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Bidding for Events...
Posted by Les Lazaruk on Monday, February 4, 2008 at 04:11:00 PM.
It was reported over the weekend that Saskatoon was one of six cities bidding to host the 2012 World Junior Hockey Championship.
That wasn't entirely correct.
There are six groups of cities that are looking to bid for 2012...with three of those groups also looking to bid for the 2010 W.J.C.
One of those groups is a Saskatchewan bid, not just a Saskatoon attempt to entice a second Worlds to our province as Saskatoon hosted the 1992 event. While Saskatoon and Credit Union Centre will be the home for one of the round-robin pools, which Canada will be a part of, the other round-robin pool would be played at the Brandt Centre in Regina. The Saskatchewan group is one of the three that has also bid for the 2010 Worlds as well as the 2012 W.J.C. Opposition for 2010 comes from Winnipeg and Halifax. They're also in for 2012, along with Toronto, Calgary-Edmonton and London-Windsor, Ontario.
Written bids need to be submitted to Hockey Canada by April 1st with decisions on both events to come during this summer.
As a result, there is a hub-bub of preliminary, behind-the-scenes meetings between members of Saskatoon Sports Tourism, the Saskatchewan bid committee and Credit Union Centre with regards to meeting standards for hosting a World Junior Championship...especially when it comes to arena facilities!
I have made it known to people on the bid committee that I wish to be involved in the planning for the building of and design of a new "media-only" gondola for Credit Union Centre. Right now, media facilities at Credit Union Centre barely meet minimum standards, as I understand them, as set down by the Western Hockey League. That's the W.H.L., not Hockey Canada for a World Juniors...for which the C.U.C. is woefully inadequete right now. Make no mistake, The Sports Network (TSN) has been a huge part of the growth of the annual Christmas holiday tournament...to the point where they have a big say on which Canadian city hosts a World Juniors.
They wouldn't like what they see right now...unless the open area of the present Gondola was made their private area...leaving the rest of the media (print and broadcast, from anywhere else) being left out in the cold...literally.
The situation has deteriorated over the years...when I first started broadcasting Blades' games on CJWW in 1994, not only was I located inside one of the Gondola booths...but so was the visiting radio broadcaster. However, as time went on and the need for corporate suites was realized by the building, the decision was made to make the Gondola booths into corporate suites and, first the visiting radio, then our home radio, was told to vacate and work from out of the open area...complete with curtain dividers! In no other W.H.L. rink is the radio broadcasters left in the open with a curtain divider. Yes, in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver the media is in an area where they are amongst the crowd, but that is out of necessity. Chilliwack might be the only place where the situation is less tolerable than it is in Saskatoon, but that building and situation is new!
There hasn't been a nationally-televised C.H.L. Game-of-the-Week on Rogers Sportsnet, outside of the Top Prospects Game, in a long time...mostly because the facilities for them aren't up to their standards. I've been to many rinks and have seen what works and what doesn't work for the media and I think I can be a big help to creating a media-only facility for Credit Union Centre that would work for either the 2010 or 2012 World Junior Hockey Championship, a future Memorial Cup, an important W.H.L. playoff game with television and radio involved...even other sports events!
It won't be the biggest factor in whether Saskatoon gets a major sports event again, but a better-than-average media facility can only help!
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