Steve Milton: A city and its team shining in the spotlight
The question is more complex than its simple wording. So is the answer.
Q: Is the Grey Cup worth it?
A: Yes.
Even a significantly scaled-back Grey Cup still strongly benefits Hamilton and its catchment area.
Debate whether the actual local economic impact is the $100 million suggested by the CFL, the $21 million the province says is generated by each dollar it invests, or something much lower. But, whatever the real number, it far exceeds the $200,000 of in-kind services the city is providing for this week.
But the tentacles of 2021 Grey Cup Week reach well beyond that and into a host of other, sometimes overlapping areas: tourism; civic self-belief; city image-marketing; volunteerism; small-business revenue generation; the 2023 Grey Cup; and, a long-term evolution of a sports-event-hosting economy.
The Grey Cup is a national annual institution which is making a return after missing a year for the first time since 1919. So, the coast-to-coast broadcast and online coverage is deeper and more poignant than usual. The social events surrounding Grey Cup week, the venues, the city's interesting people and the local landscape will all be highlighted. American sports network ESPN carries the game on some of its platforms and images of Hamilton will be splashed across them.
That multiplies the basic awareness factor, a huge tool in tourism marketing. If Hamilton can't parlay it into future tourism interest, particularly from organizers of sports and business events, it has much deeper problems.
While pandemic concerns have shortened the festival from four crammed nights to two, and removed a plethora of concerts and social events from the original plans, there are still two big social rooms at the Convention Centre Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The attendance for Sunday's Game at Tim Hortons Field between the underdog Tiger-Cats and Winnipeg Blue Bombers has been capped at about 25,000, roughly 9,000 fewer than the first blueprint. While there has been a year's worth of uncertainty surrounding travel and health concerns, the hotels and rental spaces are still full, people will be downtown and the restaurants should be jammed.
It's great for the city especially for the small businesses," says gregarious Ticat linebacker Simoni Lawrence, who knows many of those restaurant and small business owners after playing in Hamilton since 2013. They got hit hard in the pandemic and are very happy to have everyone from the CFL across the country in town and spending their money here."
Lawrence's comment touches on the celebratory sense of relief that surrounds the revival of the Grey Cup, and a return of a major event to Hamilton. We are still heavily and justifiably concerned with health issues but it's like some big part of a dark veil has been lifted.
For Ticat owner Bob Young, there is also a palpable sense of closure and a galvanizing of civic pride. As he pulled the team from bankruptcy and through the stadium-site controversy in the 20-aughts, there were promises that the team would stay in the city, that pro soccer would come and that Hamilton would soon host Grey Cups. The Ticats are now flourishing at Tim Hortons Field, so is Forge FC and the city has this Grey Cup, a compensatory one in 2023 that should be full-scale, and likely a third before the end of the decade.
For all the angst that we went through trying to build a stadium ... this city built a stadium," Young says. All of this goodness is coming from that decision, and I don't care how we got to that decision, we did. As a city. And this is the reward, this is the dividend we made for the investment we made 10 years ago."
It makes a big difference that the Tiger-Cats managed to qualify for Sunday's game. It's the first time that the Ticats will play a Grey Cup in Hamilton since they won the 1972 championship here. Fans who watched it live or on TV, recall every second of it and their children have usually heard it about far too many times.
But, there has only been one other Grey Cup in Hamilton in the 49 years since, and that was a quarter-century ago. More than a full generation of fans, business people and civic leaders, have no immediate hands-on experience with a Grey Cup. We need to relearn how much fun it is, what kind of work it takes to stage it, how many volunteers (200 this week, up to 1,000 in 2023), how to spin the week into future benefits, how it's possible to have thousands of people drinking and not fighting, how to cover it as local media, how in Canada east is east and west is west but this is the week where the twain shall meet.
In short, all of us need this week as practice for 2023, when there might not be a Hamilton team in the game and having the Ticats in this one intensifies the focus and interest on all of the above. It is our dress rehearsal with a live audience.
Earlier this week, veteran national sports columnist Terry Jones of Edmonton, in Hamilton for his 48th Cup, wrote in a long piece that ran in Postmedia outlets across the country: Clearly Hamilton is becoming a happening place. Look at what's being planned for Hamilton ahead. The Hammer is becoming an eastern sports event-host city to rival Edmonton in the west."
That's high praise and hundreds of thousands of people across the country read it.
Worth it? Absolutely.
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com