When Jeff Hartley, president of the Gloucester Lacrosse Association, first heard that a professional team would be moving to town as the Ottawa Black Bears, he saw it as “salvation” for the local lacrosse scene.
He saw a pivotal opportunity for a “dying” sport threatened by year-round hockey and soccer and changing demographics.
“For me, the Black Bears represents a situation, where, if the kids and the parents see the game, hopefully they’re going to want to play the game and that’s where we step in,” Hartley said.
The team, formerly the New York Riptide, moved to Ottawa after the 2023-24 season. With one game remaining, the Black Bears are nearing the end of a successful first season in the National Lacrosse League — on the floor and at the turnstile — and are tied with two other teams for the league’s final playoff spot.
A victory over the Saskatchewan Rush in Saskatoon on Saturday — the last game of the NLL regular season — would lift the Black Bears to a 9-9 record over the season’s 18-game schedule and possibly earn the team a playoff berth, depending on how other games turn out Friday and Saturday. Even a loss combined with certain results in other games could see the Black Bears grabbing a postseason position.
Either way, the team has had a promising first season.
Ottawa has seen a failed NLL franchise in the early 2000s and many emerging professional sports teams in recent years. To avert that, Chelsea McDermott, the team’s vice-president of business operations, says the Black Bears’ marketing strategy is centred around community involvement with minor lacrosse associations.
“We are a professional sport, but we are a smaller sport, just by nature,” McDermott said, comparing the NLL with the National Hockey League. “We don’t have 32 teams in our league, we have 14, and so we need to make sure that we are embracing our community.”
Using ticket sales as a measure, it would appear the strategy has been successful in the team’s first year.
At the Black Bears’ introductory press conference last year, team governor, Erik Baker, said the target attendance in the first year would be 4,000 a game. The team has been averaging just more than 5,000 per game, McDermott says.
McDermott also said the team has more season ticketholders than the Riptide’s average game attendance.
“Before our sixth game, we had hit our revenue goal for the year, so we’ve done quite well in Year 1, and now it’s just put a bigger goal for Year 2,” she said.
McDermott said she believes part of this success is because the NLL in-game experience is like no other.
The more you can see our guys without their helmets on, and understand who they are, and understand them as human beings, that will help grow this game.
— Rich Lisk, general manager, Ottawa Black Bears
With upbeat, remixed music that continues during the play, frequent “claws up” cheer prompts and cheerleading performances, there is little time for idleness.
Although not all fans have donned one of the team’s black and red jerseys yet, many wear Senators gear, bear claw mitts or follow the colour scheme for themed games, such as green for St. Patrick’s Day or orange for Every Child Matters night.
The Black Bears’ partnership with the Ottawa Senators is also helping the team’s outreach, says McDermott.
The partnership includes an agreement to use the Senators’ Canadian Tire Centre as the Black Bears’ home. Signage around the arena, merchandise in the Sens Store, Black Bears booths at Senators games and joint promotions help the Black Bears capitalize on the strong complement between hockey and lacrosse.
The arena’s location in Kanata is not a factor preventing people from coming to games, McDermott said.
François Brouard, a business professor at Carleton University, who published a research paper about the Black Bears last March, said the Kanata location could be an excuse for some who are on the fence about attending a game.
However, with the Senators looking into a new downtown arena, Brouard said this problem will likely resolve itself within the next few years.
Rich Lisk, the executive vice-president of GF Sports, the company that owns the Black Bears, said the strength of Ottawa’s lacrosse community — including organizations like Hartley’s GLA — was at the heart of the company’s choice to relocate to Ottawa.
“(Ottawa) has a very rich, budding, good basis of youth lacrosse,” he said. “It allows us to come in and help that process.”
Lisk said this landscape has significantly changed since the previous NLL team, the Ottawa Rebel, were in Ottawa from 2001 to 2003.
While Ottawa-born players used to be rare on NLL rosters, Lisk said there is at least one on almost every team now. For the Black Bears, goaltender Will Johnston grew up playing for the Nepean Knights, then for the Carleton Ravens.
“There is a good skill set here in this city of what the future holds for lacrosse,” McDermott said. “I don’t know if that was the case back in 2000, but I know it is the case today.”
The team’s community marketing aims to grow the next generation of Ottawa players.
“We’ve been a staunch supporter of growing the game, and we’ve been utilizing the minor lacrosse associations to do that, both by way of getting the word out, but also acting as a champion for them,” McDermott said.
This investment in the future of lacrosse in the region is essential for the Black Bears, Brouard says.
“The community of (Ottawa lacrosse) players is pretty small, so if they could develop players, then those players will be interested, basically, to go to a professional game,” he said.
One way the team has navigated this community strategy is through an advisory council with representatives from all minor lacrosse leagues and teams in the Ontario Lacrosse Association’s Zone 5.
The zone, which McDermott considers the Black Bears’ marketing territory, includes associations from Akwesasne, Cornwall, Gloucester, Kahnawake, Kingston, Nepean, Quinte and Tyendinaga.
Each home game is assigned to one of these minor lacrosse associations.
For their assigned games, associations are given a link to sell tickets to all of its players. A portion of the proceeds from these sales go to the lacrosse association, while another portion goes into a central pot for Zone 5.
At halftime, youth players from these associations are often showcased in a brief match on the Black Bears’ field.
Some of these teams, such as the Gloucester Griffins, are struggling to find players, with only 298 registrants last season, compared to 800 to 1,000 in the early 2000s.
