CHL Season Review 2018/19

EDITORIAL T he Champions Hockey League is already five years old. How time flies! Anyhow, we are still in the build-up phase of our product. Brand awareness and media exposure are growing, players and coaches are keen to challenge themselves against the best teams in Europe and clubs strive for international prestige and the opportunity to build their brands outside of their domestic markets. But nevertheless, we still have a way to go until fans and media fully jump on the bandwagon without any objections. This is the challenge the CHL Office tackles on a daily basis, with the strong support of the clubs and other stakeholders. A focus for the 2018/19 season was to increase the CHL fan experience, based on the feedback we received from approxi- mately 21,000 people in our comprehensive Fan Survey conducted in November 2017. We’ve discussed this feedback internally for many hours, and also shared the survey’s findings intensively with our clubs. The launch of the CHL Fan Challenge was a direct result of this: an interactive platform for fans all over the world which allowed them to engage with the CHL and the parti- cipating clubs, to learn about the European ice hockey family – and to win great prizes (for more information see page 38). As each team’s involvement is crucial for the success of such an activity, we’ve allocated prize money for the best ranked teams in order to heat up the race between them. Of course, we not only wanted the clubs to be active in the Fan Challenge, but also seeing their own ideas and creativity when it comes to enhancing the CHL fan experience. That’s why we introduced the CHL Marketing Award. This initiative allowed us to award the most creative and active club, but also to collect best practice cases which can be shared with the whole CHL family. The knowledge transfer across borders is one of the CHL’s priorities and also one of the major advantages which CHL participation offers. 50% of last season’s clubs applied for the first CHL Marketing Award (see page 44 for the result) – a good amount, but I wish for the number to increase in the next edition. Every day we are working to evolve our pro- duct and offer fans an exciting experience with the CHL, both online and offline. A new edition of our pan-European Fan Survey is planned for late 2019 and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the efforts of the CHL family are perceived. I would like to thank all of our stakeholders for their continued commitment and their support in 2018/19 and look forward to organising an even better CHL campaign together with all of you in 2019/20. Martin Baumann, CEO Martin Baumann is proud of the successful implementation of the CHL Fan Challenge and the CHL Marketing Award, two initiatives which helped to increase the fan experience. 5 CEO’S MESSAGE “ OUR FOCUS IS TO INCREASE THE CHL FAN EXPERIENCE.” Martin Baumann, CHL CEO