Fans of the Ottawa Senators can easily follow what happens with the team on the ice. What’s less easy to see is what happens in the back office, where business strategies are crafted, implemented and tracked. For the management team at the Senators, there’s a lot to think about, from serving a growing city to […]
Fans of the Ottawa Senators can easily follow what happens with the team on the ice. What’s less easy to see is what happens in the back office, where business strategies are crafted, implemented and tracked.
For the management team at the Senators, there’s a lot to think about, from serving a growing city to working with various partners to showcase the sport and increase the fan base. And, of course, where the team can best be located.
OBJ sat down with Senators president and CEO Cyril Leeder to discuss the team’s plans for growth, how a new arena at LeBreton Flats is shaping up, and a possible partnership with the Ottawa Charge.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
How is the business of the Ottawa Senators so far this season, and how do you plan to grow the game in the National Capital Region?
CL: It's been good. We've had decent crowds all year. All of our business metrics that we track from a revenue perspective are up. We just went through a strategy session with our leadership team. We spent a lot of time on ‘What do we want to do? Where do we want to do it? How are we going to do it? How are we going to measure it?’ OBJ readers are probably more interested in this than the traditional sports fan. Sports is big business now, so we’ve got to run the business front-facing to the fans but, behind the scenes, we're working really hard to run it professionally as a business.
We’re focusing on how you turn (casual fans) into lifelong Senators fans. It starts with your interest in hockey, even if it's just minor hockey and helping more kids play the game and understand the game. On Wednesday, we’re doing an event introducing new Canadians to the rules of hockey. Somebody is going to be a season ticketholder if they have probably either played the game or understand the game or both. So you need to have programs in place that will help long-term fan development. I think the local support here in Ottawa has always been fantastic. We punch well above our weight with local support when we compare ourselves to other NHL teams. We need to do that because we're not the biggest market and we're competing in a league with big markets like Montreal, Toronto, New York and Los Angeles.
One of the ways that we can compensate for that is over-indexing on the local support industries, so in the real estate and the construction industries. We're extremely well-represented in our ticket base and in our sponsors from real estate folks and the construction industry. Are we under-represented? Maybe on the tech side. As tech goes up and comes down, we do better in that sector. Recently, tech is starting to perform a lot better. We've got some really big local tech sponsors now such as Kinaxis, Calian, Fullscript, Wesley Clover and Nokia. Those are all big partners of ours. Where we're missing, I think, is the entry level guys that are maybe 25 to 50 employees and they don't have a partnership package. That's one of the areas where we'd like to be better at.
Nationally and locally, there is a big push on defence and security. Is that a sector that the Sens will be looking to capitalize on?
CL: Absolutely, yes. We've got people working on that sector, developing relationships. Again, that's one of the ones where you'd like to have a big result early, but we know it's unlikely. You’ve got to put the time in. We've actually had people connected to the defence industry reach out to us to say, ‘Hey, if you want some help meeting the right people in this industry, we can do that for you, because we're just big Senators fans.’ They're not looking for consulting fees or anything. They just want to be helpful. And we've taken them up on that. So we've got a couple of people internally focused on defence and they're getting some help from people that know the industry really well.
The city will be growing in terms of population over the next few years. How do you see this impacting the Sens?
CL: We do a yearly plan, a three-year plan, but then we also have a longer-term vision for the franchise. We've been here in Kanata for 30 years. It's been a good home for us. We'll be home here for at least another five or six years, but we know that the long-term future should be on the LRT line downtown. We've obviously made a commitment to buy some land down there, to work with the (National Capital Commission) on developing LeBreton Flats, and we think that will put us more central to our fans. As I said, Kanata has been great for us, but this arena caters more to the west-end fans (and the fans in) the Ottawa Valley. But if (the arena is) downtown, you're more central to a larger portion of your fan base. You're closer to Gatineau, where we know there's a rabid hockey fan base, and it puts you on the LRT line so it's still easy (to get to a game). If you're in the west end, you get on the train, you'll be able to get straight to the site fairly quickly, and the city has been growing.
I was here when we were awarded the team in 1990. Bruce Firestone, a brilliant guy, said, ‘Look, the franchise is going to be here forever. Maybe we're not big enough today to do everything we want to do, but over time, Ottawa will get to a million people. When Ottawa hits a million, (as with) any city that hits a million, interesting things will happen with its growth after that. It's almost organic.’ Once you hit that magic million number, things start to happen organically. Businesses grow and you need more services. I'm not an economist or an urban planner, but Bruce was both. He really had that vision to understand that once we got to a million, it was going to accelerate, and getting the second million won't be as hard as getting to the first. So again, we’ve got to make decisions that help run the team as a sustainable entity in the short term. But we also have to look for the long term, for that planning side of the business.