Others, such as the Nepean Knights, are thriving. As of March 1, the Knights had 600 players registered for the upcoming season, which was the seventh highest of all teams within the Ontario Lacrosse Association.
“Lacrosse is really growing in the city and surrounding area right now. We’re known as a hotspot in Canada,” said Matt Tenute, a local fan who has played lacrosse in the greater Ottawa area since he was three years old.
The Black Bears have hosted several youth development clinics with members of local lacrosse associations this season.
Zabrina Hughes, the Gloucester Lacrosse Association’s registrar, said the development clinics have been highly successful and very well-attended.
“They were right in there, running it. They were dividing up the kids, switching the kids — it was what you would expect from a program like that,” she said.
She said she was impressed by the Black Bears players running the clinic, whom many kids were “starry-eyed” to meet.
Lisk, who is also the Black Bears’ general manager, said when acquiring new players, he considers their commitment to community programs like these.
“I want men that want to play and help us grow the sport of lacrosse in the town we’re in,” he said. “I don’t want you if you just want to play lacrosse and go home.”
McDermott said player accessibility makes the Black Bears stand out. After every game, they can be found at a restaurant in the Canadian Tire Centre meeting fans and signing autographs.
“In lacrosse, you’re more part of the team than you are a fan of the team, and I think that that’s important,” she said.
Engagement with Indigenous communities has also been a visible part of the team’s approach.
“I think it’s one of the most important things we could do,” Lisk said. “They created this game. It’s the Creator’s game. It’s the medicine game.”
The sport holds important spiritual and cultural importance for the Haudenosaunee, a confederacy of First Nations also known as the Six Nations, which includes the Mohawks.
The team communicates regularly with Mohawk communities’ Akwesasne, Kahnawake and Tyendinaga through the Black Bears’ advisory council. They also visit and invite members of local Algonquin communities, such as Pikwàkanagàn in Eastern Ontario and Kitigan Zibi near Maniwaki, Que. to their games.
Tenute, an Ojibwe fan of the Black Bears who has played lacrosse for teams in Six Nations, Akwesasne and Ottawa, said the Every Child Matters night on Jan. 31, Indigenous vendors tables, visibility of local Indigenous teams and the Indigenous jersey design help him connect to the team.
“The National Lacrosse League has been really, really good at intertwining and recognizing that it is a Haudenosaunee game,” Tenute said.
Just last week, a milestone moment in NLL history was reached when Halifax Thunderbirds veteran Cody Jamieson became the first Indigenous player and only the 17th player in league history to score 1,000 points. Jamieson, who hails from Six Nations of the Grand River in Southern Ontario, has also served as captain of the Haudenosaunee Nationals in international play.
Lisk said this connection is clear in Larson Sundown, a Black Bears forward from Tonawanda Seneca Nation, a Haudenosaunee nation in western New York.
Sundown helped design the team’s uniforms, contributing the design on the jersey’s base and sleeves of people standing together hand in hand. This motif is a symbol of peace, friendship and unison in many Indigenous cultures.
It’s always been that Mohawks would pride themselves in inventing the sport and sharing it with Canadians and settlers hundreds of years ago. It’s something that really made me fall in love with the sport, knowing that history, and I feel like my son’s kind of on the same path himself, too.
— Black Bears fan Kanatase Horn, lifelong lacrosse player from Kahnawake, now living in Ottawa
“When you talk to someone like Larson, who really, truly sees the game on a different level, that, to me, is something that I think everyone should understand,” Lisk said. “It’s just not going out there and playing. There’s so much meaning behind this game and what it brings.”
Kanatase Horn, a lifelong lacrosse player from Kahnawake who now lives in Ottawa, said his connection to his community’s tradition makes the Black Bears’ presence in Ottawa extra special.
“It’s always been that Mohawks would pride themselves in inventing the sport and sharing it with Canadians and settlers hundreds of years ago,” he said. “It’s something that really made me fall in love with the sport, knowing that history, and I feel like my son’s kind of on the same path himself, too.”
Horn, who brought his 12 year old son, Kahrhiio, to three Black Bears games this season, said the team’s players, particularly the Indigenous ones, can help inspire local Indigenous lacrosse youth.
“Now that there’s a team, you see the guys on the floor, you see some names that you’re familiar with that are from the reserve, so it adds a little bit of a goal for young people to strive for from the Indigenous community.”
The team has had visibility through free streaming on NLL+, availability on the subscription-based TSN+, as well as occasional broad-audience TV coverage on TSN.
Short segments, including interviews with coaches and players, have also been on local radio stations, including TSN 1200.
Brouard said the team’s general lack of media attention outside of these outlets could threaten their success. He said that despite his interest in Ottawa sports, he has rarely seen general media coverage for the Black Bears other than at the start of the season.
While he believes the team has a strong chance at survival, he said the team will need to gain more visibility in the community.
He suggested the Black Bears could work on this by reaching out to smaller publications, including student publications, which could send volunteers to write stories about the team. He said the Black Bears will also need to continue to drive traffic to their social media channels.
Lisk said he hopes the Black Bears will continue its success on the floor with an upcoming playoff run, which could contribute to a growing fanbase.
“I think people want to get behind winners,” he said. “People want pride in that, and I think if we can do that right off the bat here in Ottawa, it’ll set us off on a good foot.”
Above all else, Lisk said the most important factor in the market’s success will be continuing interactions off the floor.
“The more you can see our guys without their helmets on, and understand who they are, and understand them as human beings, that will help grow this game.”
