Brothers in arms

“I went down to help Bruce on the business side so he could concentrate more on the hockey side. I was running a car dealership in Canmore, Alberta, and decided to join Bruce”, Hamilton recalls in an interview with RocketFAN.

Hamilton was good at selling cars. Peddling hockey tickets was a different animal.

“We had a really good marketing manager at the time in Tacoma by the name of Mark Dennis. We hired him with his involvement in baseball. He understood the American market. I was there as a backup to him while concentrating on the business side”, Hamilton added.

Selling tickets wasn’t easy in the early going. A nearby rival would see close to 15,000 fans attend a Tacoma Rockets home game. Sadly, if the Brandon Wheat Kings paid a visit, only 2,500 patrons would show up.

“Our rink (Tacoma Dome) wasn’t great. It was designed for indoor football, not hockey. We had large crowds against Seattle, but when the Canadian teams would come down, our attendance would just fall off”, Hamilton recalls.

If you’ve ever met Gavin Hamilton, he is outgoing and usually walks around with a smile on his face. His older brother, Bruce, is a little more intense. When asked about the differences in personality, Gavin, chose his words wisely.

“Very few people get to work with my brother and my wife”, Gavin said with a chuckle.

It is indeed unique. Hamilton is married to the team’s director of marketing Anne-Marie Hamilton.

When the Rockets decided to leave Tacoma for Kelowna in the summer of 1994, the real concern was playing in Memorial Arena. Not only was it built in 1945, but it also accommodated only 2,600 fans.

“We were actually quite excited with the look of Memorial Arena”, Hamilton continued. “We knew it was going to be small, but we knew with the limited number of seats that we could make it through, and we were coming into a city with real good hockey fans.”

After four years at Memorial Arena, the team moved into the freshly-built Prospera Place in the fall of 2000. It was a significant upgrade, with seating for 6,007 fans.

According to the website hockeyDB.com, the Rockets averaged the sixth-best attendance last season with 3,779 fans per game. Only Everett (5,341) and Spokane (4,419) were better in the Western Conference.

“We are trying to get the college students coming to games. The university students. The high school kids”, Hamilton said. “The younger generation, if you want to put it that way, but it is a challenge because they aren’t necessarily interested in spending three hours at the rink watching a hockey game.”

The evolution of the smartphone has been both a blessing and a curse. Hamilton says while it is a tremendous tool to get the teams message out to its fans with the use of social media, it can draw attention away from what’s happening on the ice.

“When I stand around watching the game or during the intermission, I would say 70 percent of the fans have their phones out and they are doing something on it. We need to keep them engaged in the game, and it’s a challenge.”

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by Regan Bartel

Brothers in arms

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