Sports Event Congress 2018 - Halifax

The CFC received an invitation from the Canadian Sport Tourism Association a few weeks ago to attend the annual congress in Halifax. They had a number of complimentary invitations (all expenses paid by the organizers) and with limited time in which to respond, Vlad registered. Very shortly afterwards I was also able to get a spot, expecting there to be a good turnout of Atlantic interest.

http://canadiansporttourism.com/spor...-congress.html

Basically the event brings together municipalities (85), sporting federations (55), and vendors - a chance to network. Obviously in our case any attempt to explore sponsorship opportunities would be significant. We're expecting the highlight of the conference for us to be the 25 mini-meetings (8 meetings) that various communities have requested with us. It will give us a chance to talk about our National events, and even North American, Pan-American or World events, if there is an expressed interest. BC - 5, AB - 3, SK - 1, MB - 3, ON - 6, QC - 3, NB - 1, NS - 2, NL - 1.

Things kick off in about half an hour and the congress winds up Friday at lunchtime.

Fred

Good initiative! I hope that it will brigs us some good.

I only just got home a few hours ago. I spent the night Friday and Saturday on a mat placed on top of a bench in the Halifax airport after spending 4.5 hours on the tarmac trying to make it out of Halifax. Air Canada was great once they got rolling though there were a few hours of chaos. The conference was very professionally run and included over 400 delegates, speakers, municipalities, providers of accommodations and representatives of sports organizations. It will probably take months to work our way through all of the opportunities and contacts that we made. This should lead to some more tournaments being organized and perhaps more sponsorship and better circumstances for organizers and players hopefully. It packed years of meetings into a few days. I cannot imagine a more effective way to get together with so many potential partners so quickly. There are many people out there who are interested in what we have to offer. How great of an opportunity this was will be revealed in the aftermath.

Excellent news!!

On the last day Lloyd Lombard drove into Halifax despite the looming storm and drove us to the airport. We managed an interesting conversation on the way in and Lloyd interviewed us for his newsletter. I then disappeared into the endless security line which spat me out just in time to board my flight which was doomed to wait on the tarmac for many hours before disgorging its passengers back at the gate when we were informed that all the local hotels were full and our path forward was clouded. There were lots of irate passengers though it was a bit silly to blame the crew at the airport for this predicament we were in.

This my report to the CFC board of directors about this event.

Hello Gentlemen,

I would like to report on some of the results of this conference which brought together over 400 individuals from Canadian sports organizations, municipalities, hotel chains, airlines and individual hotels and resorts, universities and colleges, speakers and an interesting cross-section of Canadian society.

We met with 25 organizations and municipalities during the speed dating portion of the conference. We probably met with a similar number of organizations outside of the speed dating. There were also some social events which included networking with the attendees. Of course there was some overlap between the meetings and the socializing. We are already aware of a number of the communities that we met with because they had either recently hosted a major event or were about to in the case of Quebec City, Regina, Kingston and Sault Ste. Marie.

I have started the process of referring these contacts to local CFC organizers. Fred seems to be doing the same. I have referred some of the Alberta and Quebec and Ontario communities to organizers already. This resulted in a positive post from Larry Bevand since I sent him referrals from Laval and Kingston tourism bureaus. I also sent the Laval referral to the FQE and one of my contacts in both the FQE and CMA who has been quite active lately. I have contacted a BC organizer to assist me in sorting out who should be referred the various BC communities that we met with. We have been experiencing some problems in communities like Montreal and Toronto in finding venues for flagship tournaments. I believe that contacts from attendees from places like Laval and Mississauga promise to alleviate some of this difficulty.

Many of the communities were interested in hosting chess events and were quite open to the idea of offering sponsorships in order to attract these tournaments. If we manage to follow up on these initial contacts properly it is likely that we would be able to fill up our schedule of events like the Canadian Open, CYCC, NAYCC, and other tournaments for many years to come. A few of the contacts were from small communities looking to establish a chess club.


The conference cost us very little as most of the food, hospitality and transportation costs was covered by the organizers. If we could find similar events I think we would very quickly fill up our calendar. Competition for the Canadian Open and CYCC and other tournaments is about to heat up significantly.

I see no downside from taking part in this event aside from the difficulty in getting home which meant that I was on the tarmac for 4.5 hours and lost a night of sleep on Friday evening/Saturday morning.