With three weeks to go until tickets become available to the general public, the 2018 Grey Cup Festival provided an update Friday on plans for the festival and ticket sales for the game.
“As we sit here right now, with our season-seat holders that have purchased tickets and our corporate partners, we are now more than neck-to-neck to where we were at the same time in 2010, and maybe slightly ahead,” Eskimos president and CEO Len Rhodes said at a media gathering in Edmonton.
In 2010, the game was sold out six days after tickets went on sale and Rhodes continues to say that record will fall in 2018.
“June 1 is the day we hope to break our record of six days in 2010. Let’s try and do it in three or four days, but I’ll take five.”
The first ticket-buying opportunity for the general public will be at an Edmonton Chamber of Commerce breakfast on June 1 that will feature Canadian Football League commissioner Randy Ambrosie as the guest speaker.
Duane Vienneau, the executive director of the 2018 Grey Cup Festival, also announced another addition to the festival in the form of a bungee jump, making this year’s festival bigger than he ever imagined.
“We never in a million years thought we were going to build a festival that had four major activations in it, like a ski hill and a bungee jump and a zip line and tube slide, but now we are building these things. We are trying to raise the bar and make it the best ever, again.”
Listen below: Grey Cup executive director Duane Vienneau
Volunteers wanted
Edmonton has always been known as a volunteer city and the 2018 Grey Cup Festival will lean on that reputation.
Brad Sparrow, co-chair of the Grey Cup Festival, says they already have about 100 volunteers signed up but are now looking for many more to step up.
“We are shooting for over 1,000 and if we need more, we know Edmonton will deliver. Edmonton has the greatest volunteers anywhere in the country”
There will be a job for everyone, Sparrow said.
“Everything from people greeting our great CFL fans coming into the airport, making sure there is a great experience downtown, showing people where to go and what to do — those are our ambassadors,” he added. “We will have security and people manning all the events — the bungee jump, the zip line and things like that. We’ve got tailgate parties (for) game day and the game itself.”
Listen below: Co-chair of the Grey Cup Festival talks about the event
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