Most winter sports teams dread bad weather but a snowstorm was the best thing that could happen to the Quad City Storm this inaugural season. A Tuesday game in January that got hit with 6” of snow became the Storm’s lucky charm and could gain them national attention with their rescheduled game. The new date of March 9 is the day before the band KISS’ Farewell Tour concert date at the TaxSlayer Center in Moline. When Storm owner, John Dawson, realized this he reached out to the jersey companies to see if the team could snag KISS jerseys for their game. K1 helped get this arranged and the promotion took off. “The KISS marketing and licensing team have been amazing to work with,” said Storm President, Gwen Tombergs. “KISS is very philanthropic and wants to make a difference in every community they play in, so as soon as they heard we wanted to auction the jerseys off and donate the money to our local USO, they were onboard.”
But that wasn’t all. The band agreed to autograph their personalized Storm jerseys so the team could auction them off too. The autographed jerseys will be sold on an online auction so that KISS fans around the world can participate. The online auction will run March 8-18 and can be found on quadcitystorm.com. The Storm is also taking it up a notch by having the world’s largest KISS Face Fan picture during the game. 4000 fans will be given a KISS mask to hold up at the same time for a panoramic shot of the crowd. There will also be someone dressed as KISS to drop the puck and four KISS babies for a baby race. A jersey will be raffled off with two tickets to the KISS concert the next day. All net proceeds from the KISS promotions will be given to the USO. “Our hopes are to raise over $50,000 just from the jerseys auctions,” Tombergs said. “The Storm have been giving back to nonprofits in our community all season long but this game could take our total over $100,000!”
The Storm’s March 9 game is at the TaxSlayer Center, 1201 River Drive, Moline, Illinois, against the Evansville Thunderbolts with game time starting at 7:10pm. More information is available by contacting Gwen Tombergs directly or at quadcitystorm.com.