While the City of Prince George receives tickets for events held at municipally owned venues like the CN Centre, they are not generally distributed to members of city council.
On June 2, the CBC published a report on how complimentary tickets received by municipalities for events held at taxpayers-owned facilities are distributed in Kamloops, Victoria, Kelowna and Prince George.
Of those four cities, only Kamloops was said to track who those tickets are given out to and an example was provided of tickets to Memorial Cup-related events being offered to that city’s mayor and city councillors in 2023.
When following up on this report, the Citizen received a statement from Prince George’s director of civic facilities and events Andy Beesley, who said that while promoters often supply the city with tickets for events at the CN Centre, “the number of tickets always varies and is never predetermined by the city.”
“There is an official procedure that outlines how we handle complimentary tickets (and/or city suite usage) for ticketed events at the CN Centre,” Beesley said. “We also ensure that we keep track of where the tickets are distributed too each time. As a general rule and practice in our city, our mayor and councillors do not ask for and do not receive complimentary tickets for ticketed events at the CN Centre.“
A city spokesperson provided the Citizen with a copy of the administrative procedure for the city’s private suite at the CN Centre and complimentary tickets for events at the venue, dated July 7, 2024.
It lists five priorities for the use of the suite and tickets in descending importance to the city.
The highest-priority uses are to generate revenue for the city by renting out the private suite or letting the suite and complimentary tickets be used to support “revenue generation to partners working with the CN Centre to promote ticket sales to events.”
The next priority is to assign use of the suite and tickets to market the city by creating and maintaining “positive relationships with individuals, groups, governments, business, organizations and corporation that could, potentially, bring new opportunities to the city.”
After that, the priorities are to use the suite and tickets to market the city’s facilities and recognize businesses, groups, individuals, city staff or other people for their contributions to the city.
“The director of civic facilities & events will work with the manager of CN Centre & entertainment to equitably, reasonably and responsibly manage booking the CN Centre suite and distributing any complimentary tickets in accordance with the priorities above,” the document concludes.
“In instances of potential conflict, where more than one user group is identified as a potential guest or renter for events, and/or if the mayor or councillors request the use of the suite or tickets, the city manager will work with the director of civic Facilities & events to determine appropriate decisions on usage
As an example of how it handles ticket requests, the spokesperson also provided a list of how the city distributed the 20 tickets it received for the Bachman-Turner Overdrive concert on April 8.
Four tickets went to members of the arena crew, eight tickets went to Levy Restaurants, the company that provides food and beverage services at the CN Centre and the Prince George Conference and Civic Centre, two went to Northern Spirit Transportation, two went to Prince George Cougars volunteers and two tickets went to local conservationist Jim Good.
In another statement, the city’s manager of entertainment Glen Mikkelsen explained how the tickets were assigned for that show.
“The tickets for the BTO show were given to our venue partners to use as staff prizes, Cougars game volunteers, and Jim Good – who does not have the financial means to attend concerts, but is a tremendous music fan,” Mikkelsen said.
“Jim ultimately had the opportunity to meet Randy Bachman and show Randy albums from his record collection. Some records Randy had never seen before! They spent about 20 minutes together just before Randy went on stage.”
Mikkelsen said that no tickets were used by Mayor Simon Yu or any councillors for this event.
“I’d like to reinforce that over almost 25 years in this role, the various mayors and councillors have been very, very respectful and responsible about requesting complimentary tickets,” Mikkelsen said. “They understand that they need to purchase floor and bleacher tickets, if they come to events.”
