The City of Ottawa seems bent on proceeding with a 5,500 seat arena at Lansdowne Place. But the arguments seem based on disproving PWHL Ottawa's success, rather than the opportunity to seize a growing fan base.

When PWHL Ottawa dropped the puck on their inaugural season in early January 2024, they did so in front of 8,318 avid fans. Of their 12 home dates, attendance at seven surpassed 8,000. The only games that fell below that mark were on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

This in year one. This while the fan base is only being established. This with short notice for ticket sales. 

There are dozens of reasons Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is wrong to not stop, and re-think the current plans for a 5,500 seat arena replacing Ottawa's 8,000+ seat venue at TD Place Arena. And it seems unwise to bet against the growth of women's sport. Particularly given research that suggests the boom of women's sports in Canada is only just beginning.

As a report by Canadian Women & Sport in partnership with Canadian Tire and BCG found, "A booming fan sentiment is arguably the most encouraging element surrounding the opportunity for a vibrant professional women’s sport market in Canada. Early evidence points to an active, committed and nimble fanbase that actively engages with professional women’s sport and wants more.

In Ottawa, it seems odd to bet against your own market.

"If you look around the landscape of sports teams in Ottawa, there is not a team whose problem is we don't have enough seats – that we're selling too many tickets and we don't have enough places to put people," Mayor Mark Sutcliffe told CTV.

"That's not the typical experience of a professional or semi-professional sports team in Ottawa. If it ends up that PWHL Ottawa has the problem, that's a nice problem to have. I think we can squeeze in a few more seats, but it's not going to be an 8,500 seat arena."

A nice problem for who? It's not a nice problem for 2,500 fans who won't be able to attend games. It's not a nice problem for fans who are being told the gap will be filled by an extra 1000 standing room tickets, because standing through a three hour hockey game is not an accessible option for many fans. It's a limiting factor against the growth of one of the most exciting things to happen in Ottawa in recent memory.

And when the Mayor's office replied to a request for comment from The Hockey News, they used the league attendance average of just over 5,000 fans per game, not the 7,496 average drawn by PWHL Ottawa. If this is in fact the City of Ottawa's reasoning, then the new event facility would only require a capacity of 4,000, not 5,500, because the OHL's average attendance is just over 3,700 fans per game. So which one is it? The Ottawa 67s averaged 4,213 this season, a number that will easily be accommodated by the new 5,500 seat arena, compared to PWHL Ottawa's 7,496.

It seems very strange to place yourself at odds with citizens by not even listening to the voices of PWHL Ottawa fans. Multiple PWHL fans who showed up at this week's public information session at TD Place Arena said there was no one there with decision making power to listen to concerns or answer questions. The purpose of the event, according to fans, was to take a tour through TD Place Arena showing them all the issues with the building, instead of discussing how new plans could meet ever evolving needs, or even receive community feedback. 

And it's no coincidence that each of the team's, the OHL's Ottawa 67s and CFL's Ottawa Redblacks, who will benefit from the plan are owned by the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG), partners with the City of Ottawa in the operation of TD Place Arena and TD Place Stadium, and plans for the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park. The lone team not owned by the group is the only team that will be hurt, and that team is PWHL Ottawa. It's not the fault of PWHL Ottawa that the Ottawa 67s don't draw larger crowds. 

"This arena is going to serve a multitude of purposes; we're not just building an arena for PWHL Ottawa," Sutcliffe said in an interview on TSN 1200. "Everybody is excited about the success of PWHL Ottawa; I'm thrilled with how it's gone and the atmosphere at their games and it brings out a different crowd, but they're going to use it for 15 nights a year out of 365."

What Mayor Sutcliffe said is very true - the City of Ottawa certainly isn't building this arena for PWHL Ottawa, or even considering the franchise, because the plan was made before the team was founded. The message that the City isn't doing this for one tenant however, is false. They are developing the arena plan for the OSEG owned Ottawa 67s. Of course there will be concerts and other events, but the 67s are the focus. The Ottawa 67s have long been a point of pride for the City of Ottawa, and that won't change, but to ignore professional women's athletes, to not even include them in your considerations, not to mention your actual plans, is wrong.

The Mayor found it easy to question if PWHL Ottawa's attendance would stay as strong as it was this season forever. Simultaneously, the messaging selectively pinned the PWHL's existence to 15 dates each year, forever. The same flexible mindset that understood attendance could change, did not acknowledge that usage could as well. Does the City of Ottawa believe that regular season home games will be the only draw for PWHL Ottawa fans or any event needing a few thousand more seats? It erases playoffs, it erases All-Star games and skills competitions, it erases potential preseason, and it erases watch parties, among other events. Because had PWHL Ottawa made the playoffs in their inaugural season, watch parties for road games were in the plans at TD Place Arena. And this is not to mention the fact that PWHL Ottawa is a primary daytime tenant of the facility, utilizing it every day for practices.

The Mayor used vague analogies to justify the decision, rather than listening to users of the facility and looking at the available stats. He claimed that "You don't buy a dining room table for the size of the event you have on Christmas Day. You buy your dining room table for the size of your family whose going to be there eating dinner every night, not for the one or two times of year when you're going to have a much bigger crowd."

You also don't often get to host holidays or special events if you don't have the space to welcome everyone. And no one likes being stuck at the foldable table in another room while a select few sit at the real table. Also, if we want to speak in facts, the average family size in Canada continues to shrink. In 1931 the average size was 4.2 people, but in Canada's most recent census in 2021, that number had shunk to 2.9 people. It would be interesting to see how many of those 2.9 person families eat dinner at a four or six person table. 

There's hypocrisy in the messaging. At the event on Tuesday, staff told the public that even the CFL's Grey Cup is drawing less attendance and would require less seating in the future. The City is using a "Christmas Day" event to prove their point, while telling the city's only women's professional team and their fans the same argument is invalid. 

The truth is, the City of Ottawa and OSEG devised this Lansdowne 2.0 plan before PWHL Ottawa existed. They can't be faulted for that. What they can be faulted for is beginning the project without revision after knew circumstances and needs have evolved. The unwillingness of investors to look at women's sport the same as they do men's sport has been well documented.

As a recent CBC article said, "as women's sports are experiencing a meteoric rise in popularity, breaking attendance and viewership records, a new report highlights how sexism still holds back women's professional sports — and investment decision-making."

For a century, watching women's hockey, or women's sport in general, has not been easy. It's been an ongoing challenge, until this season.

As Jayna Hefford stated, identifying the biggest roadblock for growth in women's sport, "Women’s sports fans have had to work really hard to watch and follow; the general sports fan doesn’t do that much work. We need to continue to make it easy to find us and be visible as often as possible."

But still, the City of Ottawa will be asking 2,500+ PWHL Ottawa fans to stay home each week. It's a move that will raise ticket prices, and with an emphasis on standing room, make games less accessible. Eventually, PWHL Ottawa will outgrow this new arena, and the City will be begging for the lowballed "15 nights a year out of 365" in sold out attendance back. Or, they could pivot, recognize the market has changed, that women's sports are here to stay and are on the rise, and plan for a more vibrant community space utilized by more, not less people in Ottawa.