The 2016 Stanley Cup Championship is now history with the Eastern Conference Champion Pittsburgh Penguins defeating the Western Conference Champion San Jose Sharks 4 games to 2 by a score of 3 - 1 in the final matchup June 12. The series is ended, but the hockey news continues.
The big news announced this past Wednesday is that the NHL is expanding for the 2017-18 season. The league is expanding to Las Vegas and billionaire businessman Bill Foley has been awarded the 31st franchise.
Commissioner Gary Bettman announced the decision after the league’s board of governors met on a 109-degree day and voted to put an ice hockey team in the Mojave Desert’s gambling mecca.
Foley is expected to pay $500 million to the NHL’s other owners as an expansion fee. The new team will play in T-Mobile Arena, the $375 million building that opened just off the Las Vegas Strip in April. The NHL is expanding for the first time since 2000, when Minnesota and Columbus each paid $80 million to join the league.
With nearly 2.2 million people in the last census, Las Vegas is the largest population center in the U.S. without a team in the major professional sports. Vegas was an economic boomtown in the previous decade, and the NHL is betting that its slowed growth hasn’t curbed the city’s appetite for sports and spectacles.
Foley’s bid had the enormous advantage of an NHL-ready arena built with private funding and eager for a flagship tenant. Foley has already accepted more than 14,000 season ticket deposits and they have sold out all 44 suites in the 17,500-seat rink. The facility was built by MGM Resorts International and Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns the Los Angeles Kings.
Although ice doesn’t last long in the desert, Las Vegas has had an appetite for hockey since the Kings and New York Rangers played a memorable outdoor exhibition game here in 1991. The IHL’s Las Vegas Thunder sometimes drew more fans than UNLV’s beloved basketball team in the 1990s.
Sports leagues once rejected the city outright due to concerns about corruption from Vegas’ massive sports betting economy, but the NHL and the NFL don’t appear to share those worries now. Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis is interested in partnering with Vegas interests to build an enormous domed football stadium for his team.
A Quebec City bid also was considered earlier in the expansion process. Concerns about the small market, the Canadian dollar’s fluctuation and the league’s resulting geographical imbalance prompted the governors to go with Las Vegas alone.
The team’s owner Foley hasn’t revealed a nickname or logo for his team, but an announcement could be made in the next few weeks. The choice could be the Black Knights, a name that has special meaning to Foley, a West Point graduate. Stay tuned for more.
