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Fans eager to get decked out in white Jets gear to cheer on their team during the playoffs can expect a downtown Winnipeg street party preview Friday.
True North Sports & Entertainment, which owns and operates Winnipeg’s NHL team, is expected to make an announcement about whiteout event possibilities at 11 a.m.
“It’s really exciting. We love our Jets,” Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham said Thursday. “There’s such an energy, such an excitement that is felt all through the province and certainly in Winnipeg and in our downtown.”
The Jets clinched a playoff spot this week with a win over the Minnesota Wild, securing the final position in the National Hockey League’s Western Conference.
The team led the West more than midway through the 2022-23 season, but their fortunes shifted and they dropped in the standings near the end of the regular season.
The post-season berth gave fans not only a chance to breathe a sigh of relief, but to anticipate flooding into downtown streets, restaurants and bars to take in the playoffs together in a way they haven’t been able to since pre-pandemic.
“This is a glass totally full situation,” said Shaun Jeffrey, CEO of the Manitoba Restaurants & Foodservices Association. “We can expect a pretty significant increase in guest activity in the downtown area restaurants.”
In 2018, when the Jets made it to the third round of playoffs, about 120,000 fans attended whiteout parties — so named because fans dress in white in a tradition that dates back to 1987 — in the streets around Canada Life Centre, then called Bell MTS Centre. The parties were capped at 27,000 guests per event.
“It does something to us as a city,” Gillingham said. “It’s about how we feel about ourselves as well as our own self-image, and so I’m really looking forward to what cheering for the Jets together can do.”
The parties didn’t come cheap. The events cost about $2.2 million in 2018, including $962,000 from the city and a $120,000 contribution from Economic Development Winnipeg. True North foot the bill for the remaining roughly $1.1 million that year, with $153,000 earmarked for associated policing and transit costs.
The next year, the province contributed $400,000, up from its $2,000 contribution in 2018 through Travel Manitoba.
The parties were free to the public in 2018 but cost $5 a pop in 2019.
But beyond party price tags, the huge crowds had a significant impact on downtown businesses and restaurants, said Jeffrey.
Based on past years, playoff parties could mean some downtown restaurants stand to do four times as much business as they otherwise would, he said.
“That’s super exciting to even think about,” said Jeffrey. “We hope … everybody comes downtown a little early and grabs something to eat before the game.”
Some restaurants still struggling to recover from pandemic inflationary pressures and supply chain management issues are already preparing for a whiteout rush — and it couldn’t come at a better time, said Jeffrey.
“It really kind of mitigates a lot of those detriments that we’ve had to face for a while.”
Fans eager to get decked out in white Jets gear to cheer on their team can expect an update Friday about NHL playoff party plans in downtown Winnipeg.
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