The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Stars coach looking to grow club to new levels
ICE HOCKEY: Pacha putting plans in place to build on sponsorship and fans
Dundee Stars head coach and general manager Omar Pacha insists they will use the Covid-19 shutdown to re-evaluate all aspects of the club and explore ways to grow the sport locally.
It has been more than two months since the Elite League ice hockey campaign was cancelled.
The Stars moved quickly to resolve a number of key issues, including season tickets, and are now beginning to reflect on their operations ahead of the 2020/21 term which is scheduled to begin in October.
Pacha wants to use the unexpected hiatus to put plans in place that can help take the organisation to another level.
The Canadian also hopes to organise an event to raise funds for the NHS.
He said: “In the background we are speaking to our sponsors from the past and I am doing a lot of webinars and seminars to try and grow ourselves as a unit.
“We are trying to plan and find ways to see what we can do better for the future, with considerations to the local situation.
“We have plans in place for when hockey does come back. We will have a special night for the NHS and other stuff too, so we are looking at all options to try and make the club bigger and better for everyone.
“You can see possibly in other sports that right now there is a lot of controversy and uncertainty, but for us, we are trying to focus on what we can do in the future and how we can still grow the club and the sport, especially with how we have grown in the past and how we have established the club in Dundee.”
Pacha, who is also keeping the Stars faithful in the loop through live shows on their official YouTube channel, saluted the backing they have received from fans and commercial partners.
He added: “It has been great, the support from our sponsors and fans has been awesome in these hard times.
“We know that, financially, some people are having to be a bit more cautious with their spending but we have had a great amount of support so far.
“Just with our weekly live show, we have about 3,000 views over the course of the few weeks we have been running them and that’s very good for a live show.
“We are just trying to keep our fans involved with the club and up-to-date as much as possible and we don’t want to lose track of our fan base.
“So we are trying to keep our show very proactive for engaging with our fans and I wrote a letter from the general manager for them the other night too just to reassure them that with the coming season they can purchase their season ticket, as that helps us establish our budgets.
“However, if the worst-case scenario comes and there is no season, then they will get their money back.
“We are doing everything we can to grow ourselves and to be ready to play when we are allowed to play hockey again and we are trying to keep the momentum that we have had in the past few years going.
“It is important to keep cracking on and keep working as, for us, the season is supposed to start in October and we are going to be ready to go once it is official and once we have the scheduling. “We want to be prepared.”
The global pandemic has forced the Stars’ boss to alter his short-term plans and vision for the city’s only professional ice hockey club.
However, he has a point to prove and is determined to keep the club growing until they are a UK force.
The coach said: “We have always been very proactive with social media and the media side of things but my prediction is that our awareness and reach will just keep expanding through our digital markets and various sources.
“Already we have increased our fans and sponsorship by 43%, which is a large percentage but everybody asks me why we do all of these things?
“It is really simple – we want to grow into an even bigger club.
“Our goal is to grow so that we can compete every season and really be a force in ice hockey in the UK and also in Scotland as well.
“Currently, we are a club that keeps growing and if you look at the percentages of attendance increases in the Elite League over the past few years, we are the team that has grown the most.
“For the people who always underestimated us and said we would never be able to do it, we have proved them wrong and we just want to keep proving people wrong.”
We are trying to plan and find ways to see what we can do better for the future. OMAR PACHA