It didn't take long for the city of Brampton to come up with some alternative content to put in the Powerade Centre. The Brampton A's of the National Basketball League of Canada will be 1 option.
The Brampton Beast of the Central Hockey League is the other option.
Now, I'm not going to kid myself. These are 2 leagues that call themselves professional but are anything but professional. I'll go check out the A's mostly because I want to see what basketball will look like in the "Powerade" as I call it. That's not what I wanted to post about today though.
The Brampton Beast are the team I want to speak about. Let me give you a little background on the Central Hockey League.
The CeHL (as opposed to CHL because the Canadian Hockey League gets the CHL short form) is technically a mid-level minor professional hockey league. In terms of the North American hockey pyramid, it is tier 4. Currently the league does have NHL and AHL affiliates but rarely will you see NHL prospects play in the league.
The Beast themselves came to be on March 8, 2013. Clearly the OHL is considered a much better brand of hockey so the question lingers, why are the Beast and the CeHL going to work when the Battalion and the OHL didn't?
I don't know that they are, if I can be completely honest. This is the only Canadian team in the league, in fact the next closest team is located in Moline, Illinois (3 hours west of Chicago). So travel cost are going to be expensive. Obviously Brampton is not a "hockey town". The attendance number for the Battalion proved that to be the case and if the OHL is a better brand of hockey then what would make the people come out to see the Beast?
Well, there are a few reasons. Reason number one is that the city is working very closely with this team. As far as I have been able to find out, the city thought that the Battalion weren't going anywhere and could basically negotiate a nice chunk of change as rent for the Powerade Centre. Of course that caused a problem with Scott Abott (owner of the Battalion...and, side fun fact, co creator of the board game Trivial Pursuit) and was part of the reason he moved the team. I have to think the Beast are paying less than the Battalion ever did but, in all fairness, I don't know that for a fact. This time around the city has also committed to installing a new state of the art score clock.
Reason number two: advertising in the community. This was literally NEVER done with the Battalion. I guess the Battalion figured that because Brampton re-named all the rep hockey teams after the OHL team, that was advertisement enough. Of course not, the hockey community is going to know about the hockey teams they can go see, it's the people outside of that community that you need to advertise to! As of today, I've seen the Beast have representatives at every city event. Last night (July 1st) I saw them at 10pm in the park where the city's firework display was going off. I've seen them outside of Brampton's theatre for the preforming arts (called the Rose Centre) and, I've even seen them at the farmer's market. In fact; my grandmother, who couldn't care less about hockey, even saw them at an event for seniors and she asked me what kind of hockey the Beast are. That's getting your name out there.
Reason three is not a sure-fire thing, but it helps. Brampton's minority owner and president/GM is Cary Kiplan. Cary is a former Canadian Soccer League commissioner and former president of the Hamilton Bulldogs. My feelings aside on the CSL (they are very strongly negative, but that's another story for another day) that's still a pretty impressive resume.
Don't get me wrong, I don't expect the Beast to be a success. According to the management of the club, they have sold 2,000 tickets for every game next season. This is about the numbers the Battalion did (including walk up) so the team has more work to do, but if they keep getting out there in the community and make sure that people know their name then maybe this team does stand a chance.
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