“We’ve grown up”, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
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The National Hockey League has chose to expand to Las Vegas, opting to place a new franchise in the heart of the Strip rather than Quebec City, according to a report by the Associated Press.
A final vote by the Board of Governors to approve the expansion will occur June 22 in Las Vegas.
One source close to the committee characterized the Las Vegas franchise as a “done deal”.
Las Vegas will finally have a major professional sports team. The NHL, now 30 teams strong, last expanded in 2000, when Minnesota got back a team after its North Stars moved to Dallas, and when Columbus, Ohio, joined the league.
Barring something unforeseen, we can start to speculate on potential names for Las Vegas’ NHL team.
Geographically speaking, Las Vegas is located in the middle of large sports markets such as Los Angeles, San Francisco-Oakland, Denver and Phoenix, so naturally rivalries with the Kings, Ducks, Sharks, Avalanche and Coyotes will be instantaneous and fierce. The Las Vegas Wranglers’ attendance was just below the ECHL average from 2010-2014, while in the same time period the 51s’ per-game attendance was 25 percent off the PCL average. The NHL says that all the Vegas owners need now is the $500 million expansion fee and it looks like that will be a drop in the bucket. That sounds impressive until you consider that the Winnipeg Jets sold out their entire allotment of 13,000 season tickets in 17 minutes after the Atlanta Thrashers were relocated there in 2011. “The facts show that concerns about athletes playing games in Las Vegas are dramatically misinformed”. Silver also cited the city’s relative lack of success of minor league sports franchises.
Pro sports leagues have also softened their stance towards gambling, in part due to the prevalence of daily fantasy sports, she wrote. “I can’t wait to see that first championship parade down the Las Vegas Strip!” Particularly, fans of Canadian teams who find it hard to secure tickets for home dates and end up finding it easier to make an excuse to go to a warm weather city while also catching a road game.
The NHL’s move into Sin City sheds more light on the National Football League and Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis pushing to move the Silver and Black to Las Vegas.
The new Vegas franchise already has an arena built.
Bettman has said he doesn’t worry about the league’s product suffering from dilution.
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 practice on one of the three rinks in town.
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Although it appears that they won’t do it in Black Knight Financial Services Arena.
