Calgary was recently bustling with some of the world’s best professional tennis players thanks to the return of the Calgary National Bank Challenger Tournament and its host, the OSTEN & VICTOR Alberta Tennis Centre.
The tournament ran from November 6 to 13, featuring men’s and, for the first time, women’s professional tennis players. Notable pros who competed included current Canadian #3 and former World #25, Vasek Pospisil, former World #12 singles player and 2013 Wimbledon Singles Finalist, Sabine Lisicki, and up-and-coming Canadian stars Alexis Galarneau (218 ATP) and Gabriel Diallo (250 ATP).
Brookline Public Relations was thrilled to again support the centre in promoting the return of the tournament to both the community and local and national media. The tournament put Calgary on the map within the international tennis community and having a world-class centre with year-round programming is a huge benefit to Calgarians. We wanted to ensure the significance of the tournament’s return was appropriately promoted, which meant working with tournament stakeholders to develop key messaging and communications and developing a strategy to disseminate the information to garner media coverage and community attendance. Through these efforts, Brookline secured interviews with the centre’s spokesperson during the player announcement at the CORE Shopping Centre with CTV Calgary, Global Calgary and the Calgary Herald in advance of the tournament.
The Calgary National Bank Challenger Tournament’s return also coincided with another significant milestone for the centre, with the recent completion of its five-court indoor tennis bubble expansion. This project will allow the centre to expand its current programming and offers 3,700 additional hours of court time per year – a huge win for Calgary’s budding tennis community. To celebrate this achievement, the grand opening of the tennis bubble was planned alongside the Rogers Community Day of the tournament on Saturday, November 5. We saw great public engagement, with numerous residents attending the grand opening to tour the new indoor facility and get a sneak peek of the professional tennis players warming up in advance of the tournament open the following day. In addition, Brookline again secured interviews with the centre’s spokesperson with CityNews, Global Calgary and CTV Calgary to further showcase the centre as a world-class host.
With the centre strategically combining these two events and our Brookline team promoting them simultaneously to media and the public, we were able to generate mass awareness successfully. Brookline worked with external stakeholders to develop impactful key messages and strategically pitched media. This resulted in multiple interview opportunities for the centre and garnered significant attendance of both the tournament and the centre’s expansion. Between June and September 2022, Brookline’s efforts in media relations garnered approximately 1.32K articles covering the centre’s expansion and the return of the tournament.
As Calgarians, we are truly lucky to have the OSTEN & VICTOR Alberta Tennis Centre in our backyard, with access to programming and events like the Challenger Tournament that are helping to advance our city in the world of tennis.
Jordyn Thomson is an Account Executive with Brookline Public Relations. Through her gift for creative storytelling, Jordyn strives to craft engaging content across all mediums.