Five sponsors. Seven figures.
The Edmonton 2010 Grey Cup committee held a press conference Wednesday to announce sponsorship support in five major areas which they believe will help make the 98th Grey Cup a best-ever presentation.
“We are so far ahead of where we were in 2002 it’s remarkable,” said co-chairman Doug Goss.
“These five sponsors combine for over $1 million. That doesn’t include the provincial government or any of the other funding we have in place. For the 2002 Grey Cup our total combined, everything included, sponsorship was less than $1 million.”
With Grey Cup season ticket holder double-up option ticket sales hitting 33,000 Wednesday, more than two full weeks before being open to the general public here and around the nation (2 p.m. local time June 1), planning is going ahead to give Canada a don’t-cut-corners, do-everything-first-class festival on Sunday, Nov. 28.
“Our goal is to make this Grey Cup the best one yet and with this calibre of sponsorship behind us, we are confident we will be able to set the bar higher for future hostings,” said Duane Vienneau, executive director of the 2010 Grey Cup Festival in making the announcement.
Tailgate party
A new Grey Cup component this year will be the Boston Pizza Tailgate Party on game day, making use of a new fieldhouse, which is part of $106 million in improvements to the Commonwealth Stadium complex. It will be a massive on-site party for fans before, during and after the game. Sponsorship includes the BP Sports Bar on 102 Avenue as part of the downtown festival.
The EPCOR Activity Centre will be the hub for family programing, including entertainment in an 11-metre-high heated structure totalling 25,000 square feet, which will completely cover Sir Winston Churchill Square.
While the official festival kickoff isn’t until Wednesday, the EPCOR Activity Centre will be open to Edmontonians starting on Monday of Grey Cup Week.
The Scotiabank CFL Experience, using the south end of the same structure, will feature 10,000 square feet and house the CFL Hall of Fame exhibit — with dozens of interactive football events similar to the NFL Experience at the Super Bowl — and will be the location for TSN live-coverage shows leading up to game day.
In addition, the Scotiabank Gala Grey Cup Dinner will be held at the Edmonton Expo Centre at Northlands, which will seat 2,010 fans and attempt to take that event to a new level as well.
The Save-On-Foods Grey Cup Parade, starting at noon, intended to be an hour-and-a-half production with much more football-themed content than in the past, will follow the same route as the Capital Ex Parade with an expected crowd of more than 100,000.
Ground zero of the Grey Cup party will be the Molson Canadian Cabaret at the Shaw Convention Centre with bands to be named later. It is expected to accommodate 4,000 fans.
Molson, which sponsors the Eskimos ‘Green & Go’ program during the regular season with fans riding LRT and transit system buses to the game for free, is expanding the sponsorship of that program to include Grey Cup Sunday as well.
Additional lower levels of sponsorship, expected to total more than a half-million dollars, is expected to be announced in the coming months.
One not revealed as part of the press conference, but which is believed to be in the six-figure range and illustrates the extent of some of the other planning, is CN Field, a conversion of the City Hall pool/skating rink into a miniature football field with turf and goal posts where minor football games and a special CEO game and celebrity games will be played during the week.
Point of pride
“Edmonton has prided itself in the past in hosting Canadian football fans and having them leave town saying, ‘Wasn’t that great?’ and ‘That’s the new standard!’, ” said Goss, who says the Eskimos hope to be able to turn a profit of more than $5 million to restore the stabilization fund.
That fund put $7.5 million toward the fieldhouse, two floors of new offices and a brand new state-of-the-art dressing room, while spending another $1.26 million for the Eskimos’ half of the new FieldTurf costs.
“I hope we’re in it,” said Goss, who is also in his final year as chairman of the Edmonton Eskimos board of directors and wouldn’t mind a Grey Cup ring as a souvenir of the occasion.
— Terry Jones
