Windsor and London will not host the 2019 World Junior Hockey Championship.
Hockey Canada announced Thursday that the tournament will be held in Vancouver and Victoria, B.C.
The news came as a disappointment to Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens.
"I guess we're slightly disappointed, of course, we worked very hard with the city of London to put together a very comprehensive, complete bid," Dilkens told CTV Windsor Thursday afternoon.
"We knew that if Hockey Canada was looking to locate the juniors in a junior hockey city that this certainly would have been a strong bid, but clearly the move to go to Vancouver and Victoria shows they wanted to stay in a large market," he said.
Windsor had committed $400,000 dollars for hosting, while London was on the hook for $600,000. But none of that money will be spent since the tournament will not be held in Southwestern Ontario.
The economic benefit of hosting is pegged around $20 million.
Windsor's sports tourism officer, Samantha Magalas, told CTV Windsor, "it would have been one of the larger events for this entire region."
The 2017 tournament will take place in Buffalo.
Last year’s tournament took place in Helsinki, Finland with the host country winning gold for the second consecutive year.
Mayor Dilkens is not ruling out another bid in 2021. "We keep tweaking and go forward, this is not going to deter us in any way, and we're already on to the next opportunity," he said.
"We respect that decison and they'll probably see us again in the future."
