| Upright: | 0.8 |
| Founded: | 2024 |
| Chrtitle: | CEO |
| Chairman: | Thomas Gilbert |
| League: | Northern Super League |
Ottawa Rapid FC (French: CF Rapide Ottawa) is a professional women's soccer club based in Ottawa, Ontario. It will compete in the Northern Super League, in the highest level of the Canadian soccer league system. The club will play its home matches at the 24,000-capacity TD Place Stadium in Lansdowne Park. One of the last two clubs to join as charter members of the league, the Rapid will play its inaugural season in 2025. The club's primary colour is light blue, with an orange accent, while its crest depicts the native peregrine falcon. Thomas Gilbert serves as the club's chief executive officer.
The club's existence was first disseminated at the espnW Summit in May 2024, where it was described alongside Montréal as the last two of the league's six charter clubs.[1] [2] [3] Details were initially scant, with the league's CEO Diane Matheson implying its development was behind the other five clubs.[4] The club's formal unveiling took place at a press conference at TD Place Stadium on 15 August, where their corporate leadership, branding, and venue were detailed for the first time.[5] [6]
Canadian advertising agency Critical Mass designed the club's branding, which uses light blue as a primary colour and orange as an accent – references to the "water, sky, and the power of nature around us", and the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill, respectively.[5] [7] [8] The club's name, Rapid, was a compromise between traditional North American "mascot" names, viscerality, and geographical context. The geology of the Ottawa Valley, and a "sense of speed and progress", were described by the club as imagery intended to be evoked by the name.[7] [8] While Ottawa is not officially bilingual, the club has an official French-language name: CF Rapide Ottawa, or Club de Foot Rapide Ottawa.[6]
The Rapid's crest prominently features the peregrine falcon, a bird native to Ottawa recognized as the fastest animal in the world, with a four-feathered wing representing the rivers Gatineau, Ottawa, and Rideau in its negative space.[7] [8] [9] The letter "O" outlines the crest, and is decorated with a small tulip on its top – a reference to the Canadian Tulip Festival that takes place annually in Ottawa.[8]
The Rapid will play their home games at TD Place Stadium in Lansdowne Park, located in the city's Glebe neighbourhood.[9] [10] The club will share the 24,000-capacity venue, which itself contains the TD Place Arena integrated into its northern grandstand, with five other concurrent tenants: the Atlético Ottawa soccer club, the Ottawa Redblacks Canadian football club, the PWHL Ottawa and Ottawa 67's ice hockey clubs, and the Ottawa BlackJacks basketball club.[10] Owned by the City of Ottawa and operated by the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, the precinct is currently slated for a CA$419 million redevelopment, which would replace the integrated stadium–arena with a new, separate stadium and arena complex, orbited by a number of residential tower blocks.[11] The cost blowout from its original CA$183 million budget attracted controversy to the project, leading to calls for it to be downscaled or scrapped altogether.[11] [12] [13]
Thomas Gilbert serves as the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Ottawa Rapid, and leads an executive team consisting former Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group executive Stephanie Spruston as chief operating officer (COO), Heidi Bloomfield as chief sport officer, and former national team player Kristina Kiss as a technical director.[6] [14] Gilbert was approached by the Northern Super League CEO Diana Matheson, who he studied for an Executive MBA with at Princeton University, for a role in the league in 2022, when he was running a frozen pizza manufacturing company.[10]