The Canadian men's university basketball championship will be held next year at Ryerson University – the first time ever in Toronto – and the organizers are hoping a little Hollywood-style marketing will help the event fly in a city where professional sports rule the roost.

The push will begin in earnest Thursday afternoon when former NBA star Bill Walton will attend the media launch for the tournament at Ryerson's Mattamy Athletic Centre, the former Maple Leaf Gardens.

The organizers hope Walton's high-profile presence will increase exposure for the Final 8 championship and help sell tickets to a general public not known for its appetite for amateur sports.

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"I look at this as the basketball version of the Toronto film festival. I look at this as launching a new movie," said Canadian film director and marketing executive Barry Avrich, a Ryerson alumnus who has been retained by his old school to help promote both Ryerson athletics and the tournament, to be held March 12-15.

Avrich is a partner at BT/A, a Toronto advertising agency whose clients have included American Express, Roy Thomson Hall, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and the Canadian Opera Company. He has also authored three books on event marketing and has directed more than 20 documentaries and TV specials, including 2013's Quality Balls: The David Steinberg Story.

His work has allowed him to rub shoulders with many of the biggest stars in the entertainment industry, and his office on College Street in Toronto's Little Italy district is a testament to his success. Framed pictures of Avrich mugging with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger, Tony Bennett, Lauren Bacall and Dame Maggie Smith all battle for space on one of the walls.

It was Avrich's idea to arrange for Walton to help spice up what is normally a drab, details-laden event – for a tournament that is officially known as the 2015 ArcelorMittal Dofasco CIS Men's Basketball Final 8. Walton is a former UCLA player who went on to enjoy a Hall of Fame career in the NBA, winning two championships and an MVP award over 10 seasons before entering the broadcast booth.

"This is a guy who is going to talk about the trajectory of a career coming from college to the NBA," Avrich said.

Walton was scheduled to arrive in Toronto on Wednesday and attend the regular-season home opener of the Ryerson Rams basketball team against the Western Mustangs that night.

Ryerson athletic director Ivan Joseph said the time is perfect to stage a national university basketball championship in Toronto, which is why he decided to bring Avrich on board to help with the planning. The Raptors are one of the NBA's hottest teams, and the club's association with rap superstar Drake adds a coolness factor that only raises the game's profile, particularly among younger consumers. Throw in Andrew Wiggins, the Toronto-raised star who went No. 1 in this year's NBA draft, and you could argue the game has never been bigger in Canada's biggest city.

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"We're really committed to making sure we've done it better than anybody else," Joseph said. "We want the look and feel of this to say 'Big Time Sport.' That's the only way it's going to go over in a city like Toronto."

Avrich has been working with Ryerson for several weeks to raise the profile of the athletics department and, in turn, help generate interest in a Canadian Interuniversity Sport basketball championship that started in 1963 but has never been staged in Toronto.

It has always been a tough sell.

Even when you include the dream matchup in last season's final in Ottawa between the University of Ottawa and crosstown rival Carleton University, which drew roughly 7,000 fans, attendance for the entire 10-game tournament was only about 25,000.

Joseph declined to say how much extra he was pouring into his athletics budget for the additional advertising and marketing, but insists it is not prohibitive.

"All we really did, we repurposed money that we were using already for different marketing efforts," he said. "Those other things through Barry; he's got a lot of corporate sponsorships that we were able to leverage. So it's not a significant increase in funding."

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Since Avrich has been on board, Ryerson has launched a Toronto radio campaign promoting the upcoming games of the school's hockey and basketball teams at the Mattamy Athletic Centre – the kind of marketing that's rare at the university level in Canada.

And for about three weeks now, a colourful Toronto Transit Commission streetcar wrapped inside and out with both text and pictures of Ryerson athletes in action has been making its way along routes in the downtown core.

"I don't know that any college sports team in Toronto has ever done that," Avrich said. "And we've photographed the players in a way that makes them all look like they're NBA superstars."

Advertisements for Ryerson's athletics have also been distributed to about 50,000 Toronto households in the form of the Do Not Disturb signs that you will find on the outside of hotel room doors.

As the CIS tournament draws closer, Avrich says a marketing technique known as "Sizzle Squads" will be hitting the busiest intersections of Toronto with Ryerson athletes, wearing their uniforms and handing out tickets and other promotional materials.

"The whole feeling is take this up a level and have our Canadian version of March madness," Avrich said.