Scotiabank Becomes Official NHL Sponsor
Ugh. I know some of you may actually like Scotiabank but some of my worst memories come from my days of dealing with them. One time, they lost my student loan documents and wanted me to write a letter to the government saying that I lost them. Yeah, if you’d seen the fit I threw in that branch that day, you’d understand why I had my money by dinnertime. I closed the account immediately.
Moving on…
Yesterday, Gary Buttmunch Bettman grinned like the lizard he is when the NHL, NHLPA in Canada and Scotiabank came to a $50 milllion dollar sponsorship deal (isn’t that less than what Daniel Brière got from the Flyers? LOL).
The agreement also allows the bank to put its stamp on the National Hockey League Players’ Association with a full range of banking services and on CBC’s Hockey Night In Canada through its sponsorship of a new pre-game show called Scotiabank Hockey Tonight.
While financial terms were not disclosed by either Scotiabank or the NHL, one sports industry journal reported the deal was worth about $50 million over five years for both the rights fees and related advertising.
Rick Waugh, Scotiabank president and CEO, called the deal a “true hat trick,” noting the bank, the NHL and hockey fans all win with the agreement.
More after the jump!
The deal comes just one day after two of the bank’s bigger rivals spent more than $10 billion (U.S.) on foreign acquisitions. And while Scotiabank prides itself on being Canada’s “most international bank,” yesterday Waugh was selling Canada as a “land of great opportunity” for his bank.
“We are a hockey nation. It’s part of our culture, its part of our heritage,” Waugh said yesterday, flanked by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and Ian Penny, associate counsel for the NHLPA.
And Waugh is banking on that down-home Canuck patriotism to translate into fatter profits. “It is good business for us,” he said.
Scotiabank already sponsors the Calgary Flames, the Edmonton Oilers and the Ottawa Senators, whose home arena was renamed Scotiabank Place in 2006. But its love affair with hockey predates the NHL and stretches back to the days of the Bankers Hockey League in 1908.
In 1971, it created a hockey-themed banking program for youth called The Scotiabank Hockey College. It also supports minor hockey across the country.
While its international presence is well noted, Scotiabank is a “relatively” smaller banking player in Canada and is eager to enlarge its share of the domestic retail market. Sponsorship deals such as this one, along with last week’s wildly successful Nuit Blanche arts festival, go a long way to broadening its name recognition. Last year, the bank spent more than $42 million in various sponsorships and donations to do just that.
But it is not the only bank playing the sports-sponsorship game. Toronto’s FC soccer team plays on BMO Field, while the NHL’s Boston Bruins and the NBA’s Celtics play in the TD Banknorth Garden and the Orlando Magic’s home stadium is the TD Waterhouse Center.
The RBC Center in Raleigh, N.C., is home to another NHL team, the Carolina Hurricanes, while HSBC Bank Canada is an official partner of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Scotiabank, however, sponsors the three Canadian NHL teams that went to the last three Stanley Cup finals. Said Bettman: “I assure you it was a coincidence, not a term of this deal.”
Tags: NHL, NHLPA, Scotiabank, NHL Scotiabank
1 opinion for Scotiabank Becomes Official NHL Sponsor
Don Thurston
Mar 12, 2008 at 6:46 am
What does scotiabank do to support minor hockey in small communities, esspecially ones that they have a branch in? Minor hockey is suffering finnancially but it is the resource that aat some points fills the rosters of your NHL teams. So please support what you will make money from in the future. Thank You Don Thurston
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