City in safe hands as Devils join Team Cardiff

The Cardiff Devils have signed up with Cardiff & Co, the organisation charged with promoting Cardiff as part of their ambitious plans to take ice hockey in the capital to another level.   

Cardiff’s latest Corporate Champions have always placed a great deal of emphasis on promoting the city as a means of recruiting new players, attracting investment and growing their fan base.  According to Devils’ Director of Hockey, Shannon Hope, forging a close relationship with Cardiff & Co, was the obvious thing to do.

Commenting Shannon Hope said, “Professional ice hockey is an extremely marketable product which has a huge global following and a well-established and growing fan base in the UK.  We (the Cardiff Devils) are an extremely ambitious club.   Our ability to attract the best players, often from overseas, relies, to a large extent, on being able to persuade them that Cardiff’s offer is second to none in terms of quality of life and the richness of its infrastructure.  Clearly, recent developments, such as the Millennium Stadium, the Wales Millennium Centre and the new St David’s Shopping Centre place us in a far stronger position than we were ten years ago.”

He added, “We’ve been following Cardiff & Co’s progress over recent months and have been impressed by the energy and purpose behind some of their campaigns to raise the city’s profile.  In early discussions with Cardiff & Co, we found that we were on the same wave length in terms of our mutual desire to tap into new markets for the benefit of both the city and the Cardiff Devils.  

One of the ideas that originated from those early talks is the idea of developing links between New Jersey and Cardiff and our respective ice hockey teams.  The Cardiff Devils took their name from the New Jersey Devils, founded in 1985, a year before our inception.  An exciting possibility which we are keen to explore with Cardiff & Co is the idea of a regular fixture between our clubs, both in Cardiff, and on the other side of the Atlantic.  If that proves successful, there could be commercial spin-offs in terms of developing trade relationships between the state of New Jersey and the Cardiff city-region.  The prospect of playing the New Jersey Devils in Cardiff is obviously an exciting one is something we will be working on over the coming months.”

Richard Thomas, Cardiff & Co’s Managing Director said, “I’m delighted to welcome the Cardiff Devils on board.  The city’s strength lies in its combined and diverse offer.  We all have something to contribute to realising Cardiff’s potential and will achieve far greater success by working together rather than working in isolation.  Fans of the Cardiff Devils and visitors to their web site will know the value that the Devils place on promoting the city.  I look forward to working with them and sharing our network of contacts which will hopefully open new doors in terms of spreading the Cardiff message and attracting new investment.”

02/10/2009