Except a what 7th tier league in the MLS does well in Toronto.
I know this is your guys forum and whatnot but wow how insulting. CFL is huge in Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa places where they have NHL. Winnipeg was struggling but they've put alot into marketing and in particular have made adjustments to the gameday experience over the past 5 years. Now a Bombers game is a party. The team has a party before and after, they allow tailgating, they have party sections, etc. It's an experience to go to a game. This type of thing has taken an aging Bombers fanbase from the 95-05 time period and now it's mostly young people who are having a blast at the games and coming out week after week to cheer on the Bombers. It also appeals to families with many events for kids at the games at a reasonable price unlike Jets games. This attitude you are saying is something I'd expect from 2000, alot has changed in 20 years since around the league.
The only place left behind it seems is Toronto. I don't know how Toronto is doing things, but they could have success if they do it right, IMO.
Since being acquired by MLSE, the Argos tried to follow a similar model as the Bombers and Redblacks. They tried to set up a party atmosphere, a tail gate, a proper 'football' game-day experience -- by all accounts, they didn't do bad job either. But it hasn't worked. Why? Because the Blue Jays got a head start back in 2014 with their beautiful new uniforms and renovations of the Skydome. The Raptors have put Drake front-and-center. Toronto FC already had a better atmosphere than the Argos, and that hasn't changed, as well as the 'hip' appeal of soccer as a global game. Heck even rugby's Toronto Wolfpack have made a mark, using their niche status as a selling point. The Argos have been around for a century. They can't play the niche card. They can't compete with soccer's worldliness or basketball's pop culture reach. The Blue Jays are almost in a different category, being the city's clear #2 team, but even if they weren't... a MLB team valued at a billion dollars can afford a lot more bells and whistles than a CFL team can.
That's the difference between a market like Toronto and small markets like the ones you listed. Just to give you an idea of the scale, since I find many Canadians outside Toronto treat it like any other big Canadian city, there are more people living in 37 sq mi of
central Toronto than in all of Winnipeg. It is a
very different beast. In Winnipeg the entertainment dollars are somewhat limited and every entertainment option (the Jets, Bombers, but also movie theaters and others) is fighting for a piece of the cake. In Toronto, because of the sheer scale of the city, nobody's fighting over the dollars. What they are fighting over is the spotlight, which attracts the dollars. The Argos are trying to cut through the noise and all the advertising trying to get people to go to the Blue Jays or TFC or the latest theater production, and get noticed. They are doing this against competitors who are often better funded, have a bigger foothold in the market, have the capacity to spend far more on advertising, or in the case of niche competitors, are ever more sophisticated and flexible in trying to reach an audience. Because those niche options need to be. Because they otherwise they fail, as the Argos have nearly done on multiple occasions.
The Argos can succeed (in a relative sense -- you only need a small sliver of the Toronto market to be 'successful' in the CFL), especially with MLSE's backing. But it's a long road back to the limelight and they'll likely never regain the popularity they reached in the 1950's. Canadian Football in the Toronto market is faces a much more difficult battle than it faces in places like Edmonton. Both the team and the league are just too small to truly compete with the big boys (even '7th tier' TFC, which for the record is probably the best team in North America, has a franchise value in the neighbourhood of $300 million, multitudes more than any CFL club).