page_title: Canadian Football League
section_title: Grey Cup
hierarchical_section_title: Canadian Football League / Season structure / Grey Cup
caption_attribution_description: The Grey Cup
context_page_description: The Canadian Football League is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a city in Canada. They are divided into two divisions: four teams in the East Division and five teams in the West Division.
  As of 2019, it features a 21-week regular season where each team plays 18 games with three bye weeks. This season traditionally runs from mid-June to early November. Following the regular season, six teams compete in the league's three-week divisional playoffs which culminate in the Grey Cup championship game in late November. The Grey Cup is one of Canada's largest annual sports and television events.
  The CFL was officially named on January 19, 1958, upon the merger between the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union or "Big Four" and the Western Interprovincial Football Union. Before the introduction of interlocking play in 1961, teams only competed against each other in pre-season and the Grey Cup Championship.
context_section_description: The Grey Cup is both the name of the championship of the CFL and the name of the trophy awarded to the victorious team. The Grey Cup is the second-oldest trophy in North American professional sports, after the Stanley Cup. The Grey Cup game is hosted in one of the league's member cities. In recent years, it has been hosted in a different city every year, selected two or more years in advance. The Toronto Argonauts have won the most Grey Cups with seventeen wins total, most recently in 2017. In 2012, the game was held in Toronto at Rogers Centre, and for the second year in row the cup was won on a team's home field, with Toronto beating Calgary 35–22. In 2013, the Grey Cup was won at home for the third consecutive time (by the Saskatchewan Roughriders), which had not been done since Toronto won at home from 1945 to 1947. In 2016, the Grey Cup was won on the natural grass turf of BMO Field by the Ottawa Redblacks beating the heavily favoured Calgary Stampeders 39–33 in overtime; the first Grey Cup championship for any Ottawa CFL team in 40 years.
  As the country's single largest annual sporting event, the Grey Cup has long served as an unofficial Canadian autumn festival generating national media coverage and a large amount of revenue for the host city. Many fans travel from across the country to attend the game and the week of festivities that lead up to it. A 2014 survey found that 48% of Canadians would prefer to watch the Grey Cup over the Super Bowl if they could only watch one or the other, with 52% preferring the Super Bowl.
  Since 2015, the Grey Cup game's presenting sponsor is Shaw Communications.
caption: The Grey Cup
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