The BC Lions are a professional Canadian football team competing in the West Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL). Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, the Lions play their home games at BC Place in Downtown Vancouver, having previously played at Empire Stadium in East Vancouver from 1954 to 1982. Due to the installation of a retractable roof at BC Place, the Lions played at a temporary stadium located at Empire Field for the 2010 season and for the first five regular season games of the 2011 season.

The Lions played their first season in 1954, making them the youngest franchise in the CFL, and have played every season since. As such, they are the oldest professional sports franchise in the city of Vancouver and in the province of British Columbia. They have appeared in the league's Grey Cup championship game ten times, winning six of those games, with their most recent championship occurring in 2011.

The Lions are also the only Western Canada team to have won the Grey Cup at home, having done so in 1994 & 2011, while also becoming the only team to beat an American based franchise in a championship game, a feat accomplished in the former game. The Lions currently have the second longest active playoff streak, and fourth longest of all time, having made the playoffs for 15 straight seasons.

The lion (Panthera leo) is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg (550 lb) in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger. Wild lions currently exist in Sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia with an endangered remnant population in Gir Forest National Park in India, having disappeared from North Africa and Southwest Asia in historic times. Until the late Pleistocene, about 10,000 years ago, the lion was the most widespread large land mammal after humans. They were found in most of Africa, across Eurasia from western Europe to India, and in the Americas from the Yukon to Peru. The lion is a vulnerable species, having seen a possibly irreversible population decline^{[clarification needed]} of thirty to fifty percent over the past two decades in its African range. Lion populations are untenable outside designated reserves and national parks. Although the cause of the decline is not fully understood, habitat loss and conflicts with humans are currently the greatest causes of concern. Within Africa, the West African lion population is particularly endangered.