUN, 5/13).
