BC Lions
Canadian football team based in Vancouver
The BC Lions are a professional Canadian football team based in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Lions compete in the West Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL), and play their home games at BC Place.
The Lions played their first season in 1954, and have played every season since, making them the oldest professional sports franchise in British Columbia. They have appeared in the league's Grey Cup championship game 10 times, winning six, with their most recent championship occurring in 2011.
The Lions were the first Western Canadian team to win the Grey Cup at home, doing so in 1994 and 2011, before Saskatchewan achieved the feat in 2013. Also in 1994, the Lions became the first and only team to play and defeat an American-based franchise for the Grey Cup. The Lions hold the second-longest playoff streak in CFL history, making the postseason 20 consecutive seasons, from 1997 to 2016 (only Edmonton has had a longer playoff streak, going 34 seasons from 1972 to 2005). With the Winnipeg Blue Bombers Grey Cup win in 2019 after a 29-year wait, the Lions currently have the longest Grey Cup drought of the West Division teams, and the longest drought since appearing the Grey Cup, last playing and winning in 2011.
History
Before the Lions
Compared to the rest of the country, senior football arrived late in British Columbia. Rugby unions had been organized in all of the Prairie provinces by 1907 and the Western Canada Rugby Football Union had been formed in 1911.
The public source identifies “BC Lions” as canadian football team based in Vancouver. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lions, Canadian and football.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q919062. VIAF identifies the subject as 131539271. The Library of Congress control number is n2001084354. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 2011, 1994 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “BC Lions” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.