Last updated 3rd November 2026
This policy explains what happens to your personal information when you use the Coventry Blaze website, why, and what your rights are. We have written it in plain English rather than legal language. If anything is unclear, ask us and we will explain.
1. Who we are
The Coventry Blaze website is run by Elite Ice Sports Ltd. We are the data controller for the information described in this policy, which means we decide how it is used and we are responsible for keeping it safe.
Elite Ice Sports Ltd
Registered in England and Wales, company number 07470954
Registered office: 298 Penistone Road, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S6 2FU
Email: [email protected]
Our website is built and looked after for us by RH Elite Services Limited, a digital agency in Coventry, which also manages our analytics and advertising accounts. They act only on our instructions.
2. What this policy covers
This policy covers coventryblaze.co.uk. It does not cover other organisations’ websites, even where we link to them. Match tickets are sold through a separate ticketing website, our online shop runs on a separate shop platform, and Blaze TV, our social media pages and the video platform that hosts our videos all have their own privacy policies. Section 6 explains where our site connects to services like these.
3. The information we collect, and why
When you contact us through the website
Our contact form asks for your name, your email address and your message. We use them to read your enquiry and reply to you. Messages are emailed to the club office and are not stored in a database on the website. The legal basis is our legitimate interests: if you write to us, we need your details to answer. You do not have to use the form; you can email or telephone the club instead.
If, and only if, you have said yes to Advertising (section 4), sending the form also sends a scrambled copy of your email address to the advertising platforms named in section 4, so they can tell us whether one of our adverts led to your enquiry. If you have not said yes, nothing about your enquiry goes to them.
When you sign up to Blaze Mail
Our newsletter signup asks for your email address and, if you choose, your first and last name. We also note which page you signed up from. We use these details to send you club news, ticket information and offers by email.
The legal basis is your consent, which you give by ticking the box on the signup form. So that we can show you agreed, we keep the wording you agreed to, the date and time, and the IP address you signed up from. You can withdraw your consent at any time with the unsubscribe link in any of our emails, or by emailing us. That does not affect emails already sent.
As with the contact form, if you have said yes to Advertising, signing up also sends the advertising platforms a scrambled copy of your email address and name to measure whether an advert led to the signup.
Site statistics, unless you switch them off
From your first page, unless you turn it off, we count how the website is used so that we can improve it: which pages are visited and for how long, how far down a page people scroll, which links and buttons are clicked (including links to tickets, the shop, Blaze TV, our partners and our social media), downloads such as the fixtures calendar, videos played, pages that cannot be found, and when a form is started, sent or comes back with a problem. We never record what you type into a form, with one exception: the search box on our News page. We count the words people search for there, so we can see what supporters are looking for and make it easier to find. They are kept with the rest of the site statistics, for two months, and are not linked to your name. If you have said yes to Behaviour and recordings or to Advertising, those tools receive the words too, as part of the address of the results page. Please don’t type personal details into the search box.
The law allows this kind of measurement without asking first, provided it is used only to improve the website, you are told about it clearly, and you can switch it off simply and for free. That is what the banner and the Cookie settings link do. The legal basis under data protection law is our legitimate interests in understanding how our website is used so that we can make it better for supporters. We have weighed that against your privacy: the statistics are used for nothing else, they are not used for advertising, they are not linked to your name, and they are kept for two months.
Behaviour and recordings, only if you say yes
If you say yes to Behaviour and recordings, we also record in more detail how pages are used: every click, where people click repeatedly out of frustration or on something that does not respond, how far they scroll, how quickly pages load and any technical errors. We use this to build heat maps of where people click and scroll, to see a history of your visits to our site over time, and to watch replays of how pages are used. Replays never capture what you type. Every form field is hidden before anything leaves your device. From time to time we may also ask a short question on the site, or show two versions of a page to see which works better, using the same tools and the same yes.
The legal basis is your consent. You can withdraw it at any time.
Advertising, only if you say yes
If you say yes to Advertising, we can show Coventry Blaze adverts on other websites and apps to people who have visited our site, and see whether an advert led to a ticket click, a shop visit, a Blaze Mail signup or an enquiry. Section 4 explains exactly what is shared and with whom. The legal basis is your consent.
Information collected automatically
Like almost every website, our servers keep a short technical record of the requests they receive: your IP address, the pages requested, the date and time and basic browser information. Our website security service also checks requests, and the forms run a quick automatic check that the person using them is not a bot. We use these to keep the site working, to diagnose faults and to protect it and our supporters against attacks, spam and abuse. The legal basis is our legitimate interests in keeping the website secure. They are not used to profile you or to advertise to you.
