DUBNetwork recently spoke with Victoria Royals President and General Manager Cameron Hope to discuss the team’s bid for hosting the 2020 Memorial Cup tournament. With the initial deadline of June 1 for teams to express interest in hosting the event, Victoria is joined by the Kelowna Rockets, the Kamloops Blazers and the Lethbridge Hurricanes as potential suitors to the Canadian Hockey League’s championship event.

Kelowna captured the 2004 Memorial Cup on home ice in front of a sold-out crowd and will surely be trumpeting that past success with their current bid. Kamloops will also be boasting past glory with their bid, as the year 2020 will mark the 25th anniversary since the Blazers successfully hosted and won the Memorial Cup in 1995. Lethbridge was a late entry to the bidding, with little word prior to the deadline that they would be sending a letter of intent. The Memorial Cup has not been held in Lethbridge and the Hurricanes will likely be highlighting their franchises recent resurgence as part of their bid.

While Victoria has not hosted the Memorial Cup, they do have a marquee junior hockey event upcoming this year with the 2018 World Junior Hockey Championships, which they will share with Vancouver. When asked if having a major event so close time-wise would benefit the bid or pose challenges, Hope said “They’re completely different events. The involvement of the team for the World Juniors is really just to get out of the way, and essentially let the IIHF (International Ice Hockey Federation) take over the building. The one thing that it does is that it underlines for everybody involved, including the people that make the decisions on the 2020 Memorial Cup, as to whether or not this is the kind of market that has the kind of support for a big event like this. We know people support the Royals here, but is there an undercurrent of support for hockey at the highest level, where people are going to come to games, even if they’re not just Royals games? I think the answer to that is yes, we’ve shown it over and over again with every event that comes to Victoria. Now the city has shown it again with the World Junior packages for Victoria essentially being sold out. It underlines and confirms how much support hockey has here.”

In preparation for the WJHC tournament, Victoria’s home the Save-On-Foods Memorial Arena will have to undergo some changes in order to accommodate the multiple competing teams as well as the extra officials needed. When asked if those advance preparations may play a factor, Hope commented “I think for all the teams that are now bidding, they would have to do some work around being able to accommodate everything, not just the clubs that are competing and having dressing rooms for them, officials and so on. But also special arrangements have to be made for TV media including French and English, and all the other media that attends including NHL scouts, VIP’s, etc.”

The arena has played the host for other big events in the past, including 2006 Skate Canada, 2005 and 2013 world men’s curling championships, 2009 Scotties women’s national championship. “We have hosted events before such as big curling events, concert events, most buildings are able to do that and I know that this building is no exception,” Hope said. “They would have to make some changes, but in most cases, they’re the kind of changes that are not hard to make.”

The city of Victoria boasts a thriving tourist infrastructure and when asked if that is a highlight of the bid, Hope said “I think it should be among the most important things being considered. I think Victoria is by far the most suitable city in that was built for tourism and it is annually voted among the best places in the world to come.” Victoria was recognized internationally in 2017 by Condé Nast’s Reader’s Choice Award, which ranked Victoria as the second best small city in the world, outside the USA. Hope added “It has shown in the past that it can host enormous events such as the Commonwealth Games, so the infrastructure is definitely in place. We have exceptional accommodation, plenty of bars, restaurants and an arena that’s right downtown within walking distance of a lot of those amenities. And it’s beautiful in May, when the Memorial Cup is held. So it checks all those boxes. I think that Victoria really holds an advantage when it comes to the infrastructure that’s already in place to deal with these kind of events.”

This past year saw Regina host the Memorial Cup in an extra special tournament honouring the 100th year of the championship. The host city went all out for the event, even having the iconic band The Eagles perform to kick off the tournament. Fan feedback, however, was that some of the ticket pricing was too high in Regina. When asked how strategic ticket pricing may play into a bid, Hope said “I think we take a lot of lessons from what’s happened over the past few years in terms of pricing for all kinds of events, both at the International and at the CHL level. The business model is difficult because it’s such an expensive event to put on, but having said that we shouldn’t be here to make money off the backs of the hockey fans that are committed to supporting the team, it’s a real balancing act. Of the teams that are bidding on the 2020 Memorial Cup, none of them have big NHL style arenas, they are all 6000 to 7000 seat rinks. Prices will have to be higher than they are for a regular junior hockey ticket, but I think it behooves all of us to be careful.”

While the goal of every CHL team is to make the tournament through a successful season and playoffs, the host city is given an automatic berth into that year’s tournament. When asked if a bid would play into the planning for the roster and the future of the Royals, as the architect of the team Hope said “I think it’s necessary to keep your eye on it, but it’s something that we do all the time. Our plan as Victoria Royals hockey operations has always been to make the team a sustainable success, strive for excellence every year, trying to avoid the sine wave of terrific years followed by years of drought and do that at all costs. We think that a team can retool without having to be terrible and there is a real temptation if you’re awarded the Memorial Cup to maybe change that philosophy a little bit to focus a lot on one particular year.”

While Lethbridge was very stealthy with their intentions to bid, Kelowna and Kamloops both held press conferences to announce their intentions to bid on the 2020 event. When asked if a more subdued process of bidding was part of Victoria’s game plan, Hope commented “We wanted to make sure that everybody was aware we were in but also careful in selecting people for our bid committee, deciding on the structure of our host organizing committee and making sure that we’re ready to roll out information including things like how we see ticket prices going. Specifically what we see Victoria being able to do over those 10 days. We wanted to have that stuff in our pockets before we have a big splash. But when we are ready we will make some noise and be loud.”

Victoria will indeed hope to make some noise as this year progresses, with selection of the 2020 host team to be announced following a WHL board of governors’ meeting in Calgary on October 3rd.