Marty Hastings – Kamloops This Week
Don Moores is the Kamloops Blazers’ business Beethoven.
“It’s about having that symphony leader and we’ve got our guy,” said Blazers’ majority owner Tom Gaglardi, speaking June 30 at his Sandman Signature Hotel on Lorne Street.
“We needed to have a hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we were doing everything we could on the business side. There are new tricks and strategies. Frankly, we haven’t spent the proper amount of time creating and implementing them.”
Moores, a born-and-bred Kamloopsian, was named the local WHL club’s president, chief operating officer and alternate governor at the press conference.
He will look to borrow from the Pied Piper with his first tune, aiming to compose a marketing melody that will lead butts into Sandman Centre seats.
The Blazers’ average attendance at home games in 2015-2016 was 3,769, good for 15th in the 22-team league, down from 3,994 in 2014-2015 and 4,148 in 2013-2014.
“That’s what I do. I’m a marketing guy” said Moores, who played with the Kamloops Chiefs in the 1970s and was an assistant coach with the Blazers from 1985 to 1990.
Moores’ experience in management roles is extensive, having been publisher of Kamloops This Week, vice-president of Cariboo Press, president of Black Press Prairie Operations and president of Black Press Interior Division before starting fresh on Vancouver Island.
He became co-owner and general manager of Nanaimo-based Maximum Yield Publications, a magazine and event-management company, in 2008.
“It all comes full circle, doesn’t it?” said Moores, who coached Blazers’ part-owners Mark Recchi and Darryl Sydor when they wore Blue and Orange in Kamloops.
