Tourism Burnaby has announced a new brand entitled Sport Burnaby, and SFU will be playing a significant part in it.

Sport Burnaby has been established with the goal of attracting sports championships to the city, and will help organizers book things such as transportation and accommodations for their events.

“Our goal is to target directors and organizers and connect them with venues in the city that work for them,” explained Jennifer Scott, Sport Burnaby manager. “There’s always been a strong partnership with Simon Fraser University. [. . .] SFU is the only NCAA school in Canada, so it’s a great partner to have in terms of tourism.”

SFU has a strong partnership with the new Sport Burnaby brand, and will be hosting its first event — the GNAC women’s soccer conference championship — next year.

“We’ve always had a board member [on Tourism Burnaby’s board of directors], and I’ve served on it for two years,” said SFU Athletics Director Milt Richards.

“They’ve given us money to bid for the GNAC championship, which was a $1,500 fee. There is a working committee which is headed by our compliance director Kelly Weber that will put on this tournament,” explained Richards.

On Tourism Burnaby’s role in bidding for the women’s soccer conference championship, Richards said, “They were our partner from the beginning. They helped us write the proposal, they helped us bid on it   [. . .] they’re kind of like the icing on the cake.

“The university steps in and says, ‘look, we have the facility, we’ve got the staff, and we can put this on,’” Richards added. “But now for the extra stuff, we now have the support of Sport Burnaby, which will really [help] us get this bid.”

Richards believes this new partnership will be the start of something special for the SFU athletics department. “I think it’s positive,” he said.

“We will continue to discuss with [Tourism Burnaby] about an overall sponsorship with the athletic department, because [with annual tournaments] we probably bring in over 1,000 [hotel bookings].”

“They’ve always helped us. For example, one thing we did bid on but didn’t get was the Men’s and Women’s Basketball championship, and Sport Burnaby actually put up $15,000 to help us get that bid.”

When asked if this means we can expect more events like the Women’s soccer championship, Richards said, “I think so. One of the things I’ve emphasized to my staff is we really want to do a great job on this event, because we want to host other events in the future.”