Champions Hockey League CEO Martin Baumann explains the tagline "Where Europe Comes to Play".

The Champions Hockey League will be Europe’s pre-eminent competition for the continent’s club-hockey supremacy. Just as football, basketball, and handball have long-established competitions to determine club supremacy, the Champions Hockey League will be the same for our sport.

With the focus on developing and exposing club hockey throughout the “old continent”, the tagline “Where Europe Comes to Play” was chosen.

Champions Hockey League CEO Martin Baumann explains: “It is our strategy to establish a very solid presence in Europe,” said Baumann, “And not only in the traditional hockey markets. We have a strong focus on leagues and clubs from what we have identified as Challenge Leagues, and, therefore, through our Wild Card system have been able to invite teams from Norway, France, Denmark, and Great Britain. Furthermore, with Bolzano winning the EBEL league, we have clubs from twelve countries and eleven leagues.”

“So Where Europe Comes to Play reflects very well what we are about,” said Baumann. "It also complements the Champions Hockey League name. The league brand communicates the pre-eminence of the competition, while the tagline positions us geographically and emotionally.”

The tagline has a double meaning. Obviously, it identifies the playing ground of the Champions Hockey League. But, it also alludes to one of the most frequent sayings in hockey and also other sports. When a coach wants to praise a player, he will often say simply, “He comes to play.” To go further, he will say, “He comes to play every night.”

This is an affectionate understatement which makes it clear that not only is the player coming to play, he is doing so with the utmost seriousness and consistency, taking pride in his play every shift, the way only a hockey player can.

This passion is what the CHL strives for, from its players and the organization itself. That passion to play every night, to give fans only the very best hockey, is what the CHL symbolizes and celebrates.

“It is all those subtle messages which this phrase embodies which makes 'Where Europe Comes to Play' such a good motto during our initial positioning phase,” Baumann concluded.

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