Evansville Icemen Announce Hiring of Jim Riggs as Chief Operating Officer

Running a professional hockey teams involves much more than just having enough guys to field a team, and someone to coach them. There's marketing, ticket sales, advertising, and more going on behind the scenes that fans don't see. It's not an easy job by any stretch of the imagination, and the Icemen have found the guy they think can handle the job.

Team owner Ron Geary announced on Thursday that the Evansville IceMen have hired hockey management veteran Jim Riggs as the team’s Chief Operating Officer.

Riggs, a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will oversee the team’s sponsorship & ticket sales, marketing, community relations, media relations, game day operations, and business operations, and work closely with IceMen Head Coach Dwight Mullins to assist him as needed with hockey administration.

Riggs brings over twenty-five years of professional sports management experience to the Evansville IceMen organization. Since 2011, he has been the President of Sports Profit Consultants, a sports marketing consulting company, which works with individual teams and leagues to help them improve their front office operations. Jim was an integral part of the start-up of the ECHL (as the league’s first Director of Communications working with Commissioner Emeritus Patrick J. Kelly), the Central Hockey League, and the Atlantic Coast Hockey League (now the SPHL). A highlight of his career was serving as the General Manager of the Central Hockey League’s Memphis RiverKings for ten years. During his time in Memphis, the RiverKings were twice named the area’s “Most Popular Team”, qualified for the playoffs in seven of ten years, and went to the CHL finals twice; winning the CHL Championship in the 2001-2002 season. The team was also in the forefront of the CHL in the areas of marketing and promotions. Memphis was the first team in all of professional hockey to introduce “human bowling” as an intermission event and Jim was instrumental in bringing together the “Hanson Brothers” from the movie “Slap Shot” as a touring act. Memphis had the very first hard sellout in the revived Central Hockey League and all of the team’s attendance and revenue records were set under his leadership.

“It is an honor to be joining the IceMen organization and have the opportunity to work with a first class owner in Mr. Ron Geary and the professional staff that he has assembled,” said Jim Riggs. “The success of a Chief Operating Officer or General Manager at the minor professional hockey level really depends upon the quality of ownership and staff that he is working with. Fortunately, we had both in Memphis during my ten years there and I’ve been looking for a similar situation to get involved with. Mr. Geary has one of the finest organizations in the ECHL and it will be my job to assist everyone involved in making the Evansville IceMen the best it can be both on and off the ice.”

Riggs professional sports management experience also includes working in the American Hockey League as the Assistant General Manager & Vice President of Communications for the Baltimore Skipjacks (Washington Capitals affiliate), and as General Manager for the CHL Bloomington PrairieThunder (where he first met IceMen Team Owner Ron Geary). And his sports background also includes serving as the Director of Business Development for the 2006 AutoZone Liberty Bowl Football Classic in Memphis, Tennessee. Jim believes in “out-of-the-box” marketing and promotions. He’s stood on an outdoor billboard, driven a Zamboni for eight straight hours, and ridden a roller coaster for twelve hours, all to promote his hockey team. Riggs is a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pttsburgh.

“I’m pleased that Jim has decided to join the IceMen organization,” said Team Owner Ron Geary. “He was a part of the recent search committee that recommended Dwight Mullins as our new Head Coach. Based on his extensive sports management background, I can see Jim assisting me with a number of projects and mentoring our sales and marketing folks.”

Season tickets for the 2014-2015 season are available now. For more information, call 812-421-GOAL (4625).