NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman made the announcement after the league’s Board of Governors voted unanimously in favor of the proposal during a meeting in Las Vegas.
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The Las Vegas team will play in the Pacific Division for the 2017-2018 season.
“Without question, we are very impressed with Bill Foley, the City of Las Vegas and the T-Mobile Arena”, Jacobs said.
The NHL had only two contenders for its first expansion since the year 2000 – Vegas and Quebec City.
With almost 2.2 million people in the last census, Las Vegas is the largest population center in the US without a team in the major professional sports. But if the Oakland Raiders move to Las Vegas – which has been rumored recently – would that damage the league’s business model in Sin City? The NHL’s postseason awards show, which will be held on Wednesday evening, has been hosted in Las Vegas since 2009.
LAS VEGAS – The offices in which Bill Foley is currently operating his Las Vegas hockey kingdom right now are quite modest.
Construction workers eat lunch by an MGM arena being built behind the New York-New York casino-hotel in Las Vegas on April 7, 2015.
“We’re here because we think this is the right time, the right circumstances and we’re happy to be here”, said Bettman, who shrugged off the idea that Vegas presented a risk.
“I love Black Knights”, Foley said when asked about the team’s name. That would net the team a 2017 draft pick as high as No. 1 and no lower than No. 6.
Vegas is in the middle of the Mojave Desert, but it has grown as a hockey town over the past 20 years since local youngsters like Jason Zucker, now with the Minnesota Wild, had to practise on one of the three rinks in town.
Bettman said that he didn’t view the Vegas expansion as a “bellwether day” for USA sports betting and the league wasn’t going to “make it all that easy for you to pick up a ticket, a gambling ticket, on your way into the [T-Mobile] arena”. It immediately jumped to mind for me when I thought of how many fans of the Rangers from NY will hop a flight to Las Vegas to see their team play there and then spend a weekend at a resort hotel. That reality also leads to many Vegas residents working nights, which was reflected in the former ECHL’s Las Vegas Wranglers annual “Midnight Roundup” promotion, which was a game played at midnight. At some point, Quebec City will get a franchise.
But ultimately, Bettman said the bid was deferred due to elements over which bidding group had no control over.
The NHL will lose out on a deep pocketed Quebec City prospective ownership group which would have shelled out the $500 million expansion fee, where the fee for relocation is much smaller.
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While Quebec City has been an NHL market in the past and is rich with hockey fans, Las Vegas represents yet another chance to grow the sport in a non-traditional and untapped hockey market. “We will continue to work with determination to achieve this goal”. News stories displayed here appear in our category for Sports and are licensed via a specific agreement between LongIsland.com and The Associated Press, the world’s oldest and largest news organization.
