The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation is all about getting people to come here and spend their money, and they’re targeting Canadian hockey fans to help do that. The GPTMC is holding a contest called the Ultimate Flyers VIP Experience Contest, in which they’ll give away the following…
- Two roundtrip tickets to Philadelphia from Toronto Pearson International Airport
- Two night deluxe hotel accommodations at a downtown Philadelphia hotel
- Pre-game VIP tour of the Wells Fargo Center, home of the Philadelphia Flyers and Philadelphia 76ers, including a Zamboni ride
- Pair of Lexus Package tickets to the March 3 game against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Includes lower level seats and dinner inside the exclusive Lexus Club lounge - Philadelphia Flyers merchandise package
- With Love, Philadelphia XOXO gift bag
- Ground transportation to and from the Philadelphia International Airport
Obviously, they’re targeting Canadians here, so they’re basically giving tickets to fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I support the idea of promoting tourism to the city, obviously, but giving away tickets to opposing fans? That’s not something I can really get down with.
Apparently, Danny Briere can get down with it, though (more like the PR department asked him to). He recorded what might be the lamest promotion video I’ve ever seen.
UPDATE: The GPTMC contacted us to share this: “Yes, of course Maple Leafs fans (and any fans, really) are welcome to enter the contest and visit Philadelphia. But both our organization and the Flyers are primarily targeting our contest outreach to Flyers fans living in Ontario.”
Thanks for the outreach, yalls. It’s good to hear that from them, even though Leafs fans are still going to enter the contest and potentially win. I guess there’s nothing they can do about it. (Still, though… the video was bad, guys.)
That first sentence. Man, that’s horrible. Although if you want to sell a hockey game to Leafs fans, putting a clip of Briere scoring on the Habs is probably a good way to start.
Here’s what I propose, though. The contest is open to anybody 18 and older in the United States and Canada. Let’s all enter and try to win the contest ourselves. We’ll save the tourism folks some money since they won’t have to pay for that flight from Toronto, and we’ll be taking those tickets away from Leafs fans. Sound good? Cool, go enter.
