From shark attacks to urban snowboarding, SPOHOX 2025 offered actionable insights on resilience, risk-taking, efficiency and community impact.
By Angela Kryhul
Launched in 2023 as a boutique gathering for sport event professionals, SpoHo Xperience (SPOHOX) has grown into a collaborative forum where industry leaders exchange ideas and innovations.
The 2025 edition, held October 29–30 in Regina, featured case study presentations by five thought leaders, touching on the power of resilience, taking risks, reducing inefficiencies and spreading positivity.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the Spo Ho X Power Play sessions.
Lucas Arsenault: Resilience in motion
Canadian kitesurfing champion Lucas Arsenault, born and raised on Prince Edward Island, delivered one of the most moving sessions of SPOHOX 2025.
In May 2024, while snorkeling in Turks and Caicos, Arsenault survived a rare shark attack that resulted in the loss of his leg. Rather than retreat, he turned recovery into a mission of purpose, undergoing grueling rehabilitation and embracing public speaking.
With raw honesty, he shared lessons on mindset, perseverance and positivity—reminding audiences that resilience is built by showing up every day and never giving up.
Brendan Matthews: Bringing snowboarding to the city
Brendan Matthews, vice-president of business development and partnership at Canada Snowboard, outlined the bold vision behind The Grind Series, an initiative bringing snowboarding to urban centres through events like The Style Experience, FIS Snowboard Big Air World Cup at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium and Snowboard Rail Jam in Regina earlier this year.
Designed to attract new audiences, establish new revenue streams and create athlete pathways, the series leverages municipal partnerships and sponsorships to expand accessibility.
“Rail jam, or street style, is starting to become more mainstream, so we said, ‘why don’t we bring snowboarding to the people, engage with new fans and create something really new and noteworthy that people would talk about,’” Matthews says. “So we created an entire new series of snowboarding in Canada and brought it to places that you wouldn’t think snowboarding should exist, like Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton.”
Takeaways from Matthews’ presentation include the importance of piloting small events to build trust and prove value, taking risks to create new opportunities and that “thinking differently” can open doors to new funding, fan engagement and community impact.
With The Grind Series now gaining recognition, the goal is to grow the series to five stops in 2026 and seven in 2027.
Tyler Childs: Tech, efficiency and collaboration
Tyler Childs, CEO and founder of Tournkey, explored the fragmented world of event technology, highlighting how the use of multiple platforms and inefficient processes cost the sports industry time, money and opportunity.
Drawing on McKinsey and Company data, Childs underscored the need to reduce waste, streamline systems and share expertise across stakeholders. Childs called for integrated modelling and a collaborative approach to unify registration, ticketing and volunteer management.
Citing examples from basketball tournaments in Kentucky and the Niagara 2022 Canada Summer Games, he showed how innovation and trust-based partnerships can improve efficiency. His message was clear: automation, shared learning and AI-driven tools will shape a smarter, more sustainable future for sporting events.
Dr. Jen Fry: Simplifying sports travel
Dr. Jen Fry, founder and CEO of Coordle, a travel coordination app, shared how her background as a college volleyball coach and a PhD in Sports Geography, inspired a tech-driven solution to one of sport tourism’s biggest headaches: group travel logistics.
Coordle centralizes, predicts and personalizes group travel experiences by eliminating the chaos of juggling multiple platforms. Trip details, itineraries, communication and more are all in one place. The app also analyzes visitor demographic data and dietary preferences to make dynamic, location-based recommendations for nearby places to eat.
“Travellers don’t want to scroll through 15 different recommendations on TripAdvisor and wonder which one is true. They want trusted options that have been vetted,” Fry explains. “Coordle puts time and location-based offers in the same itineraries that the groups are already using.”
Josh Stewart-Van Dusen: The Good Morning Project
On June 3, 2025, Josh Stewart-Van Dusen, CEO of Tandem X Visuals, introduced the Good Morning Project—a grassroots campaign that turned a simple daily greeting into a citywide place-making ritual in Regina.
The goal was simple: Spread positivity in Regina. For the past five months, short “good morning” messages have generated nearly two million organic social media impressions.
According to Stewart-Van Dusen, small, consistent interactions build civic pride, spark participation and deliver measurable benefits. The city embraced the idea, with the mayor DJing at a food bank fundraiser, McDonald’s Canada and other businesses promoting the project, and the Regina Open Door Society painting “Good Morning” on sidewalks in multiple languages.
Stewart-Van Dusen’s advice to other changemakers: systemize simple rituals; prioritize kindness, promise and city pride; leverage partnerships and sponsors; and let the community own and amplify the movement. Small gestures, repeated, can shift perception, boost engagement and create economic impact and well-being.
Save the Date: The next SpoHo Xperience takes place November 4-6, 2026, in Saint John, NB.
Published November 2025
