Canadian Football League in the United States
Game Date Visitor Score Home City Stadium Attendance
Exhibition December 11 , 1909 Hamilton Tigers 11-6 Ottawa Rough Riders New York City Van Cortlandt Park 15,000
Preseason August 11 , 1951 Hamilton Tiger-Cats 17-11 Toronto Argonauts Buffalo , New York Civic Stadium 18,146
Preseason August 2 , 1957 BC Lions 8-29 Edmonton Eskimos Portland , Oregon Multnomah Stadium 10,261
Preseason August 11 , 1957 BC Lions 6-9 Edmonton Eskimos San Francisco Kezar Stadium 16,000
Regular season September 14 , 1958 Ottawa Rough Riders 18-24 Hamilton Tiger-Cats Philadelphia Municipal Stadium 15,110
Preseason July 29 , 1960 BC Lions 7-13 Winnipeg Blue Bombers Cedar Rapids , Iowa Kingston Stadium 12,583
Preseason July 29 , 1961 BC Lions 13-3 Saskatchewan Roughriders Seattle Husky Stadium 28,000
Preseason August 1 , 1961 Calgary Stampeders 14-7 Saskatchewan Roughriders Spokane , Washington Memorial Stadium 7,511
Preseason July 9 , 1967 BC Lions 7-2 Edmonton Eskimos Everett , Washington Everett Memorial Stadium 6,248
Preseason June 25 , 1992 Toronto Argonauts 1-20 Calgary Stampeders Portland , Oregon Civic Stadium 15,362
Preseason June 24 , 1995 Baltimore CFLers 37-0 Birmingham Barracudas Miami Orange Bowl 20,216
Pre-expansion era -- Neutral site games
Main article : List of neutral site Canadian Football League games Eleven neutral-site IRFU/WIFU/CFL games have been played on American soil . The earliest of these dates to 1909 , while the bulk occurred between 1951 and 1967 . The 1909 game , featuring the Ottawa Rough Riders and Hamilton Tigers of the IRFU , was sponsored by the New York Herald and played at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx ; [ 2 ] this in the era when the Canadian game was more similar to rugby football and did not feature modern rules such as the forward pass like the American game . The next game , a 1951 match-up between the IRFU 's Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Toronto Argonauts in Buffalo , was billed as the first true all-Canadian game played in the United States . Played in a city that at the time was embittered with the National Football League after its All-American Football Conference team was controversially excluded from a merger with the NFL , the Buffalo game drew more than 18,000 fans - a decent crowd for the era . [ 3 ] In 1958 , the first season officially played under the CFL moniker , Hamilton defeated Ottawa in a regular-season contest in front about 15,000 in Philadelphia 's cavernous Municipal Stadium , 24–18 . It remains the only CFL game played outside Canada , involving two Canadian teams , that actually counted in the standings . Prior to and even after the formation of the CFL , the teams of the IRFU ( which eventually became the CFL 's Eastern Football Conference ) were regarded , especially in Eastern Canada , as superior to the Western Canadian teams . Starting in the 1930s , Western Canadian teams had begun aggressively scouting for and recruiting players from the rich American talent pool , largely in an effort to achieve parity with the East . The American Pacific Northwest became a frequent site for WIFU and later CFL preseason games in the 1950s and 1960s with Western Canadian teams , particularly the BC Lions , being called upon to entertain their regional neighbours . News reports from the time suggest a hybrid game of three down Canadian ball played on the more restricted 100 yard American field . [ 4 ] One BC–Winnipeg matchup in 1960 was held not on the west coast but in Cedar Rapids , Iowa , presumably because both teams had a number of former University of Iowa stars , including Willie Mitchell , who scored the Lions ' only touchdown in a 13–7 loss in front of 12,583 . Western teams were mostly ignored by U.S. clubs as potential opposition for preseason interleague contests , although this was in part due to the more onerous travel requirements to Western Canada an era when rail travel was the norm and the fact the WIFU moved up the start of its regular season long before the Eastern section followed suit . It would not be until 2019 that NFL teams would play any sort of contest in Western Canada . Most exhibition games involving Canadian teams in the U.S. tended to be characterized by low scores and frequent punting , with crowds between 10,000 and 20,000 ; these numbers dropped off in the last two games of the era . A low-scoring BC–Calgary game in Everett , Washington , in 1967 drew just over 6,000 ; [ 5 ] there would not be another CFL game in the United States until the cusp of US expansion itself in 1992 .
The Canadian Football League (CFL), the sole major professional sports league in the United States and Canada to feature only teams from Canada, has made efforts to gain further audience in the United States, most directly through expansion into the country from 1993 to 1995. The CFL plays Canadian football, a form of gridiron football which is somewhat different from the more common American football played in the United States and the world. The first American team, the Sacramento Gold Miners, joined in 1993. The league added three more American teams in 1994, after which two more teams joined, one re-located and one folded to bring the total to five in 1995. In the latter year, the teams were aligned into a new South Division. The three years saw numerous ownership debacles on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border. The Baltimore Stallions became the only American-based team to win the Grey Cup championship, in 1995. With the exception of Baltimore, all of the American teams consistently lost money. CFL games in the United States by its American teams averaged 10,000 to 15,000 in paid attendance, while the Stallions ranged from 30,000 to 37,000. (At the time, the CFL was a gate-driven league.) Tension also arose between the American and Canadian contingents over rule changes, scheduling, import rules, and even the name of the league itself. Facing these difficulties, the league returned to be an exclusively Canadian one beginning with the 1996 season.