Links we share
Links we post on social media, in Blaze Mail and on partners’ websites carry a short tag in the web address saying where the link was posted. Our site statistics read it so that we can see which posts bring people to the site. The tag identifies the post, not you.
If you have said yes to Advertising, when you click through from our site to the ticketing website we add that tag to the link, and a random code for your browser goes with it, so we can see which post or advert led to a ticket sale. Without your yes, those links go exactly as they are.
4. Cookies and similar technologies
A cookie is a small file a website asks your browser to store on your device. Some tools store similar information in your browser’s own storage or read information from your device in other ways; everything in this section applies to those too.
We put them into four groups. Only the first two run without asking, and the second only until you switch it off. Nothing in the last two loads, and nothing is sent for those purposes, until you say yes.
How you choose
On your first visit a banner tells you that site statistics are on and lets you turn them off with one click. It also asks whether you are happy with Behaviour and recordings and with Advertising. You can accept everything, say no thanks, or choose each group separately. Saying no is as quick as saying yes, and the site works normally either way.
You can change your mind whenever you like with the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page. If you turn a group off, those tools stop, the page reloads and we delete the cookies we are able to delete. Some cookies belonging to the advertising platforms sit on their own websites rather than ours, and those you can clear in your browser. Blocking cookies in your browser is always open to you too, though our banner is the simplest way to object to site statistics.
Your choices, and when you made them, are kept in a cookie on your device and in a record on our server, linked by a random code rather than your name, so that we can honour your choice and show what you agreed to. If we add a new tool that needs your agreement, we will ask you again rather than assume your earlier answer covers it.
Group 1: strictly necessary
These make the website work and keep it secure. The law allows them without asking, because without them the site cannot be provided. They cannot be turned off.
| Cookie | What it does | How long it lasts | Set by |
|---|---|---|---|
| coventry-blaze-session | Keeps track of your visit as you move from page to page, so the site behaves consistently. | 2 hours from your last activity | This website |
| XSRF-TOKEN | Confirms a form was genuinely sent from our website, which blocks a common type of attack. | 2 hours from your last activity | This website |
| blaze_cookie_consent | Remembers your choices in the cookie banner and when you made them. | 12 months | This website |
Group 2: site statistics (on unless you switch it off)
These count how the site is used, as described in section 3, using Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google LLC. Google Analytics uses the cookies below to collect information about how the site is used and passes it to Google, which processes it into reports for us. Google explains how it uses information from sites that use its services at google.com/policies/privacy/partners. It is set up so that it acts only on our instructions and for our purposes:
- it does not share our data with the provider for its own purposes, and does not use it for advertising;
- features that link visits to people’s accounts with the provider, and ad personalisation, are switched off and stay off, even if you say yes to Advertising;
- it is not linked to any of our advertising accounts, and we do not give it your name, email address or any account identifier;
- the detailed records are deleted after two months; only overall totals are kept beyond that.
| Cookie | What it does | How long it lasts | Set by |
|---|---|---|---|
| _ga | Tells one browser apart from another so visits are not double counted. It does not tell us who you are. | 2 years | Google Analytics |
| _ga_ followed by our account reference | Keeps track of a single visit to the site. | 2 years | Google Analytics |
Group 3: behaviour and recordings (only if you say yes)
These provide the detailed behaviour records, heat maps, visit history, replays, questions and page tests described in section 3. They come from a product analytics and session recording provider, which stores what it collects for us in the European Union. It does not record your IP address, and anything you type is hidden.
| Cookie | What it does | How long it lasts | Set by |
|---|---|---|---|
| A cookie whose name begins ph_, plus entries in your browser’s own storage | Holds a random identifier for your browser and the current visit, so separate pages and visits can be joined up. | 365 days | Our product analytics provider |
Group 4: advertising (only if you say yes)
These let us show Coventry Blaze adverts to people who have visited the site, and measure whether an advert led to a ticket click, a shop visit, a Blaze Mail signup or an enquiry. We use two advertising platforms: Google (Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, California, USA) for adverts in Google search, on YouTube and on other websites, and Meta (Meta Platforms, Inc., 1 Meta Way, Menlo Park, California, USA) for adverts on Facebook and Instagram. We name them because they use what they receive for their own purposes as well as ours, so your yes is given to them as well as to us. We use no other advertising platform. If we ever add one, we will name it here and ask you again before it is switched on.
