FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 28, 2024
To all our valued Season Ticket Holders, Partners and Food Vendors — and to ALL OUR FANS:
RE: Touchdown Pacific CFL game, impact on HarbourCats home playoff dates for upcoming 2024 season
The Victoria HarbourCats Baseball Club is notifying all supporters of a change to our season operations in 2024, that is out of our control.
As you may be aware, the City of Victoria and the Canadian Football League (CFL) have agreed to host a regular season football game at Royal Athletic Park on August 31, 2024, featuring the BC Lions. Due to the apparent requirements for the stadium set-up (e.g., adding additional bleachers and grassing over the baseball infield), the HarbourCats have been advised we must end our use of Royal Athletic Park this summer following our final regular season game on August 7. The WCL playoffs can run until August 16 at the latest.
This means there will be no home playoff games at Wilson’s Group Stadium at RAP this 2024 season.
In discussions with the City of Victoria, this situation is a one-time occurrence and will not happen in subsequent seasons. Those discussions are ongoing.
As our fans would expect, this is not a situation we are pleased to be in — we fully support the premise of hosting of CFL game – something that benefits all sports fans in Victoria. However, we do not understand why a date was needed that impacted our operation, the HarbourCats being a team that has worked hard to become a local staple of summer in Victoria with a history of strong representation and performance. We also apologize to the West Coast League and our league partners for any inconvenience this causes, and vow to ensure this cannot happen again.
That said, we will work to make the best of it and urge the people of the South Island to come out this season and again show their tremendous support of our games and entertainment — let’s PACK THE PARK, starting with the home opener on June 7.
We will focus on making this an opportunity to rally around the team, as a community.
This will NOT affect any of our regular season games. However, should we make the playoffs, as we have in six of the past seven WCL seasons, we will need to hold any playoff “home games” between August 10-16 in an alternate facility that meets West Coast Leagues (WCL) standards. Unfortunately, that means home playoff games cannot be played in Victoria as there is no suitable secondary option in the market.
The Victoria HarbourCats organization has notified the City of Victoria and the CFL of the profound impact of this change to 2024 playoff games. To be sure we can address this situation, we are currently researching options. This could affect as many as four playoff games.
Fans, we know you are behind us – and have been for more than 10 years.
Additional information and frequently asked questions ARE posted on our website HERE and will be updated as more information and clarity is provided to us over the next few weeks.
We welcome all feedback from our fans and stakeholders, and ask you to please provide any such comments to the email address “playoffs2024@harbourcats.com“. We ask people to use this method rather than bombarding members of City Council, or staff, and those comments will be shared with the City of Victoria.
Sincerely,
Jim Swanson
Managing Partner
Victoria HarbourCats Baseball Club
Cell: 250-889-5204 Office: 778-265-0327
E-Mail: jim@harbourcats.com
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