The NHL is currently testing the waters in Las Vegas to see if the city would be a proper fit for a future professional hockey team. All signs are currently pointing to the league expanding to the Sin City, barring some sort of major surprise. Expansion always comes with a large amount of risk, but the speculated destination of a new team – Las Vegas – carries a bit of extra risks which may not be found in other locations. Is Las Vegas the right location for an expansion team?
Laura Astorian
Associate Editor, Puck Drunk Love
I don’t believe this is the right market for expansion right now. Sure, there are problems with the arena in Seattle; yes, the Canadian dollar’s slipping; and yes, it seems like no one wants to use the arena in Kansas City for hockey. Vegas, though, has problems of its own. There isn’t a large permanent population (the metro area’s less than 2 million people), so most of the season tickets are going to go to corporations. I’m not sure how that builds a sustainable fanbase. Also, there’s the issue of having a professional sports team in a city where sports betting is legal. Is Rick Tocchet being offered a job? Gretzky’s already involved. Why not get the whole Phoenix 11 back together for one more heist?
Also, and this is probably the biggest thing for me, is that the possible owner wants to name them the Black Knights. What is that? How old are we? Will their logo be the Batman symbol?
I know the Canadian dollar’s slipping, and I know that the conferences are already uneven, but Quebec City’d support a team much better and consistently than Las Vegas would.
Ben Koo
CEO, Bloguin
Vegas already hosts many big time sporting events and as society and opinions evolve, the NHL to Vegas makes total sense as long as you can check old fashioned logic at the door.
There are no other pro teams in Vegas and hence a pro NHL team immediately becomes the city’s main routing interest akin to the Blazers on Portland or the Thunder in Oklahoma City. Why bother with entering into a market that already established brands and fan habits/preferences?
Also the stigma of being in the shadow of the betting capital of the country is long gone. Adam Silver helped loosen the cap on this bottle by advocating the end of sports betting being illegal and also investing in FanDuel. Get in now before a NBA teams lands there.
Mike Burse
Associate Editor, Puck Drunk Love
I would vote yes! The NHL would be the only professional sports franchise in the city and that would make them number one at least in terms of sports. Granted there are so many other things to do there. However does anyone really believe that Vegas would do any worse than Arizona, Florida or Atlanta? Personally no, so why not give it a try? The population has grown immensely since the 1970’s from something around 60,000 to over 2 million. With that in mind most Las Vegas residents are first or second generation and the city is still forming an identity with it’s permanent residents. The NHL could get in an create a fanbase while the city is in it’s “infancy” for lack of a better term. They would not be the most profitable franchise but I believe they would still do better than some of the current franchises in the NHL.
Matt Yoder
Managing Editor, Awful Announcing
Absolutely the NHL should expand to Las Vegas. First, for the simple reason that the league needs to add two teams to balance out the ludicrously imbalanced rebalancing of the divisions and conferences in the most recent round of realignment. Second, because it would be a groundbreaking move that would allow them to own a market with huge, untapped potential. Unknown potential, but potential nonetheless.
I don’t know of anyone who would necessarily think of “hockey” when they think of Las Vegas, but the city has been crying out for a professional franchise for so long that whoever could stake their claim first in the city would have a huge advantage. Population wise, the Vegas metro area is between Columbus and Nashville, so there’s definitely enough people to support at least one local pro team. (And that doesn’t include the enormous tourist base.) Now there finally seems to be momentum among the leagues to move in that direction. Adam Silver’s New York Times op-ed about sports gambling was just the beginning as we’ll see that wall continue to crumble down in the years to come.
The one issue that might cause me to hesitate is the fact that the NHL has been very hit or miss in southern and warmer climates. Atlanta has come and gone multiple times. Phoenix hangs on by a thread. Raleigh and Miami are struggling mightily to draw fans. Would the same happen in Vegas? It’s impossible to predict right now, but I’d definitely say the reward outweighs the risk. If you’ll pardon the obvious pun, the NHL in Vegas is certainly worth the gamble.
Chris Rocco
Associate Editor, Puck Drunk Love
I’m not against Las Vegas as a market but I am against expansion. I think there are too many weak franchises in the league and I’d rather see one of them relocate instead of just adding more teams. Maybe relocating a team from the East to the West(Florida) or moving Phoenix to Las Vegas would be a better move. Balancing out the conferences would be a good move but that doesn’t have to happen solely through expansion.
As far as Las Vegas goes as a market, it’s hard to say how they would respond to a team but hopefully they take the right steps to get an idea of how many people would be interested. Just throwing a team in that market just to have another team in the West is not something I’d be in support of. They need a little bit of certainty. We’ve seen it with other sun belt franchises, people aren’t going to automatically show up because it’s a major sports league. Winning is important but so is building rinks in the area to get people interested in the game.
Joe Lucia
Content Director, Bloguin
The NHL in Vegas is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s a completely untapped market. There isn’t a pro sports franchise in Las Vegas. The NHL would be the first league to dip its toe in those waters – that’s a huge point in their favor.
On the other hand, the NHL has been shaky (to put it mildly) in southern US markets. Atlanta failed. Phoenix and south Florida have largely failed, but the league is pressing forward. Southern California has been a massive success, as has Nashville to a lesser extent. Because of how much of an unknown Vegas as a pro sports town is, we can’t exactly project the success or failure of an NHL team will be based on the successes and failures of other teams. It’s a completely blank slate.
I wouldn’t be opposed to the league expanding or relocating into Vegas – but you’d better hope they do their due diligence. Fan polls, research panels, and maybe even some early financial commitments from sponsors and fans should all be on the table before a firm decision is made either way.
David Rogers
Managing Editor, Puck Drunk Love
The PDL team makes some strong arguments both for and against. As Chris points out, the NHL would be wise to solve other issues around the league before tackling a new endeavor. That’d be the logical solution, but since when has the NHL made logical decisions? Expansion was made inevitable after the league realigned and they need to correct it.
Vegas is an extremely risky option for expansion. The NHL would have the only major sports team in the city, but there has to be some serious doubts over whether the small population in a tourist town can regularly fill the arena. The NHL is concerned that the crowd would be all tourists who received tickets as comps from a casino. In other words, it may always feel like a road game for the home team.
Personally, I’m against expansion. However, I know the NHL will be adding teams but I’d prefer if they started in a different location. Seattle makes a lot of sense (just ask the Sounders if Seattle fans are loyal) as do the Canadian options. Vegas appears to be the favorite because it’s a glitzy option. As with most trips to Vegas, once you see past the bright exterior, there really isn’t much going on. The league may have an ugly situation on their hands should we revisit this topic in 10 years.
