B.C. Lions say bye-bye to B.C. Place (for one sport) and hiya to Victoria

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The Gray Cup is coming to Vancouver in 2024.

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So is the “mini-Gray Cup.”

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The B.C. Lions will host a neutral-site sport on Saturday, Aug. 31 towards the Ottawa Redblacks at Royal Athletic Park in Victoria, the end result of a multi-day pageant within the provincial capital.

“That is greater than only a B.C. Lions residence sport. That is dubbed the ‘mini Gray Cup,’” mentioned Lions president and COO Duane Vienneau. “How fortunate are we to have two hottest properties within the CFL in a single yr? That’s particular. That’s a serious coup.”

The sport marks an finish of the Landing Atlantic period, or a minimum of an evolution of it, because the league has moved on from a 40-year stretch of attempting to will a workforce within the Maritimes into existence. Thus begins the Landing Sequence period, with the sport seemingly transferring from metropolis to metropolis throughout the nation every year.

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B.C.’s capital will host the workforce from the nation’s capital as a result of it has the mandatory infrastructure to assist the occasion. The previous two Landing Atlantic video games have injected wherever from $10-$17 million into the native financial system.

Royal Athletic Park has a everlasting grandstand that seats 3,800, and might be expanded to 14,000 with non permanent bleachers, because it did when it hosted video games within the 2007 FIFA girls’s World Cup. And gamers’ joints and tendons will recognize its pure grass turf.

The pageant a part of the occasion might be held both on a closed-off stretch of Authorities Avenue or on the waterfront within the downtown core.

Lions season-ticket holders may have the sport included of their bundle. If they will’t attend, the workforce be versatile and work with them to discover a answer, whether or not it’s credit score to a playoff sport or different.

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“I’m going to induce them to not be too versatile, as a result of the this sport goes to promote out. It’s going to promote out in a day. It’s going to be the most well liked ticket on the town,” mentioned Vienneau.

The Lions president has some expertise within the matter. Earlier than coming to B.C. to exchange Rick LeLacheur, he was the league’s Chief Gray Cup & Occasions Officer, which included overseeing the previous three Landing Atlantic occasions.

“A part of the attraction of Landing Atlantic — and now Landing Pacific — is it’s performed in a small, quaint atmosphere, which creates a complete totally different atmosphere,” he mentioned. “(It’s) environment is totally totally different than you’ve ever seen earlier than.

“We all the time would say, it’s like our Area of Desires in baseball. It’s a bit like a Heritage Traditional within the NHL. It’s only a totally different atmosphere, which is what makes it so particular.

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“Once I was operating Landing Alantic in Acadia, I informed the tourism bureau, ‘hear, you’re going to be invaded with followers.’ And they’d be like ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah … OK, Duane.’

“I used to be attempting to color an image for them, and so they actually didn’t consider me. And about Day 2 of the pageant, I received a name from the CEO of Halifax tourism saying, ‘I consider you.’ They simply noticed jerseys in all places they regarded.”

Tickets for the sport will go on sale to the general public in March, forward of the same old late Might/early June date for single-game tickets.

2024 marks the workforce’s seventieth anniversary, and B.C. Place would be the web site of the upcoming Gray Cup. The Lions have been reborn underneath the possession of Amar Doman, who has leaned closely into the identification of being a part of the province’s tradition and identification.

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“When you will have anniversaries like this, you all the time wish to attempt to do one thing particular,” mentioned Vienneau. “We actually wish to outreach into your complete province. That’s a key driving pressure for us. We’re B.C.’s workforce, we’re not Vancouver’s workforce.

“We might all the time look forward to subsequent yr (for Landing Pacific) however we don’t wish to. We wish to proceed our upward trajectory and that is a part of that.

“If you do one thing like this, you don’t know all the pieces. You be taught it as you construct it. And that’s the gorgeous half. We’re going to we’re going to construct one thing. … We all know we’re placing on a two to a few day pageant. We all know we’re going to have a sport with 12-14,000 folks. We all know what’s going to be in probably the greatest environment within the nation, we’re going have followers from in all places coast to coast, and it’s going to be cool, and we’re going to construct it as we go. So let’s get to it.”

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FUN FACT: The Lions have performed only one impartial web site common season sport of their historical past, after they took on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in Guelph on Sept. 7, 2013. The Ticats have been displaced to the college of Guelph that yr whereas Ivor Wynne was being torn all the way down to make approach for Tim Horton’s Area.

The Lions misplaced that sport 37-29 with Ticats QB Henry Burris hitting for 375 yards and 4 touchdowns, as Hamilton wore retro pink uniforms to honour the 1943 Gray Champion Hamilton Flying Wildcats.

B.C. has performed preseason video games away, most lately in 2015 at UBC’s Thunderbird Stadium due to the ladies’s World Cup. Earlier than that, it’s important to go all the best way again to the late Nineteen Fifties, when the Lions performed a number of preseason video games in Iowa, Everett, San Fransisco and Seattle.

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