The Kitchener Rangers are a major junior ice hockey team from Ontario. They play in the Ontario Hockey League. In the paper, The Kitchener Rangers Hockey Club: Skating Into The Future, Schnarr, Krizmanich, and Lee are focused on the structure of The Kitchener Rangers hockey club with paying a lot of attention to the financial performance of the not-for-profit organization. The main points described by the authors are summarized below.
The article begins with a brief description of the ice hockey industry in Canada and the Kitchener Rangers hockey club. The authors underline that ice hockey is considered to be the national winter sport in Canada, and Canadian hockey is worth approximately 11 billion United States dollars annually. The Canadian Hockey League, which was the world’s largest, is divided into three divisions in accordance with geographical position: the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League; the Western Hockey League; and the Ontario Hockey League where the Kitchener Rangers play.
Further, the authors concentrate on the Kitchener Rangers hockey club. The history of the club began in 1963 when a local business entrepreneur Eugene George transformed the New York Rangers hockey club into the Kitchener Rangers. When the club had some financial problems, and the sponsorship was ended, Eugene George bought the club for 1 dollar and created the not-for-profit organization.
The board of 40 directors is the governing body of the Kitchener Rangers hockey club. There is also the executive committee of nine board members, which has been established by the board of directors. Steve Bienkowski leads the management team as the chief operating officer and governor of the Kitchener Rangers.
The annual revenue of the Kitchener Rangers hockey club includes donations from individual and corporate sponsorships, including digital and print signage opportunities, which provide over a third of the revenue. However, the hockey club receives more than half of all income from ticket sales for games. In 2015, regular season revenues were about six million United States dollars, with a surplus of 50 thousand dollars.
The main expenses of the club are rental. The Kitchener Memorial Auditorium Complex (the Aud), the home arena of the club, is a municipal property of Kitchener city. The club rents the complex from the city of Kitchener at the cost of 19 percent of revenues per year. Moreover, the Auditorium was expanded twice in 2007/2008 and 2012, and the Kitchener Rangers financed the second expansion borrowing almost ten million United States dollars from the city of Kitchener. It is worth mentioning that the Kitchener Rangers club does not spend money on promotion because the club is quite well-known in the local community. The hockey club pays only for radio advertisement. It costs approximately 50 thousand United States dollars per year.
To sum up, the authors illustrate some short-term and long-term goals to achieve. As it is described by Steve Bienkowski, there are still tickets available for games, so it is important to enhance the Kitchener Rangers’ marketing. He is aimed to attract younger people such as university and college students and young professionals. From a long-term perspective, the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium Complex has to be expanded again. The hockey club is considering adding 10,000 or more seats. However, this question is open because it is still unclear how the expansion of the complex will be financed.