| Cookie | What it does | How long it lasts | Set by |
|---|---|---|---|
| _gcl_au and other cookies beginning _gcl_ | Record that you arrived from one of our Google adverts, so a later ticket click, signup or enquiry can be matched to it. | 90 days | |
| IDE and similar cookies on Google’s advertising domain | Let Google show our adverts to people who have visited our site. | 13 months | |
| _fbp | A Meta identifier for your browser on our site, used to measure our adverts and include you in our Facebook and Instagram audiences. | 90 days | Meta |
| _fbc | Records that you arrived from one of our Meta adverts. | 90 days | Meta |
| fr, datr | Set on Meta’s own websites rather than ours, and read when you visit us. Used for advertising and for Meta’s own security. | 90 days (fr), 400 days (datr) | Meta |
What is sent to Google and Meta, and what is not
With your yes to Advertising, the tags in your browser tell Google and Meta which of our pages you view and when you click through to tickets, the shop, Blaze TV or a partner, download our partnership brochure, sign up to Blaze Mail or send the contact form. Our own server also tells Meta about the same actions directly, with your IP address, basic browser information and the Meta cookie values above, so that adverts can still be measured when a browser blocks the tag. For a Blaze Mail signup or contact form, Google and Meta also receive your email address (and for Blaze Mail your name) in scrambled form.
“Scrambled” means turned into a code (a SHA-256 hash) before it leaves our website, so the address itself is never sent. It is not anonymous: Google and Meta can match the code against the accounts they hold, which is the purpose of sending it.
Without your yes to Advertising, nothing is sent to Google or Meta for advertising, from your browser or from our server, and their advertising tags do not load at all.
Our arrangement with Meta
For measuring our adverts, Meta handles this information on our behalf. For deciding who is shown our adverts, and for improving its own advertising systems, Meta and Elite Ice Sports Ltd are joint controllers. Under that arrangement we are responsible for telling you about it and asking for your consent, which is what this policy and the banner do, and Meta is responsible for what it does with the information afterwards, including honouring your rights over it. You can use your rights with either of us, and we will pass on any request that is for Meta. Meta explains its own use in its privacy policy at facebook.com/privacy/policy, and Google explains its use at policies.google.com/privacy.
The tool that loads the others
We use a tag management tool to load the tools above. It sets no cookies of its own and only loads each tool in line with your choices. We tell Google’s tools about your choices too, so that they only do what you agreed to.
Match tickets
Match tickets are sold through a separate ticketing website, with its own privacy policy. Our site statistics and advertising tools run on the Coventry Blaze pages of that website only where you have agreed to them there. Where you have, they count ticket orders: the order reference, the match, the number of tickets and the order value, so we can see which post or advert led to a sale. We never receive your name or email address from it.
Our online shop
Our shop runs on a separate shop platform with its own cookie banner and privacy policy. None of our site statistics or advertising tools run on the shop itself. We count clicks from our site through to the shop, as described in section 3, but those tools do not follow you onto the shop or count shop orders.
5. Embedded videos
Some pages include videos from a video sharing platform, whose name appears on the player. We use its privacy-enhanced mode, so watching a video on our site is not used to personalise your experience on that platform or the advertising you see elsewhere. When a page with a video loads, your device connects to the platform to fetch it, and the platform receives your IP address. If you play the video, it may store information on your device about playback. That happens under the platform’s own privacy policy. Our site statistics also count whether videos are started and watched to the end.
6. Who we share your information with
We do not sell your personal information. We share it only as described here, and only as far as each recipient needs it:
| Who | What they do for us | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| RH Elite Services Limited, Coventry, United Kingdom | Build and look after the website, and manage our analytics and advertising accounts. | Access to the website, its systems and those accounts in the course of that work. |
| Our website hosting provider | Runs the servers the website lives on, in London. | Holds the website and its data for us. |
| Our website security and delivery service | Delivers our pages quickly and protects the site and its forms from attacks and bots. | Your IP address and technical details of your browser and requests. |
| Our email newsletter provider | Sends Blaze Mail and handles unsubscribes. Its own privacy statement is at intuit.com/privacy/statement. | Your email address and, if you gave them, your name. |
| Google LLC, through Google Analytics, named in section 4 | Provides the site statistics in section 4. | How the site is used, linked to a browser identifier, not to your name. |
| Our product analytics and session recording provider | Provides behaviour records, heat maps, visit history, replays, questions and page tests. Only with your yes. | How you moved around and used our pages, with anything you type hidden, and general browser and device information. |
| Google and Meta, named in section 4 | Our advertising and the measurement of it. Only with your yes. | As set out in section 4. |
| The video sharing platform | Hosts the videos embedded on our pages. | Your IP address when a video loads, as set out in section 5. |
Every provider other than Google and Meta acts only on our instructions under a written contract and may not use your information for its own purposes. We will also disclose information where the law requires it, for example under a court order, or where it is needed to protect the safety of our supporters, staff or others.
