Recently I have been honing my answers (for anyone who’s asking) on what are the best sports promotions.  Last week I wrote about the “White Out” (pros and cons) and this week I wanted to highlight another favorite, the Teddy Bear Toss.

A Teddy bear toss is a popular Christmas season promotion at many minor and junior hockey arenas throughout North America. Fans are encouraged to bring teddy bears to the game, and to throw them onto the ice when the home team scores it’s first goal. The toys are then gathered up to be donated as Christmas presents to hospitals and charities. In many cases, the players themselves personally donate some of the bears to children at area hospitals.

Perhaps the most popular example of this promotion is the Calgary Hitmen’s annual toss game, which they bill as “the worlds largest teddy bear toss.” On December 04, 2005, Hitmen fans broke their own CHL record when 13,650 bears were thrown onto the ice after Brodie Dupont scored midway through the first period.

This years event was also a major success in Portland, where Winter Hawk fans threw 10,742 bears onto the ice when Brandon Dubinsky scored the Hawks first goal. Including corporate donations, the Winterhawks sent 21,067 bears to area charities.  from Wikipedia

First of all, you know you have a great promotion when you have a Wikipedia listing.

For the Gameops.com Best of Awards we consider creativity, entertainment value, media exposure, drawing power, and execution of the operations….so if you apply those tests the Toss wouldn’t fair well.

But that doesn’t stop me from thinking it’s a great promotion and one that every team (particularily hockey) teams should consider. 

-cudo