The number of fans attending Saskatchewan Roughriders games seems poised to grow in 2026 as the club reaps the rewards of its fifth Grey Cup championship.
Speaking with reporters Thursday after addressing a business luncheon in Saskatoon, Riders CEO Craig Reynolds said all facets of ticket sales appear poised to grow year over year.
“We’re up significantly on new season tickets and season ticket renewals were extremely, extremely strong so we’re going to see season ticket growth which is really, really important to us,” Reynolds said, later specifying that new season ticket sales are already over 60 per cent ahead of last year’s pace.
Along with strong demand for group sales, Reynolds also pointed out the recent growth in single-game tickets – a trend he could foresee continuing in 2026.
“There’s a lot more single-game buyers than there were in the past,” he said. “So we set a record two years ago with the number of single-game tickets we sold. We broke that record last year with the number of single-game tickets we sold, so you see the trend and we’ll potentially break that again this year as well.”
Winning is often said to be the best deodorant in sports, but Reynolds also pointed to a number of measures the team has taken in recent years to make the game-day experience more affordable for fans.
“It’s a conversation piece in our offices all the time and we’re doing a number of things to try and address it,” he said. “Over course of the last few years we’ve actually reduced ticket prices for 12,000 seats in Mosaic over a number of years so that was one step.”
Others have included the introduction of a family pack ticket option, half-price youth tickets for many seats, and a partnership with Federated Co-operatives Ltd. that makes a selection of upper-deck east side tickets available for $20 apiece at any game, except for the Labour Day Classic where the price is set at $30.
While he declined to share specifics about merchandise figures, deferring to the club’s annual general meeting in June, he did allude to success in that realm as well.
“I’ll just suggest they’re very, very strong. They’re amongst the highest we’ve ever seen,” he said.
So will it be enough to keep the team’s finances in the black for a second straight year? Reynolds didn’t say.
“Reality is we had some outstanding merchandise sales, we had strong partnerships, we had strong ticket sales. But the reality that comes with winning the Grey Cup is that it comes with a lot of expenses as well,” Reynolds explained, pointing to travel and hospitality costs for the players and their families, Grey Cup rings, and the province-wide community tour the team embarked on after winning.
The Roughriders reported a net operating loss of $1.1 million in 2023-24 followed by a net operating profit of $2.1 million in 2024-25.
