5A4 Sport Tourism Canada Online conference

I attended the the 2021 Sport Tourism Canada CEC online version April 7th to 9th with the highlight being the speed dating meetings with 15 communities on Friday April 9th.

I was scheduled to meet with

Tourism London
Peterborough and Kawarthas Tourism
Saskatoon Sport Tourism
Bay of Quinte Regional Marketing Board
Brandon First
Quebec City Business Destination
Medicine Hat
Tourism Kingston
City of Penticton
City of Markham
Ottawa Tourism
Tourism Kelowna
Sport Burnaby
Tourism Hamilton
City of Summerside

Unfortunately the representative for Saskatoon was experiencing technical difficulties and we were unable to connect on the platform but agreed to meet later when our schedules permitted.

That left me with 14 very productive meetings.

It should be noted that sixty communities expressed interest in meeting with us and we were limited to one virtual table unlike the two that we had in the real world events in 2018 and 2019.

Every one of the communities are interested in working with us to bring chess tournaments to their communities and they have the connections and funds to help that happen. For the most part I encouraged communities to work on setting up chess festivals which they can run year after year without bidding and then supplement these festivals with some of our flagship events. Most of the communities were receptive to this idea.

It should be noted that the last few Canadian Opens and CYCC's were organized in communities that we met with at these conferences and the next three will also be, but more on that in another thread.

Being recognized by the Canadian Olympic Committee resulted in the invitation to Sport Tourism Canada conferences which has led to many thousands of dollars of sponsorships for chess tournaments. They have given us a prospect list of interested communities and we have been mining that list since 2018 when we first attended in Halifax.

I have not yet had time to follow up on the meetings (though I have been sending and receiving emails with some of the people who I met at this or previous versions of this event continuously but expect to start to do so systematically in the next two weeks during and after this meeting of the voting members.

This meeting and the contacts we made will be an important tool in helping the CFC emerge from Covid stronger than we would have without this clearinghouse for contacting communities interested in our tournaments. I will have more to say on this later in the meeting.

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Originally Posted by Vladimir Drkulec

I will have more to say on this later in the meeting.

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Probably you'll address that - there shall be a clear understanding how the information gathered at these meeting is passed towards "local organizers" and they could use it for organizing tournaments.

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Originally Posted by Egidijus Zeromskis

Probably you'll address that - there shall be a clear understanding how the information gathered at these meeting is passed towards "local organizers" and they could use it for organizing tournaments.

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We try to find one or more local organizers to match with each of the tourism bureaus. Often the hard part is getting the local organizer who is willing to swing for the fences on a big event or even a modest event. A lot of people are in their comfort zone.

The conference speed dating only just concluded on this past Friday and I am already getting callbacks which I am dealing with. For all Quebec tourism bureau contacts I refer them to the FQE. The Laval bid from the FQE is at least in part due to a contact made in 2018 at Halifax. We talked to the person again in 2019 and she had some very good ideas of how any number of events could be organized in Laval using various facilities. I talked to the FQE at least twice about this person in the Laval Tourism Bureau and it looks like a bid will come together. I have discussed you as a possible organizer with the Markham tourism people but at the moment they are looking at something bigger possibly for 2022. We have to see what is happening with Hamilton before we can work on a bigger project related to 2022. Hopefully everything will be clearer in about two weeks.

I think the CFC needs to be more involved up front in negotiations with the tourism bureaus even before finding local organizers. I was a bit disappointed in the support that was given to the 2020 Mississauga CYCC and Canadian Open organizer Ken Green as it was much less than what I discussed with the tourism people as being required and which they said was possible.

I have now hooked Egis up with the Markham tourism people. If anyone else is interested in organizing tournaments in any of the communities mentioned, please let me know and I will try my best to facilitate introductions and possible meetings.

Thank you for the second Kingston connection, we're already emailing each other.

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Originally Posted by Aris Marghetis

Thank you for the second Kingston connection, we're already emailing each other.

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I first met that person in Halifax in 2018 and met with him in Windsor with an eye to running a smaller event but then they sold that hotel. I'm happy to see that the CFC can connect with him again.

In discussions with many of the communities we discussed the idea of setting up chess festivals which could be used to create a base of interest in chess locally. This would also create a training ground for the arbiters and organizers that will be needed when we move towards hosting the larger events that are part of the CFC's set of flagship events. We should be looking to ways to increase the number and size of new events to increase our memberships and also encourage organizers to be creative in their creation and marketing of chess events.

One of the interesting presentations of the Sport Tourism Canada CEC was on gaming and esports which consisted of former Olympian Charmaine Crooks interviewing Chris Overholt of Overactive Media Group. eSports is well on its way to larger audiences than traditional sports like hockey, baseball and is starting to challenge football. I think we have seen some of this in chess as well as many of the Canadian chess players are making more playing chess on platforms like twitch than they do in over the board chess. Expressing sports interactively is the new frontier for sports and will also be a factor in popularizing chess as well, I suspect.