team\u2019s home opener when it sold out the stadium for the first time in 24 years<\/a>.<\/p>\nBecoming the naming rights partner for what is now known as Ottawa Stadium would have benefits, Shore added, such as visibility for the brand from the Queensway and Vanier Parkway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The team has heard from multiple interested candidates, but is proceeding with caution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re quite happy to choose and make sure that it\u2019s the right partner, somebody that understands the message, who appreciates the community and, more importantly, the family demographic that we’re about,\u201d said Katz, vice-president and chief operating officer of the Titans. \u201cThis isn\u2019t the corporates of the world that are spending hundreds of dollars on a ticket to see a hockey game. That\u2019s not our clientele. We want to be accessible to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
To date, interested parties haven\u2019t aligned with the Titans\u2019s values, have lacked a proven track record or didn\u2019t have as direct a link to Ottawa as desired.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to find ourselves making this significant investment and then two years down the road we find that the (naming rights partner) company goes insolvent or is bought by another company,\u201d Shore said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA sponsor is putting a sign on a building or in our outfield, but when we get into doing naming rights, that becomes a marriage. This is where the Titans and \u2018blank\u2019 are married together \u2026 We\u2019re now completely intertwined and it\u2019s truthfully going to be like a marriage. There\u2019s going to be some negotiations. There\u2019s going to be some compromises, but we\u2019re going to do whatever we can to keep each other happy,\u201d Katz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Katz pointed to the example of Slush Puppie and the Slush Puppie Centre in Gatineau, which is home to the Gatineau Olympiques of the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor them, that was about giving back to their community, but they truly wanted the team and the arena to succeed,\u201d he said.\u00a0
\nFrom JetForm to RCGT
\nOttawans who were around in the early 1990s might remember JetForm Park, the first name for what is now Ottawa Stadium, at 300 Coventry Rd. First proposed in the late 1980s, the stadium was completed in April 1993, in time for the Ottawa Lynx\u2019s opening season. The project came with a price tag of $17 million and was built to the specifications of the Lynx\u2019s parent club, the Montreal Expos.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When JetForm rebranded as Accelio in the early 2000s, the stadium became known as Lynx Stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Lynx\u2019s run in Ottawa came to an end after the 2007 season, when the organization \u2014 which by then was the Triple-A affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies \u2014 relocated to Pennsylvania. With the Lynx gone, the City of Ottawa started discussing plans to redevelop the site.<\/p>\n
But shortly thereafter, a new team, the Ottawa Rapidz, was introduced as the city\u2019s professional baseball team. The Rapidz\u2019s time was short-lived as the team declared bankruptcy in 2009, despite attracting higher attendance numbers than the Lynx in its final days.<\/p>\n
Once again without a team, the stadium was known as the Ottawa Baseball Stadium from 2008 to 2015. In 2010, the Intercountry Baseball League awarded a franchise to Ottawa, with the team, the Ottawa Fat Cats, playing out of the stadium. The Fat Cats also had a short run in Ottawa, playing from 2010 to 2012.<\/p>\n
When the Can-Am League brought the Ottawa Champions to the nation\u2019s capital in 2015, the stadium found itself with a new naming rights partner: Montreal-based accounting firm Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton, which signed a three-year deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the 2019 season, the Champions ceased operations after the city terminated the team\u2019s lease with the ballpark, and the naming rights partnership with RCGT ended along with it.<\/p>\n
But in 2020, Sam Katz, Canadian businessman and former mayor of Winnipeg, along with the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group and Ottawa lawyer Shore, secured a 10-year lease with the city on the stadium and started a team that would join the Frontier League for the 2022 season. Since the Ottawa Titans Baseball Club was created in 2021, the team has been looking for a naming rights partner for the stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cBaseball certainly had a rocky history in Ottawa and some people had doubts in the early years, which was another reason why we waited. But, here we are, five years later, absolutely thriving. I think we\u2019re on a better footing,\u201d said Regan Katz.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re among the few (sport teams) who are increasing their attendance annually in Ottawa \u2026 We can only project that it\u2019s going to continue to grow. The timing is right. The corporate world is coming back to life and people are embracing it all. It seems like the right time to get more aggressive and try to find the suitable partner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not to mention, baseball has recently seen a boom in Ottawa and throughout the country, thanks in part to the Toronto Blue Jays making it to the World Series in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBaseball has become so much more of interest to kids and school programs. It\u2019s fantastic and we\u2019ve added to it. The Blue Jays helped us, of course. But we have made that happen because of the way in which we have brought baseball back in a really sophisticated way to this city. It harkens back to the early days of the Lynx,\u201d said Shore, partner at Gowling WLG, president of the Ottawa Titans Field of Dreams Foundation and one of the team\u2019s owners.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the Titans find a naming rights partner, Katz said he doesn\u2019t want that company to slap its name on the building and call it a day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can do anything. Knowing what their goals and targets are, it allows us to get creative and do things together to accomplish those goals and targets \u2026 We\u2019ve got a great facility here, so maybe they believe in holding the provincial tournaments or city finals of baseball here. Maybe they really want to get into the grassroots (clubs) of the community. With them, we can make these things happen,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As the search continues, Katz said the team is continuing to reach out to the business community in Ottawa.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The right partner could be a local company, a regional company or a national or international company, as long as it has a presence in Ottawa, Shore said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe number of times we\u2019ve done our research or have been speaking with (potential partners) and they\u2019re quite comfortable with referencing Toronto or surrounding areas in the GTA. But I\u2019m not confident that they could find Ottawa. They\u2019re not the right partner,\u201d Katz added.<\/p>\n
And with Ottawa seeing a defence sector boom, Shore said the team is engaging the defence community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are defence companies out there. They have a presence in Ottawa. Those kinds of companies work (as potential partners) if the outreach is a serious one,\u201d Shore said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not looking for a shortstop. We\u2019re looking for a very successful batter,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those things where there\u2019s no question the benefits would accrue very quickly to any partner that we see because we would make the commitment to fully embrace them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Katz encouraged smaller companies to take a shot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there are many smaller companies out there that think that this is out of their reach and they\u2019re wrong. It\u2019s not about affordability here. This is something that (a smaller company) might actually be able to consider and play with the big boys. I\u2019m hopeful that somebody will have the courage to reach out and \u2026 start that dialogue. Maybe we wouldn\u2019t know to reach out because we didn\u2019t think they\u2019re ready but they may be,\u201d Katz said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Owners of the Ottawa Titans Baseball Club continue to look for a naming partner for the east-end stadium,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-821416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}