Regina, Saskatoon city councils approve bid to bring 2023 world juniors to Sask.

Saskatchewan will try to get the world junior hockey championship back in the province.

In separate meetings Friday morning, Regina and Saskatoon city councils unanimously approved motions to put together a bid to bring the event to the cities.

Each city will put up $350,000 in special events funding, which will only be spent if the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) and Hockey Canada choose Saskatchewan as the host site.

The deadline to submit the bid is Monday. The IIHF is expected to make a decision by the end of April.

The IIHF turned to Canada to find a host city for the 2023 tournament, since it was originally scheduled to take place in Russia. It was moved after the invasion of Ukraine began.

Saskatchewan has played host to the tournament twice before, in 1991 and 2010.

Regina reaction

It might not host the big games if the world juniors do come to Saskatchewan — Regina has a smaller arena than Saskatoon — but the Queen City is still buzzing about the idea of the tournament.

City council voted 9-0 to approve the funding for the bid. Well, the vote initially was 8-1, but Coun. Jason Mancinelli said he voted ‘no’ as an April Fool’s Day joke.

Despite that, council and city administration are serious about hosting the tournament.

Mayor Sandra Masters believes the Queen City is the perfect fit.

“It’s one of the gifts of our city and our residents that we have so many shared moments that we can go back to at points in time, and so many of them are focused around events,” she said during the meeting.

“Heck, wear your Rider jersey down into Mexico and you’ll make friends in a heartbeat. It’s that kind of connection — because of moments that we create here in this city, — which makes us, in my opinion, ideally suited.”

Speaking of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Masters acknowledged Regina is often seen as the heartland for Canadian football.

“It is the heartland of hockey too. If football unites the country coast to coast, I would suggest that hockey connects Regina and the province of Saskatchewan to the rest of the world. It is absolutely what we’re good at,” she said.

Another major event in Regina in 2022 is the Grey Cup in November, the same month as Agribition.

It’s safe to say there will be a lot on the city’s plate this winter if the world junior bid is successful, but Masters isn’t worried about that.

“I absolutely believe we can handle it all,” she said during a media conference. “We talk about the volunteerism in our city and in our province as being exceptional. I think this actually creates opportunities for more people to get involved at the volunteer level.

“And I think that we work hard. We’re incredible hosts. We welcome people. We’re always happy to have them here … So absolutely I think we’re up to it — more than up to it.”

Coun. John Findura is just as enthusiastic.

“We must take this opportunity …,” he said. “If you snooze, you lose … We know we have the space and Regina is on the map. We’re set for doing events, small, large (or) whatever. We need to be a destination.”

Tim Reid, the CEO of Regina Exhibition Association Limited (REAL), has been heavily involved in the pitch. He’s very excited for the chance of a prairie world juniors.

One thing he pointed to was how big this would be for industries that were hit hard by the pandemic.

“This is genuinely $100,000 a night of investment to our hotel industry, somewhere around the same for our food and beverage industry, and then for our busing and commuting industry it’s $10,000 or $11,000 a day,” he explained.

“When you break that down to actual spend, that turns out to be jobs at restaurants, jobs at hotels and helping that sector get back on track after truly what has been a horrible couple of years for that industry.”

On top of the big boost to the economy, he thinks it just fits so well for such an iconic tournament to return to Regina, after being cancelled in 2021 and held without fans in 2020.

“What’s unique about this opportunity is the world juniors are such a foundation of that time of year. For so many Canadians, we all don our Team Canada jerseys, we have our families over for Christmas, we’re trying to avoid our in-laws to the best of our abilities, so we huddle around the television,” Reid said with a giggle.

“The reality of it is we haven’t had the chance to do that with live fans since COVID started.”

Saskatoon steps up

In Saskatoon, funding for the bid would come from the city’s Reserve for Special Events, which currently has more than $660,000 in it.

It’s contingent upon a successful joint bid with Regina.

Mayor Charlie Clark says it has been awesome to see how both councils, tourism teams and arenas in Regina and Saskatoon have collaborated so quickly on the project.

“We have a really great track record of being able to host events and being able to pull people together to do really creative things to host great events,” said Clark.

Clark says he’s “really optimistic” about the joint bid, and he looks forward to potentially putting on a great show for the world.

“I remember the gold-medal game when we hosted in 2010. It was absolutely thrilling. Our province (and) our city was electric,” he recalled. “We know how important hockey is to this city, this community.”

Tourism Saskatoon CEO Stephanie Clovechok told councillors the economic impact could be around $50 million.

“More than 300,000 fans will attend the 31-game event with an expected 15,000 room nights for our hotels, and 20,000 out-of-town travellers.

“Over 120 million viewers will be watching the worldwide broadcasts on TSN, providing Saskatchewan and our visitor economies international exposure.”

If the bid is successful, Clovechok said there would be an opportunity for some pre-tournament games to take place in other cities across the province.

— With files from 650 CKOM’s Lara Fominoff