The Oshawa Generals have apologized after asking fans this week to shower before attending the team’s home games.
The situation first started producing social media chatter on Tuesday, after season ticket holders received an email with a hygiene reminder.
“If you went to the gym or did something that produced body odour, please shower before attending the game,” reads the email sent out by Jason Hickman, the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) team’s director of ticket sales and service.
CBC News has reached out to Hickman and the Oshawa Generals media spokesperson for comment.
In the same email, Hickman asked fans to use hand-sanitizing stations throughout the arena, cover coughs and sneezes, and “be mindful of personal cleanliness while sharing our space with fellow fans.”
“These small actions make a big difference in keeping our community healthy and our events running smoothly,” he wrote.
We’ll serve our 2 minutes for this one.<a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/GensNation?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#GensNation</a> <a href=”https://t.co/KkORGvqiFa”>pic.twitter.com/KkORGvqiFa</a>
The team issued an apology on social media on Thursday, which said, “it’s not our place to overstep like we did. We are sorry and hopefully we can wash this one off.”
Hickman told DurhamRegion.com Thursday that he gets a lot of complaints from fans “about the [person] next to them smelling like cat pee, bad breath, this, that and everything else.”
He told the news outlet that these complaints have increased over the last month.
In a city that some call “the Dirty ‘Shwa,” one fan said the Generals’ email plays into negative stereotypes.
Ashley has been attending Generals games since she was a child. CBC News is not using her full name because she works in an industry tied to the OHL and is concerned about speaking publicly.
While she’s not a season ticket holder, she said she thought the email was funny and she wasn’t personally offended. But she said the email drew extra attention because of Oshawa’s nickname.
“It just played into that … confirming that everyone in Oshawa is dirty and we have to be told to shower before we go to the game,” she said.
“It’s not a great look on Oshawa, but for me personally, I just laughed about that.”
Ashley said she hasn’t noticed bad smells at games before. She called the email a blunder for the team, saying they should have addressed odours by approaching people in person.
“[They should have] handled it in a more personal and human way, than in such a wide way that is going to offend so many different people and all the season ticket holders that you rely on to keep the team going,” she said.
