The Brampton Steelheads will start their first season in Flower City after spending the last twenty years in their southern neighbor of Mississauga. The team made the shortest relocation in hockey history this offseason when they traded the Paramount Fine Foods Centre for the CAA Centre right up the street. But despite a new environment, will the Steelheads finally find a footing in their market, or will they find the same struggles as they did in Mississauga?
Brampton has been a hockey city for a long time. They have had a few notable teams play throughout recent history like the Brampton Battalion which served the community from 1998 to 2013. There was also the Brampton Beast of the ECHL that folded during the pandemic. Now it’s the Steelheads turn to try to be a mainstay in the city.
The city does look to be another bottom-feeder in terms of attendance. The record for major hockey events was the 2016-17 season for the Beast where they got 3,106 average attendance. But what is different about the Steelheads?
They have a footing in Mississauga where as before with the Battalion and the Beast, there was competition. Now, the Steelheads have the second and third biggest municipal markets to try to get people in the seats.
But if they did what they did in Mississauga for most of their time then the same problems will also relocate with them. In Mississauga, the Steelheads existed. There was no TV deal so unless you were already a super fan and didn’t mind paying for a streaming service it was challenging to constantly root for the team. However, it could be blamed on the league for not securing long-time TV deals for all of their markets and having a terrible streaming service that doesn’t not think forward.
There also has to be some type of different marketing compared to the other OHL markets. A little more than half of the city is South Asian. A lot of people have immigrated to Canada and don’t have a history with hockey. There needs to be a lot of work to get people in the front door for the first time to Steelheads games and blow them away on and off the ice so that they become lifelong fans.
There also needs to be a way to get children to become lifelong fans as they will be some of the most valuable fans if they are able to be hooked for life. Go to schools, go to community events, do something different where you can show that going to your event is something people want to do on a weekly basis.
There needs to be a reason people will go to the corner of the city to come see teenagers play hockey. This isn’t my first time talking about the issues with this team’s marketing but now they don’t have the excuse that their city is too big and hard to market to. Find a way to connect with its people and because it’s Brampton it will have to be outside of the normal OHL marketing.
There should be no more excuses for why this team has low attendance.