Are there any updates on the LeBreton Flats project?
CL: We're working away at that. It's a complicated process. We're still in a due diligence phase. We're in a planning phase where you’ve got to figure out what we can accommodate on the land. We are looking at remediation planning, like how the site is to be cleaned up before work and development can proceed. So we're looking at financing alternatives and we've got an Indigenous land claim that we've been dealing with.
There's lots of balls in the air, but there's really no update on any of those, other than we continue to work at them. We're confident that we're making progress, and we're hopeful. I think it'll probably take until the first quarter of next year before we can have some timelines and some definition on the project. There's just too many of these big issues we need to solve and until we figure those out we're not going to be in a position to say when we’re moving there.”
It was announced last week that the Sens will be heading to Germany in December to take on the Chicago Blackhawks in a pair of games as part of an initiative spearheaded by the NHL and the National Hockey League Players’ Association. What does this mean for the Sens?
CL: It's great. However, there's no direct benefit for the club. Right now, we're not able to enter into marketing arrangements or partnerships outside of our territory, which is (in Ottawa). Some of the other leagues, such as the NBA or the NFL, have arrangements that allow their teams to do that. We're going to get there as a league, but we're just not there yet. So from our perspective, this announcement is good for a bunch of reasons. It's a start to lay the groundwork for the days when we are able to do these partnerships and we have one of the most marketable German stars in the game, Tim Stützle. We'll be able to leverage his popularity in the future.
Immediately, hockey is a global game. Not too many team sports can really say they're played in as many countries as hockey, other than soccer, but I think after soccer, we're probably No. 2. It allows us to build our global fan base, whether it’s (by increasing) followers on social media, encouraging folks to buy merchandise or getting more fans watching our games on TV. Then the obvious, really, is that it's exciting for our fans to follow our team internationally. With these Global Series games, we usually have a big contingent of fans that go with us. So we're talking to tour operators right now about putting together packages for five, seven and 14 days to go over to Germany and see our team play and be part of this tour. I think the fan benefit is they get connected to the team. Maybe it's a chance for somebody to check something off their bucket list. I'm one of those people. My heritage is German. I've never been there, so I'm looking forward to it.
When the team is looking to partner with a brand, what is the value proposition that the Sens bring over a larger-market team?
CL: I think we offer a couple things. We have a great broadcast territory. So if you're one of our broadcast partners in our regional territory, we really go from Northern Ontario to Peterborough and all the way to Newfoundland. We've got a really compelling, big chunk of the country to offer to new partners. Second thing is, we try harder. If you talk to the big companies that deal with multiple teams, they'll tell you that when they call Ottawa, we get back to them right away when they need something. We make the changes. Our value proposition to them is, ‘I'm sure you're important to all the teams. But you're really important to us, so we're going to go out of our way to make sure you're a happy customer that you want to renew with us.’ Maybe you’ll want to spend a little more money with us next year, because you got such good value out of a partnership with us last time. Our prices are a little lower because we're not Toronto reaching seven million people. We're Ottawa reaching five million people. So you're going to get a little bit of a break, but you're still going to get to all the hockey fans that you want to get to in that region.
There is chatter that the Sens are in talks with the Ottawa Charge to possibly keep the women’s pro team in Ottawa as the new event centre at Lansdowne evolves. What is the Sens’ role in helping women’s pro hockey in Ottawa?
CL: Part of our focus has to be to grow the game. While we're trying to transact business in the current year, we're still planning for the future. We’ve got a vested interest in growing the game and the Ottawa Charge are an important part of that ecosystem. I think the women's game, and the girls’ game in this area, has always been strong. The Charge just shines a bigger spotlight on the women's game. That's why, when they reached out to say, ‘Would you talk to us?’, we agreed. We confirmed what the PWHL said last week, that yes, we have been in talks with them about trying to find a permanent lease arrangement for them here at Canadian Tire Centre. We're doing a game with them on April 3 and it's selling really well. We've sold over 10,000 tickets already, so we're hoping that we can eclipse the professional women's hockey record for single-game attendance in Ottawa to demonstrate the value of the Charge to the community and what it would be like if they played more than one game a year here at the CTC.
If the Charge were to call the CTC home, would it pose any challenges for the Sens as far as scheduling?
CL: Whether it’s fortunate or unfortunate, we’re not fully booked every night at the CTC. There are lots of dates available. We have a lacrosse team that plays here 10 nights a year. We could easily put two more teams in this building and not use all the good Friday, Saturday and Sundays. I’m not too worried about stretching it too thin. There’s lots of available dates to accommodate the Charge or anybody else that wants to come here, whether it’s a concert or a team sport. We’re open for business. 
