Calgary plans bigger fan fest during 2019 Grey Cup Week
For the first time in 10 years, the Grey Cup will be hosted in Calgary.
At a joint news conference that featured representatives from the CFL, the Calgary Stampeders, Tourism Calgary and the Province of Alberta, it was announced Wednesday morning that the 2019 Grey Cup will be hosted at McMahon Stadium.
Game day is set for Nov. 24, 2019, although CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie stressed that a huge part of Calgary’s winning bid was their plans for a bigger, better fan festival in the week preceding the league’s championship game.
“There’s a lot of things that go into the bidding process,” Ambrosie said. “We look at it from a lot of different lenses. What we are asking our teams to do (is think about) how do we make our festival bigger? How do we make the fan experience bigger? We want a fan that comes once to commit to coming for the rest of their lives.”
The 2019 game will make the fifth time Calgary has hosted the Grey Cup, with the most recent coming in 2009 when the Montreal Alouettes beat the Saskatchewan Roughriders 28-27.
At that game, temporary seating was added in the end zones at McMahon Stadium to increase capacity, but that’s not something fans should be expecting for next year’s game.
“Right now, we’re more or less looking at temporary suites in the end zone, not putting up the temporary (seats) they had in 2009,” said Stampeders president/GM John Hufnagel.
In addition to the aging McMahon Stadium, one of the biggest concerns about Calgary ’s viability as a Grey Cup host has been the city’s shortage of indoor practice facilities.
That’s something that both Hufnagel and Ambrosie said they hoped might be addressed, but the Stamps president said it’s not currently in the team’s plan to build any sort of field house — although that could change if the City of Calgary were to pitch in with funding.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi was absent from Wednesday ’s announcement, because he was chairing a meeting for city council to decide the city’s indicative tax rates.
The mayor did send a video supporting the announcement, but there were no details made available about if there would be municipal funding provided for Grey Cup Week.
While details on Calgary’s plan for the game and the festival were scarce, Alberta Minister of Culture and Tourism Richard Miranda announced that the province would be providing $1.5 million in funding for the game and the festival.
An Edmonton Sun report from last year indicated that the City of Edmonton provided a “similar contribution” to the $1.5 million that the province provided for the city to host this year’s Grey Cup.
“It’s going to be in collaboration with the organization to make sure we are using every dollar to attract people here, to advertise an promote the event itself,” Miranda said.
“It’s going to be a great investment, as we’ve seen in previous years, with a very good return on investment and we’re looking forward to the party that can be put on by the city.”
While much of the excitement surrounding Grey Cup Week stems from the thousands of fans from across the country who stream into the host city — the CFL says studies have shown that the potential economic impact is more than $100-million — it’s local fans who will also have the first crack at tickets.
The Stampeders announced that fans who purchase season tickets for the 2018 season will be guaranteed the opportunity to buy a Grey Cup seat for 2019 before the general public.