7. Information that leaves the United Kingdom
Several of the providers above, including Google and Meta, are based in the United States or can reach information from there, so some information is transferred to the United States. Information held for us in the European Union is also outside the UK.
UK regulations recognise the European Union, and US companies certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, as protecting personal information to the required standard, and we rely on those regulations where they apply. Where they do not, the provider has agreed to the contract terms approved under UK law for these transfers (the International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the European standard contractual clauses). You can ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards using the contact details in section 1.
8. How long we keep your information
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Contact form messages | As long as we need to deal with your enquiry and any follow-up, then deleted from the club’s mailbox. |
| Blaze Mail details and proof of consent | Until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove you. We may keep your email address on a list of people not to add again, for that purpose only. |
| Server and security records | A short period, typically a few weeks, before they are overwritten. |
| Site statistics | Detailed records two months, then deleted; only overall totals are kept. The cookies last up to two years unless you clear them or switch statistics off. |
| Behaviour records and visit history | One year, then deleted automatically. |
| Replays | 30 days, then deleted automatically. |
| Your cookie choices | The cookie lasts 12 months, after which the banner asks again. The record on our server holds only a random code, your choices, the policy version and the time, and is deleted seven years after you make the choice, so that we can show what you agreed to if it is ever questioned. |
| Advertising audiences and measurement | You stay in our audiences for the period set on our advertising accounts, no longer than each platform allows, unless you ask us to remove you sooner. Google and Meta hold what they receive under their own retention policies. |
If you ask us to delete your information, we can delete everything our product analytics provider holds about your browser, including replays, and we will pass the request to the other providers where it concerns them.
9. Keeping your information safe
Our website is hosted on servers in London. Information between your browser and our website is encrypted. Access to the website’s administration area and to our analytics and advertising accounts is limited to club and agency staff who need it, each with their own account.
10. Children
Our website is for ice hockey supporters generally and is not aimed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children through it. If you think a child has given us their details, please contact us and we will remove them.
11. Automated decisions and profiling
We do not make any decision about you by purely automated means that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you. If you say yes to Advertising, you may be placed in advertising audiences based on the pages you visited and the actions you took, so that we can show you our adverts. That is a form of profiling. Withdrawing your consent stops any new information being sent for it, and you can ask us to remove you from our audiences.
12. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have these rights. They are free to use, and we will reply within one month.
- To know what we hold. You can ask for a copy of your personal information and an explanation of what we do with it.
- To have mistakes corrected. If anything we hold about you is wrong or incomplete, we will put it right.
- To have it deleted where we no longer have a good reason to keep it, including behaviour records and replays.
- To restrict what we do with it while a question about it is being resolved.
- To object. Where we rely on our legitimate interests, including for site statistics, you can object and we must stop unless we have compelling grounds to continue. For site statistics, switching them off in the banner or Cookie settings does this at once. You can object to direct marketing at any time and we will stop.
- To take it elsewhere. Where you gave us information electronically and we use it with your consent, you can have it in a portable format.
- To withdraw consent at any time. For Blaze Mail, use the unsubscribe link. For Behaviour and recordings, and for Advertising, use the Cookie settings link at the foot of any page.
To use any of these rights, email [email protected]. We may need to confirm who you are before acting, so that we do not give your information to someone else. Analytics and advertising information is linked to your browser rather than your name, so we may ask for the identifier in your browser to find it.
13. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, please complain to us first at [email protected]. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it and tell you the outcome without undue delay.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commission, the UK’s independent data protection regulator, which took over from the Information Commissioner’s Office on 30 September 2026. Its website is ico.org.uk. Complaining to us first does not affect that right.
14. Changes to this policy
We will update this policy whenever what we do with your information changes. The date at the top shows when it was last updated. Where a change is significant, such as adding a new analytics or advertising tool, we will make that clear on the website and ask for your consent again where it is needed, rather than relying on you to notice.