Skaters compete at the World Figure Skating Championships. (Photo by Skate Canada)
This week, Budweiser Gardens, an ice arena in London, Ontario, is hosting an international event with around-the-world interest comparable to the Super Bowl.
The World Figure Skating Championships, which began practices at Budweiser Gardens March 11, have brought about 35,000 visitors and 200 media outlets to London and are expected to be viewed by 150 million people worldwide.
The annual seven-day event is being held in Canada for the first time since 2006 and was last held in Ontario when Ottawa played host in 1984. While it will be the first time hosting the Worlds for the Global Spectrum-operated Bud Gardens, it is far from their first skating event.
“We've done other national skating championship events,” said Brian Ohl, general manager of Budweiser Gardens and Global Spectrum regional vice president. “We've done a world synchronized skating championship event here as well. So we have a pretty good track record with skating.”
The arena, which was built in 2001 for $42 million and is also home to the Ontario Hockey League's London Knights, held the Canadian National Figure Skating Championships in 2010.
This competition, however, is the biggest they've hosted and most important in the sport outside of the Olympics. Winners are world champions in men's, women's, pairs and ice dancing and the results determine the number of athletes that qualifying countries are allowed to send to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games in Russia.
The 12-year-old arena, which will seat around 10,000 for the event, had to add an extra inch of ice to its surface to meet figure skating standards. They also removed over 34,800 cubic feet of equipment off-site to make room for participants and medical personnel.
To make room for the approximately 200 media members, Bud Gardens staff set up a separate building on property and utilized extra space within the arena and in the parking lots.
“Our parking lot is half-filled with TV trucks and mobile studios,” Ohl said. “It's been something, but we've found ways to accommodate them.”
Another consideration for the week's events was providing food for participants, coaches and media from around the world .
“We've gotten phone calls about different allergies and things like that that we've tried to accommodate,” Ohl said. “We're here this week at 6 a.m. with practices, so we've added breakfast as well as a healthy-food stand with different items like gluten-free options to reach out to everyone's interests.”
Another pair glides along the ice during the Figure Skating World Championships. (Photo by Skate Canada)
While preparation has taken a number of weeks at the arena, the groundwork for hosting the World Skating Championship was laid last year. In 2012, the event was held in a converted convention center in Nice, France. The city sent Mayor Joe Fontana, John Winston of London Tourism, and Gary Turrell of Bud Gardens to scout the championships and learn how they could improve on Nice's product.
One thing the group took away is that they could upgrade on their predecessor’s technological abilities.
“We have a special IT committee that is just sitting in the media tent waiting for any problems to happen and will fix them immediately,” Turrell said. “We also boosted our availability of internet to 500 megabytes. We teamed up with a couple local companies including Pro-Tech, and Bell Canada and Cisco to get our infrastructure set up the way we needed it to be.”
In addition to the IT efforts, the event and arena staff are working to promote the skating championships via social media. The championships have created their own Twitter hashtag #FSWorlds13 that allows people to find others discussing the event.
“Locally, we have the largest social media assets,” said Chris Campbell, Global Spectrum's director of Marketing at Budweiser Gardens. “We have around 23,000 on Facebook and 11,000 on Twitter. We are very connected that way and we are very connected with local media this way as well.”
Turrell said the arena staff expects improved ice conditions over the previous host because the arena hosts ice events year-round, as opposed to the makeshift rink created in Nice.
“There were days where the doors were open and hot air was coming in because that's probably what they do for trade shows there,” Turrell said. “We're used to having ice in here and ice events are what we're good at.”
Budweiser Gardens has also added surrounding events including a video and lights show at the end of each day.
The World Skating Championships wrap up March 17 with a closing exhibition gala.
Interviewd for this story: Brian Ohl, Gary Turrell, and Chris Campbell, (519) 667-5700