The Ottawa Senators have a new arena name and a much talked about marketing promotion. (Source: Ottawa Senators)

The Ottawa Senators have thus far been a major success on and off the ice. On the ice the Sens have the league’s best offense, defense and a new coach that has rid the team from their past ‘demons of conservativeness’ which led them to several disappointing postseasons.  Off the ice, expansions made during the lockout to the arena have allowed the team to scale up attendance from a previous max of 18,500 to a capacity over 20,000. The resulting changes have made the Senators the fifth best selling ticket in the NHL ranking behind only Montreal, Tampa, Detroit and Philadelphia. 

Earlier this month the club announced the naming rights for the arena have been picked up by Scotiabank ending a near 10-year association with Corel Corporation. Ottawa-based Corel originally bought the rights in 1996 for $26 million over a period of 20 years – about $1.3 million per year. On January 21st, the arena officially switched over from the Corel Centre to Scotiabank Place. The name change has caused a small local outcry from the public who are seemingly upset that a corporate name they have grown accustomed to is being replaced by a moniker that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.  Of course Scotiabank could have compromised and appeased fans at the same time by including the original name of the arena – something like Scotibank Palladium, but I digress. The new 15-year deal with Scotiabank is worth $20M or about $1.33M per season – a modest $330,000 increase revenue for the Senators.  

To officially launch the arena name change Scotiabank and the Sens combined on a “Go Red” promotion which encouraged fans to wear red for the January 21st contest against the rival Toronto Maple Leafs. Now if you’ve never been to a Sens-Leafs game in Ottawa let me provide you with a bit of background. Approximately 1/3 of the fans are Leafs boosters and they account for roughly 50% of the noise in the building. Launching a promotion that encourages fans to show unity by wearing red on a night when the team is playing a neutral site game for all intensive purposes is about as pointless as CBS’ promos for Jenna Elfman’s new show.  

She’s back! Jenna returns to network TV.  

You can’t promote someone’s return when either no one’s noticed or cares that she left in the first place; just like you can’t launch a big promo for Sens fans with Leaf Nation in the building.  

Of course, as expected the “Go Red” promotion failed miserably. About the only discernable red that was truly evident was that on the Sens promotions staff’s faces. Okay if you want to launch a promotion like encouraging fans to all sport the same colour than fine but go about it a smarter way. Instead of handing out Thunderstix (easily the most annoying thing to enter the sports world since sideline reporters) why not hand out red t-shirts. I know I’m stating the obvious but apparently this isn’t apparent to everyone. If you give out 20,000 red t-shirts for the game I can guarantee that you’ll get your desired effect.  It’s not difficult.  

That promotion aside, the Sens are running one of the most talked about promotions in the entire league.  The team’s partnership with a local pizzeria chain is feeding fans on a regular basis so much so that the team’s top line of Alfredsson, Heatley and Spezza has been dubbed “The Delivery Boys”.  The sponsorship deal calls for Pizza Pizza to dole out a free slice of pizza to each ticket holder in any home game when the Sens score 6 or more goals. Through 24 home games the Sens have been able to hit on the magic pizza number 9 times (including three games when the initial Pizza Pizza goal tally was 5). According to Pizza Pizza only half the fans from a given “Pizza game” redeem their ticket stubs for a free slice. On average each 6-goal Sens game results in $10,000 of free giveaways for the pizza chain. The promotion is obviously a hit with fans and apparently Pizza Pizza is enjoying all the extra attention. But how much can the pizza chain actually be gaining from this? 

Think about, when people go in to redeem their stub for a free slice there’s isn’t much opportunity for Pizza Pizza to up sell anything to a customer. Granted, some people will buy a drink but other than that people are grabbing their slice and leaving the store.  The whole appeal of a promotion like this is that you’re actively drawing consumers to your business; if you don’t have anything else to sell them while they’re in your store you’re missing out on a terrific opportunity.  

Just imagine if a grocery store was the sponsor of this promotion. For every six-goal game from the Sens the store could invite people to redeem their stub for $5 in free groceries.  With this kind of promotion the opportunity to up sell would be greatly increased. Chances are people would likely do their weekly grocery shopping while redeeming their $5 voucher. And for the grocery this would be a more high-profile approach of attracting consumers in to the store with a loss leader.