When the Edmonton Rush released their statement earlier today, they essentially put it on the city of Edmonton to ensure that the team stays. Well, the city wasn’t exactly thrilled with that approach.
Owner Bruce Urban said in a story in the Edmonton Journal that the city hasn’t been very helpful towards the team.Some of his quotes are as follows:
“City Hall has basically said there is no place for you here. That’s the feeling we’ve got anyway. We haven’t heard anything from the City or from the (Daryl) Katz Group. We’ve simply had no support from the City of Edmonton.
“Our mayor tweets about Connor McDavid, but we can’t get him to tweet about us. I invited him to last week’s playoff game, but I didn’t get any response.”
“Calgary’s City Hall loves their Roughnecks. They’ve got a huge ‘Go Roughneck’ sign outside of their City Hall. Naheed Nenshi, Calgary’s mayor, has had his picture taken in a Roughneck jersey. But, here, we haven’t seen 25 cents from our City,” said Urban.
“This is Year 10 and we’ve had absolutely no support from the City of Edmonton. They’ve made it clear where we sit in their books and that’s sad.
“The previous mayor (Stephen Mandel) made sure he got the arena deal done. The current mayor acts like we are non-existent. As a result, professional lacrosse in Edmonton is almost a thing of the past.”
Essentially, Urban feels the city does not support the team.
Current mayor Don Iveson fired back today in the late afternoon, responding directly to Urban’s comments on 630 CHED in Edmonton.
“It’s been a running discussion for at least a year,” Iveson told reporters of how the two sides have been talking about a sponsorship arrangement. Proposals and counter proposals were made. “They walked away. We were talking to them and they walked away.”
“It was related to working with the team’s captain some programming for aboriginal youth which we saw some value in. We couldn’t come to terms unfortunately with Mr. Urban but to suggest that the city has not worked with them or has been non-responsive or that I’ve been unsupportive is frankly disappointing.”
“It’s a lost opportunity to fill one or the other arena with event nights, but again that’s a business decision for the team to make and Edmontonians have the most say over that by actually buying tickets and going to games. It’s got to be business viable for them, it’s not something we’re going to step in and subsidize.”
“To the issue that I was invited to a game and didn’t come, don’t invite the mayor on Twitter three days before an event if you want me to get there. I get 2,500 invitations a year. If you want me to get to something do my staff the courtesy of giving us a little bit more notice than that.”
These comments by Iveson could be perceived in a couple of ways. Possibly it’s a good thing, because it doesn’t mean the city is railroading the team. Still, Urban’s comments are odd if this is the case. A deal for the Oilers to buy the team also fell through in the past few months.
The Oilers have started a fan petition through social media to keep the team in Edmonton. Yet, it seems it is on the organization themselves at this point to keep moving forward.
