Western Fair Arena seats 1500 fans. New Owner Paul Duarte hopes to see every seat filled soon to watch the London Nationals. Duarte took over the team just before the Covid-19 pandemic was set to hit North America. The team takeover wasn’t announced initially as the Nationals were heading into the playoffs for that season. But when the GOJHL started back up, Paul was finally announced as the new owner.
With the second half of the season now underway, fans have been very appreciated, with Duarte and the Nationals hoping for more of their beloved fans to return to watch, Duarte decided to run an ad campaign to bring back the hype around the London Nationals. “Well, the main factor being with COVID that we made awareness that our brand was out here, and to get actually people to come out and enjoy such a great product. And we just wanted to hit all facets of marketing, being the London free press, the radio stations. We’ve got ourselves a jingle. I have a business outside of hockey as well that I market quite well over 20 years. So having that experience, I had that resource with the local media to start this business venture as well and get the name out there to the nationals out there.” Duarte responded on what was the biggest factor on creating the ad campaign for the Nationals.
Sharing the city with another well known hockey team in London with the Knights, Duarte has to tip his helmet to the organization and the reaction of how his team has benefited from a great partnership. “Yes, it makes me very happy that, you know, obviously, as things progress here with COVID restrictions, really, it’s probably going to have a better attendance record where we get capacity. I gotta hand it to the London Knights. They play on Friday nights, they max out at their 9300 fans. And everybody knows that it’s 9300, I couldn’t tell you the maximum capacity of any other Arena in hockey, but the London Knights have done very well. So I’m pretty much modeling them that hey, when we talk about the London nationals that we max out at 1200, right, and that being a Wednesday night, you know, breaks the week and a half and it’s great to have a break and then you go watch the nights if you’re locally from out of town.” Duarte says that he was very happy with the amount of fans coming to show their support.
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