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The Ottawa Citizen devotes one of its City Editorial comments to CIS basketball and the national tournament's arrival to the City of Ottawa The Drive for Six

The focus of the Nationals now shifts to Ottawa after the tremendous job done by Halifax for the past 24 years. As a review of the articles below with attest, there are varying opinions on how well Ottawa will do with the tournament. My personal opinion is that Carleton has already done a tremendous job positioning this event for success including their solid decision to develop a partnership with the excellent team at Capital Sports and Scotiabank Place. Capital Sports track record is already top notch with their sales and marketing team being the strongest ticket sales channel in the Capital Region. Operationally, as Wayne Kondro reports in today's Ottawa Citizen, they continue to do their homework to ensure that all operational logistics for the tournament next season are properly thought through given the unique circumstances of arena location to downtown. Tickets are already on sale for the event as a pair of quarter-page ads in yesterday's and today's editions of the Citizen have expoused.

The group has already done a tremendous job building profile in the Capital Region where more than 1.1 million people reside (as compared to about 934,000 in all of Nova Scotia ). However, target geographical markets for this tournament will likely also include:

- the "Greater Golden Horseshoe" (population 8,100,000 and a 3 1/2 to 4 hour car ride to Kanata depending upon where you are coming from), which includes Canada's largest city, Toronto, and stretches from the Niagara Penninsula around through to Peterborough, with home to more than one-quarter of Canada's population and 15 CIS basketball programs

- the province of Quebec (population 7,600,000) including CIS-sport-crazy Quebec City with Universite Laval and Canada's second largest city, Montreal, and home to 5 CIS basketball programs. Quebec City is within 3.5 to 4 hours of Kanata and Montreal within 2 hours.

With 16,800,000 million people within 4 hours of the event and basketball one of the fastest growing sports in Canada among youth, achieving an average of 10,000 fans per session (50,000 fans total if there are 5 sessions) represents a miniscule market share of 0.29% (less than one-third of one percent). Strictly as an observer not privy to any of the details of the marketing plan - only having witnessed the Capital Hoops Classic in January, my sense is that 50,000 fans could be achieved strictly with a marketing focus on the Capital Region and Kingston/Belleville augmented by fans travelling with qualifying teams from the other conferences in Canada. With a targeted marketing effort in Quebec and Greater Golden Horseshoe, the potential is almost limitless, especially if there is a view of partnering with other professional sports marketing organizations in Toronto, Hamilton, Quebec City and Montreal among others. Event marketing will bring profile to the Nationals event for the short-term; for a long-term, sustainable product to have profile for many years to come, an infrastructure that includes communicating timely, accurate and consistent information to the market place is also critical. Fans need to be able to have detailed information on all games, players, coaches, events and everything else that makes all games (not just those at the Nationals) a big event throughout the year at their finger tips so momentum builds from Labour Day through March. I have all the confidence in the world that the Nationals in Ottawa will be a resounding success.

Here are some further articles from across the country:

Claude Skilly from the Kingston Whig-Standard presents the Kingston area perspective to the Nationals Doornekamp delivers for Ravens

Wayne Kondro's article in today's Ottawa Citizen describing the work done over the weekend by Capital Sports on location in Halifax to further understand the logistics of holding such a tournament (subscription needed) It's going to be different... Ottawa to utilize lessons learned

Alex J. Walling in the Halifax Daily News puts forth his thoughts on the Nationals Halifax built CIS into a real event

David Larkins blog "The Point After" with some CIS tournament thoughts David Larkins Blog

Don Brennan from the Ottawa Sun describes some of the aftermath of Carleton's victory on Sunday Carleton students stark raven mad ?

Paul Owen from the Gateway on-line on Sunday's championship Ravens take yellow brick road to title