Grey Cup victory impacts entire province: Roughriders CEO

A year in review with the Saskatchewan Roughriders President & CEO Craig Reynolds.

While the Saskatchewan Roughriders won the 2025 Grey Cup on the field, Craig Reynolds believes the championship is of major significance to the province.

Reynolds, the franchise President and CEO, sat down recently with CTV News to look back at the season which concluded with the Riders defeating the Montreal Alouettes 25-17 on Nov. 16 to win the Grey Cup.

Reynolds, who joined the Riders in 2009 at Chief Financial Officer before taking the reins as President and CEO in 2015, recognizes the big-picture view of the championship.

“I’m so happy for our fans, to go 12 years between championships and to bring home the fifth championship for them. That means a ton to our players and our coaches and our entire organization,” said Reynolds.

It was the first Grey Cup victory for the franchise since 2013 when the Riders beat the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 45-23 before a soldout crowd of 44,710 at Mosaic Stadium at Taylor Field.

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Ending the Grey Cup drought will certainly impact the franchise in multiple ways.

“Obviously, when you win a Grey Cup, there’s a lot of positive sort of impacts that happen. Some of them are immediate so we’ve seen an immediate rush for merchandise sales, for instance, an immediate sort of fan engagement, fan response. You saw that in the [victory] parade and the attendance at the legislature,” said Reynolds. “And then you see some longer-term sort of impacts in terms of corporate support emerging, and then obviously in season tickets. You hope that momentum continues into 2026, and you see increased gates. It’s just so incredibly positive for the organization but I would say for the entire province.”

One measure the Riders can use when gauging the success of the past year is the economic impact generated through finishing first in the West Division with a 21-6-0 record, hosting the West Division final and winning the Grey Cup.

“I think we saw two things. Late this year, one is the continuation of the sales around the obsidian merchandise that continues to be really popular with our fans, whether that’s jerseys or T shirts or hats. We thought it might tail off a little bit, and it really didn’t. Fans continue to buy that merchandise and were really happy with that product line,” said Reynolds.

“And then now what we’re seeing is the Grey Cup merchandise, and it is probably not an exaggeration to say it’s flying off the shelves right now as we kind of approach the Christmas season. As soon as we kind of get product out there, it’s being sold. We’re seeing numbers there that we haven’t seen in a long time, probably since 2013 and so we certainly expect our merchandise sales to exceed last year, which were already strong.”

One area the team has been focused on is ticket sales. When the Riders moved into Mosaic Stadium for the 2017 season, fans flocked to the venue and sellouts were a regular occurrence.

But the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by non-playoff records in 2022 and 2023, resulted in attendance numbers dropping.

Reynolds admitted it’s been tough for the Riders to find ways to return to the attendance glory days.

“That’s the challenge. That’s been the challenge ever since Covid, and I think we’ve seen a steady rebound. It’s been slower, but certainly we’ve seen a rebound. We saw increase attendance this year. I was really encouraged by the sell out at the Western final,” said Reynolds. “For us, it’s building on this momentum that we’re seeing and making sure that we’re doing the right things as an organization, and to make sure that as part of that momentum, we’re seeing increased crowds back to the stadium.

“It starts with our season-ticket base, and we’re seeing really great results there, following the Grey Cup win. Last year was a nice rebound year on the season tickets, and this year, we’ve already sold twice as many at the same time as we did last year at this time. We’re seeing really encouraging results there,” Reynolds added.

The plan to continue building on the current momentum includes the strategy of making each and every home game a true event, rather than just being another CFL game.

“One of the keys is making it an event, and that’s what we’ve sort of seen. Like the Western final is an event sold out. Labour Day is an event. It’s sold out. Our Family Day has now become an event, and it’s sold out this year,” said Reynolds. “Part of that is also the tailgating that we’re introducing [for the 2026 season]. It’s going to create a bit of an event in and around the stadium and create that atmosphere that I think specifically younger folks are looking for nowadays.”

Players and members of the organization have been busy since the victory, sharing the Grey Cup with family, friends and fans throughout the province. Most of these appearances have been scheduled informally and Reynolds explained the schedule in 2026 will be more structured.

“As we shift into 2026, we’ll do a more of a formal sort of community tours, and so we’re just working out the plans around that,” he said. “But really, the intent there is to get it across the province, whether that be schools or events. We really want to go from corner to corner of the province,” said Reynolds.