Maya Garow describes the atmosphere inside TD Place arena during the PWHL Ottawa team’s inaugural season as “unreal.”
The stands were consistently full of fans and “young girls wearing team colours, cheering with the same [intensity] usually seen for the Ottawa Senators,” she said.
Since that first year, support for the Ottawa Charge has only grown.
So when the PWHL said earlier this week that the Ottawa team won’t play in the smaller arena envisioned under the Lansdowne 2.0 plan, Garow was clear: “Good for them.”
League executive vice-presidents Amy Scheer and Jayna Hefford told reporters on Nov. 18 that the Ottawa Charge will not use the new arena because of the 30 per cent reduction in the number of seats.
The Ottawa Citizen has reported that Ottawa Senators management is open to meeting with the PWHL about having Charge games at the Canadian Tire Centre, where the Senators play.
The PWHL, and some experts, say the reduction in seating planned for Lansdowne would restrict fan access and jeopardize professional women’s sport. While the issue is local, it reflects a broad tension across Canada regarding how fast-growing women’s professional leagues are treated.
Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG) senior vice-president Janice Barresi says the new building has “been designed to meet the broad-based needs of the city, rather than being tailored to any single user group.” Barresi said the city-led project fills promoters’ need for a modern “mid-sized” venue.
In an earlier Ottawa Citizen article, Scheer and Hefford urged OSEG and Ottawa city council to “make space for a partner that has been asking for a real conversation [privately and in good faith] about capacity since early 2024.”
However, Baressi said “it’s important to note the [arena] size was established well before the Ottawa Charge existed.”
Scheer told the news media this week that the league felt misled by the city, and that the promise of the PWHL being included in capacity discussions was not kept. “We felt we were forced to go public because we were really just left behind,” she said. “The city was very clear on where we fit in the ecosystem of their sports, which is nowhere.”
Council approved the Lansdowne plan, with its smaller arena, on Nov. 7 and directed the city manager to work with OSEG and PWHL to advance lease discussions. A meeting between the City of Ottawa, PWHL and OSEG was scheduled for this week.
The demand for some PWHL Ottawa Charge games already exceeds what the new Lansdowne arena will be able to hold. The Charge’s most attended home game drew 8,576 fans, 2,726 more than the new planned 5,850 seat capacity. Many other games surpassed 8,000 fans, and the team’s average attendance of 7,006 still sits well above the new limit.
League-wide numbers point to an upward trend for attendance for women’s professional hockey. PWHL attendance is up 52.5 per cent compared to last season, and average crowds have grown by 27 per cent, according to the PWHL website. Several PWHL markets already operate in larger venues, including Toronto with 8,140 seats, Montreal with 10,000 seats, and Vancouver with 16,000, giving those teams more space to meet rising demand. The league’s highest-attended game drew 21,105 fans, raising the question of whether the Ottawa Charge can grow significantly if given the right opportunity.
A report in The Hockey News said staying at the new arena at Lansdowne would have put the team and league “in a position to lose an estimated $1 million per season.”
“Let’s build an arena worthy of the talent on the ice and the people in the stands,” wrote Hefford and Scheer in the Citizen article.
For some fans, the downsizing feels like a limitation. Garow worries that the reduced capacity in the new arena will lead to “Ticketmaster wars” among those trying to attend future games.
“It feels like right when we were finally getting someplace good, they cut it off right away,” she said. “There are actual fans out there that watch and constantly attend games. Now they’re not letting there be room for growth.”
Charge fan Amy Paisley said the downsizing contradicts the teams’ popularity, which she said she believes will continue to grow.
“If [moving to the CTC] happens, there’s more room for fans to go to games,” Paisley said.
Some experts question the decision to downsize TD Place arena. “It’s very short-sighted,” said Cheri Bradish, a sport marketing professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. “I would encourage them to rethink it because it’s not in the best interest of the community, and it sends a very mixed message [to girls].”
Bradish argued that, to grow the game, organizations must strategically understand the average attendance and build a venue that supports that demand. She said downsizing “puts the growth of professionalizing women’s sport in jeopardy in Ottawa.”
Bradish said a smaller venue is “not ideal” because it prevents the ability to create new fans and sell more ticket packages.
“In sports marketing, we call it the escalator,” she said. “In order to grow, you want to create more fans. You want to bring, enhance, create more.”
“Men’s sports are always assumed to grow and [are] built with that expectation, where women’s sports are asked to prove it first.”
Lindsay Hofer, Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota
Lindsay Hofer, administrative director at the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota, said downsizing the arena raises questions about how women’s teams are valued. She said venue choices shapes “what kind of message you can send about how big you think that sport can be.”
As to suggestions the Charge could play occasional high-demand games at the CTC, Hofer said the situation highlights a broader pattern in women’s sports. When women’s teams are told they can borrow the men’s arena only when necessary, she said, it “reinforces that longstanding pattern that women’s teams are treated as temporary guests, rather than full time, permanent stakeholders in their own sports ecosystems.”
“Men’s sports are always assumed to grow and [are] built with that expectation” she said. “Where women’s sports are asked to prove it first.”
Hefford and Scheer made a similar point, writing “just as women’s hockey has earned the right to think bigger, the city is planning to think smaller.”
“It makes no sense for the [Charge] to use the smaller rink,” said Paisley. “I’m not surprised the PWHL rejected it.”
“It’s ‘here we go again’ right?” said Bradish. “The women’s game takes two steps forward, and is moved one step back.”
