On Monday, members of Grande Prairie city council will vote on whether or not the Downtown Events Centre will be re-named the Bonnetts Energy Centre.
Arena Events & Marketing Specialist Jade Nyland said the process of finding a new sponsor should have started when the Revolution Auto Group contract expired in July 2020. She says those plans were put on hold as the COVID-19 pandemic took over the spotlight.
“It did delay the process of recruiting a new naming partner,” she says.
“In March of this year, the city issued a request for expression of interest just to ensure fair access to all the interested parties, and after careful evaluation, they were the best fit.”
Nyland says in 2020, she was unable to picture what the future of the arena would look like, but she believes they’re on the right path to getting back to as normal as possible, as soon as possible.
“It’s a good news thing, and it’s something we are all looking forward to, can’t wait to have the stands filled, have concerts, hockey games, trade shows… it’s really the light at the end of the tunnel for us,” she says.
She adds while the agreement has yet to be ratified, if council decides to approve the naming rights agreement, arena staff will have a lot of work to complete by the end of the month.
“As soon as council signs that agreement, we are working on getting the signage in order, and the website changed out, and the target date right now is September 1st,” she says.
“That’s sneaking up on us pretty quickly, but we are optimistic we can get most of the major assets changed over by that time.”
The financial details over the naming rights have not been made public at the time of publication.
