Mississauga Steelheads President: Attendance is No. 1 Reason for Pending Move to Brampton

Mississauga Steelheads owner Elliott Kerr says relocating the OHL team 10 minutes up the road to Brampton gives fans a better experience and minimizes disruption to players and staff.

For the second time in as many years, the OHL is seeing one of its teams relocate. 

Unlike the temporary move from Hamilton to Brantford, the Mississauga Steelheads are heading less than 10 km up the road to Brampton, as first reported by TSN’s Darren Dreger.

“There are a few more hurdles to get over, but I’m optimistic,” Steelheads president Elliott Kerr told The Hockey News.

The attendance in Mississauga has long been a topic of conversation for quite a while, sitting at the bottom of the league in that regard since the pandemic, while they’ve been a fixture in the bottom five of the OHL for a decade.

The Brampton market hasn’t exactly had a long run of attendance success in its own right. When the OHL was last there, the Brampton Battalion averaged an attendance of 2,318 from the 1998-99 season to 2012-13, according to hockeydb.com. The Steelheads have averaged about 2,546 since 2012-13, excluding the pandemic-affected season. With that said, there is confidence from within the Steelheads organization.

“At the end of the day, attendance is probably the No. 1 reason for the move. We knew we had to do something and challenge ourselves to find something that works for us and our fans,” said Kerr.

“The genesis was not only the attendance piece, but we have a major competitor in not only our own market but also in our own building. We have the Raptors 905 playing the same time of the year, the same demographic, and a similar price point. It’s been a challenge since Day 1.”

The NBA’s Toronto Raptors G League affiliate has been playing their games in the same 5,000-seat Paramount Fine Foods Centre in Mississauga since its inception in 2015. The Steelheads' attendance fell almost every year from 2015 to the 2020 season and has remained at the bottom of the league since.

“In the area around our facility right now features no commercial development,” Kerr said. “It’s not a destination – you’re not going for dinner around the arena before a game or stopping to grab a beer after the game.

“What the arena in Brampton has a fully operational large restaurant that will be jam-packed pre- and post-every one of our games,” Kerr added. “We aren’t looking at this as moving from Mississauga to Brampton. We are looking at this as servicing our market by moving three miles north and giving our fans a better experience.”

The move will allow the team to retain season ticket holders, maintain relationships with corporate and media partners and keep their overall fan base. It also allows the team to minimize any disruption to the players, whether it comes to their billet families or education plans, as the short drive up the highway means that the team stays in the market while giving them a bit more of what they wanted.

The Steelheads are looking at this as a change of facilities within the market. Ownership sees this as a benefit for fans who want to attend Steelheads games. The Steelheads are the youngest team in the OHL, and they’ve been a strong club all year. NHL draft-eligible players such as Luke Misa, Ryerson Leenders, Jack Van Volsen and Jakub Fibigr, along with 2025 draft eligibles such as Porter Martone and Jack Ivankovic, make up a good young core that should make the Steelheads a force over the next few years.

“You think about what has happened recently in Brampton with multiple sellouts at the 2023 women’s World Hockey Championship... the Hockey Day in Brampton that the mayor, Patrick Brown, pushes to the forefront – it will be an excellent place to bring the Steelheads,” said Kerr.

The relocation process is still in the early stages, but Kerr said he has full confidence that it gets done and has had good conversations with the league already. As with any relocation, it still has to be approved by the OHL's board of governors, with some details of the move still to be worked out with the league and its members.

The Brampton Steelheads should be taking the ice to begin the 2024-25 OHL season.