The Saskatchewan Roughriders are set to kick off their regular season in Mosaic Stadium this Saturday.
“It’s one of the most important days in the history of this franchise,” said Craig Reynolds, the Roughriders president and CEO.
This is the Riders’ first regular game in their new home, and the entire country will be watching.
“We’re excited to show the country what we’ve done here and what this province has accomplished and the type of facility we have here, because it is truly world class,” said Reynolds. “It’s iconic. We think it’s the best stadium in Canada.”
The kickoff will celebrate the new stadium and Canada’s 150th birthday and will feature a major halftime show with 200 performers.
Concessions will also be fully operational, and there will be pregame festivities in Confederation Park.
Reynolds says there are still a few wrinkles that need to be ironed out following the preseason game.
“Certainly there are some operational things, mostly behind the scenes, that are important to us,” he says. “So we learned a lot, we had transit issues, a lot of people use transit, which is great, we promoted it. But now we’ve got to deliver on the transit side.”
“Throughout this season we’ll be continually improving on the experience,” he added. “I think we’ve gone a long way from what we learned at the test event. But we know things would come up, it is a brand new stadium and when you talk to others across the league that have opened stadiums, there’s a collective improvement that happens game in and game out and I think we’ll see the same thing here.”
The Saskatchewan Roughriders will face the Winnipeg Blue Bombers Saturday, July 1. Kickoff is at 7 p.m.
Comments