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Northern Kickoff, the most northern game in CFL history, helps Eskimos' brand
Saturday's second CFL preseason game also takes place in an unusual location, but unlike the Montreal Alouettes - Ottawa Redblacks clash in Quebec City, the Saskatchewan Roughriders - Edmonton Eskimos clash in Fort McMurray, AB doesn't seem like a way to evaluate the region's potential for CFL expansion. Instead, it's part of a long-planned Northern Kickoff project that sees the Eskimos trying to turn crisis into opportunity, using their forced relocation from Commonwealth Stadium thanks to the ongoing Women's World Cup as an opportunity to boost their brand throughout Alberta, and a way to inaugurate Fort McMurray's just-opened $133.2 million Shell Place sports complex. It will be the most northern game in CFL history, and it should provide a very different kind of CFL experience. It's also one that's going to be repeated in a few weeks when the Toronto Argonauts "host" Edmonton at the same stadium in their regular-season opener (as a result of their scheduling conflicts at home with the Blue Jays and the PanAm Games). How did these games come about, and what do they mean?
The Eskimos jumped on the initial Northern Kickoff plan early in 2013 when they realized the Women's World Cup was going to conflict with their preseason. It turned into a chance to expand their presence in northern Alberta, though, and a very popular one; the initial 5,000 seats sold out in five hours in June 2013, prompting the Eskimos to team up with Alumna Systems to expand the stadium by a further 10,000 temporary seats. That indicates how this has gone from a problem to a benefit for them. It also proved to be a benefit for the Argos, who needed a place to play once conflicts at the Rogers Centre arose. Eskimos' CEO Len Rhodes told Gerry Moddejonge of The Edmonton Sun earlier this year that while his team's displacement from Edmonton's city-owned Commonwealth Stadium during the World Cup has created some challenges (including the movement of their training camp 35 kilometres away to Spruce Grove, AB), the chance to play these games in Fort McMurray carries great benefits for them:
We take pride in the fact that we are northern Alberta’s CFL football team, so this has turned out to be a great opportunity,” said Rhodes. “The people in Fort McMurray are extremely happy and I think that allows us to develop football across northern Alberta.
“We did it because we were in a situation beyond our control, but I think when you look at the solution, I think it turns into a very big opportunity.”
Fort McMurray itself hasn't officially been a city since the 1990s, when it became an urban service area within the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, and it only has about 61,000 people. However, it's an area where football has been growing, as Chris O'Leary of The Edmonton Journal explored in an excellent piece this week looking at the rise of high school football there over the last decade. The field at SMS Equipment Stadium will be used for CFL football this week (and again on June 27), but regional mayor Melissa Blake told O'Leary its larger purpose is for a variety of community events:
“That’s the thing, it’s not for the big ticket events,” Blake said. “We’re glad to have them, but it really is a field that can be used for multiple purposes here in our own community. We have a men’s football team that will take full advantage of this field.
“The opportunities are endless and we want to make sure that the population here has everything at its disposal.”...“The ability to open a spectacular sporting field is one thing, but to be able to host a CFL game right here, pre-season with the Eskimos and Roughriders, we couldn’t ask for a better grand opening weekend,”
In addition to the football/soccer field (which will have its seating capacity temporarily boosted from 5,000 to 15,000 for the CFL games), the overall Shell Place complex includes a baseball stadium, community-use softball and turf fields, and a volleyball and badminton court. While it may seem somewhat odd at first glance to bring in a CFL game to launch a community sports complex, it's something that's been very popular locally; 2,300 people turned out for the ribbon-cutting this week. It's something that provides the CFL with a unique location and the Eskimos with both a place to play and a way to expand their brand, but it has some big benefits for the locals too. Fort McMurray-Athabasca MP David Yurdiga told Andrew Bates of Fort McMurray Today that this is a perfect way to unite the community and get a national focus on the area:
This really pulls the community together," said Fort McMurray-Athabasca MP David Yurdiga. "A lot of times, the north is always forgotten ... but do you know what? Fort McMurray is a place to go, a destination."
For the Eskimos, and later the Argonauts, it's proven to be a very useful destination indeed.
