I touched on this subject back in March, after the Press Conference, before the championship game of the Final Five. Looks like the WCHA marketing plan is coming to fruition. Here's a screen shot of the
WCHA's webpage.
Rachel Blount asked, “Can
you explain exactly how the Big Ten and
the WCHA will be working together and what
kinds of things you will be working together on and how you will be partnered?”
Jennifer Heppel responded
back with this, “What we have done so far is again the WCHA and the Xcel Energy
Center since the time the facility has opened has really built a tradition with
the fan base here. We recognize the support the fans in this area have given to college hockey.
We have for the last month made available the opportunity to purchase tickets
in advance for those fans in this area that supported the WCHA tournament.
Tickets for the general public go on sale on Monday. We wanted to extend that
opportunity. We worked out some initial joint marketing efforts and we will
continue to do that. Again, this community has a lot of fans of specific
schools, but you also have just incredible support for hockey and college
hockey. The WCHA and the Big Ten want it to be a seamless transition from
year-to-year for those that support college hockey and the “X” has been on that
same page, and they don’t want there to be any drop-off in the tradition that
has been created.”
So after Jennifer Heppel
gave us her canned answer, WCHA Commissioner Bruce McLeod jumped in and said
this.
“Rachel… we set a record
this year in our packages [tickets]," McLeod said . "We sold
pre-tournament wise, I would have to check, almost 13,000 [tickets]. I think.
That was a record for us. All of those ticket bases; those email addresses have
been shared with the Big Ten people, and hopefully as Jen said the end result
is, everyone benefits. We’re working on the same, you know, kind of the
same [fan] base, and sharing all of those names, and I think the basic idea of
what Jen says if we can provide, I don’t know what you’re going to call it
eventually, the collegiate hockey weekend, or something like that. One year
it’s the Big Ten Hockey weekend, the next year it’s the WCHA. The more we can get
that across, the better off we’re going to be.”
You got that? Those people
that bought tickets to the Red Baron Final Five will get a first crack at next
year’s Big Ten Hockey tourney. So the Big Ten is hoping that you will
decide to not go to the WCHA conference tourney in Grand Rapids and instead go
the Xcel next season.
That’s absolutely
brilliant.
