True North and the City hope more people show up at the Whiteout Street Party for Monday night’s Jets game than on Saturday.
Economic Development Winnipeg’s Dayna Spiring admitted the organizers were largely at fault for the ticketing situation that kept people away.
“We’re learning as we go here and Winnipeg has never hosted a party on this scale before,” she said. “And so every time we host one of these Street Parties we get all of our team together after and we figure out how to make it better.”
In a statement Spiring said: “To ensure that we didn’t end up with thousands of disappointed fans downtown with no place to go, the Winnipeg Police Service mandated that we implement a free ticketing policy.”
Not true said Winnipeg Police Service. Special Event Commander Nick Paulet said the service presented concerns to the Special Events Committee.
“The service, [as a] stand-alone does not mandate anything.”
“It represented to the committee to ensure our concerns are addressed and it’s up to the committee itself to mandate conditions of the special event permit on the applicant,” Paulet said.
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“Alcohol, large crowds, NHL events do bring with them challenges so we have recognized those challenges and brought them forward through the special event committee process.”
What the agencies do agree on though, is that the Whiteout and the size of the parties are a whole new experience for everyone involved.
“This is new. It’s new for the city, it’s new for the planners, it’s new for police. Crowds of this size of this nature are new, so it’s no surprise to any of us that we’re learning as we go,” Paulet said.
“We’re listening and we’re learning as we go. Implementing a ticketing policy allows us to plan our capacity in advance and it ensures that Jets fans aren’t disappointed if they were to arrive at the Winnipeg Whiteout Street Party that was already at capacity,” Spiring added.
The estimated 15,000 people in attendance Saturday was nowhere near the event’s capacity of 27,000 because of scalpers and others who may have ordered their eight free tickets and then not used all of them.
“Unfortunately we had some issues with scalping and some different things which was certainly not the intention of any of the organizers,” Spiring said.
10,000 more free tickets were released Sunday in the hopes of getting a full house Monday night.
“We’ll keep doing our best to make sure we get this system the best it can be,” Spiring continued.
She said they’re not closing the door on expanding the parties even further if the demand is there, but adds that 27,000 is close to the maximum that they could safely handle with all the logistics involved.
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