Michael Friisdahl
Michael Friisdahl is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, a sports and entertainment company. Friisdahl was appointed in October 2015, and is responsible for overseeing MLSE's sports properties which includes ownership of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC, Toronto Marlies, Raptors 905 and Toronto FC II. It also owns and operates Scotiabank Arena, a multi-purpose indoor sporting arena in Toronto that has hosted more than 36 million fans over 2,500 events since its opening in 1999, and has invested in five other Toronto’s sports facilities — Coca-Cola Coliseum, home of the Marlies; BMO Field, home of Toronto FC; Lamport Stadium; the MasterCard Centre for Hockey Excellence, the practice facility for the Maple Leafs and Marlies and the OVO Athletic Centre, the practice facility of the Raptors. MLSE operates and manages events at Ricoh Coliseum, BMO Field and BioSteel Centre.
Prior to joining MLSE, Friisdahl served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Air Canada’s Leisure Group since it was formed in 2012, combining Air Canada Vacations tour operations with Air Canada Rouge, a vacation and leisure airline subsidiary of Air Canada. With Friisdahl at the helm, Air Canada rouge saw significant growth and was an important contributor to Air Canada’s very successful transformation. Following the launch of Air Canada rouge with just 4 aircraft serving 13 destinations, the airline grew to include a total of 34 planes and offers competitively priced travel to more than 75 routes in Europe, Mexico, the U.S., the Caribbean, Asia, South America and Canada. Air Canada rouge, through a partnership with the Disney Institute, built a unique culture focused on customer engagement, along with applying next-generation communications technology to create an engaging and customer friendly experience. Air Canada rouge was one of the first airlines in North America to offer streaming inflight entertainment to its customers’ own devices.
