[News] Update: NHL green lights season-ticket drive for Las Vegas

[Yamer]

Originally Posted by KootenayFlamesFan

Gallagher's a hack, hope he's right though. I'd love to go to Vegas to watch a game.

And that statement right there epitomizes why a move into Vegas simply isn't comparable to places like Phoenix, Tampa, and Miami.

[dustygoon]

Originally Posted by Matty81

I'm in the minority here it seems but I hate this... I really dislike expansion to sunbelt type cities with no hockey grassroots. Seattle I like but Vegas could be Phoenix 2.0.

I am afraid it will be mediocre support for years, milking the equalization payments for all they are worth and then a cup run fed by the NHL's welfare draft system rewarding their badly run business. We'll be watching a half assed crowd that never watched a hockey game before that season and never will again stand around half heartedly cheering during a 40 degree cup parade in a 10 years.

San Jose...no hockey grass roots, but does pretty darn well. Partly due to no pro sports teams to really compete with at that end of the peninsula and decent average income of locals.

[Ashasx]

I just don't see fan support in Vegas.

Sure, you'll have people coming from all over North America to see games, but the team itself? Doubt it'll have many fans at all.

Just seems like a gimmick. Who would want to play for Las Vegas?

I also hope it isn't for the 15/16 season, otherwise goodbye McDavid.

[chubeyr1]

How does putting a team in Las Vegas make any sense?

Casinos and businesses buy season tickets for the first few years till the fad fades away. Didn't the CFL put a football team there before? How did that turn out?

65 percent of Vegas population works in the evening/night, when games are being played. This is not a grass roots hockey environment at all. There is good reason why there are no pro sports teams in Vegas.

People will travel to Vegas to watch hockey? People travel to Vegas to gamble and what not. Hockey, is not the what not!

I hope I am wrong. I do believe the NHL should expand and adding two more teams would be good. I think Seattle is the perfect place. Vegas though?

[Fire]

Not a fan of expansion but Las Vegas and Seattle would be my top 2 choices. More reasons to go to Vegas.

[Fire]

Originally Posted by chubeyr1

People will travel to Vegas to watch hockey? People travel to Vegas to gamble and what not. Hockey, is not the what not!

You would see hundreds of Calgarians flying down to watch the Flames play in Las Vegas. It would be a trip destination for any hockey fan.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Bad decision by the league. There is a very good reason why the other leagues have stayed far away from Vegas as a site for a team. There isn't a population with earning potential to support the team. Unless the league props up the team, this will be a disaster and a relocation within five years, probably to Portland, where the team should have been in the first place.

[Alberta_Beef]

Vegas is a horrible idea for the NHL.

Since it is a small city where almost all the permanent residents work evenings, they will have no loyal fanbase. Sure tickets will sell as casinos buy them to give away and visiting fans invade the arena but they won't have their own fanbase. Which means small TV revenue and small merchandise revenues.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Fire

You would see hundreds of Calgarians flying down to watch the Flames play in Las Vegas. It would be a trip destination for any hockey fan.

So a team needs about 15,000 tickets sold to have a chance at being profitable. Say that on any given night there will be about a thousand fans from the visiting team, where does the other 14,000 fans come from? Most people who live in Vegas make a mediocre living. How is the average household, making less than $60,000, pay for season tickets?

http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/nevada/las-vegas/
http://www.reviewjournal.com/busines...income-decline

I think this has disaster written all over it.

[CliffFletcher]

The ownership of this league is so venal and shortsighted it's hard to stomach sometimes.

[CedarMeter]

I love it. Go down on a weekend with the boys to see a Flames game, how cool would that be. First Flames game that's held on a weekend should be a CP trip. It would be a riot.

[Blaster86]

I pity the first team that has to go there for a 7 game series.

[chubeyr1]

Originally Posted by Fire

You would see hundreds of Calgarians flying down to watch the Flames play in Las Vegas. It would be a trip destination for any hockey fan.

Hundreds of fans? Where are the other 19,000 people coming from lol? Don't get me wrong, it would be cool/hot to go to vegas and catch a flames game. Canadians are hockey fans, we would do stuff like this ( I would too ). Most American's wont though.

I would support the expansion though. When it fails the team will move to Quebec. What was the last expansion team placed in a gambling city? Atlanta Thrashers? Now the Winnipeg Jets. I was born and raise in Winnipeg and think the idea of a team there is terrible. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact they have a team in Winnipeg, they really cant support that team nor will quebec be able too.

Expansion should be to Seattle and the greater Toronto area. Could easily support two teams there.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Blaster86

I pity the first team that has to go there for a 7 game series.

No kidding. The distractions will prove to be quite the home ice advantage. I'm down with both Vegas and Seattle but the thought of watering down the talent of the league for two more rosters is a little worrisome. It seems to me there's already a large amount of teams without a single truly elite player (Flames included) on their roster and this will make things worse.

[wretched34]

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Las Vegas as a place to visit, I've been there, done that, too many times to find it enjoyable anymore, but I would definitely go out of my way to catch a few Flames games down there. I've always wanted to travel to catch some Flames games, and have always wanted to do a West coast Tour, and catch them in LA, San Jose and Anaheim, but financially, that's a pretty big trip.
Vegas is super cheap to get too, and stay in, and after the game, there's still things to do. Could make for some great bachelor parties, or birthday getaways.
Also, I think many are overlooking the local fan base. Their ECHL team over the past 5 years has pretty consistent season attendance, right around league average at 4354 people per game over those 5 years. Highest single year was this past season at 4581, lowest was in 2010-11 at 3940. I know, it doesn't sound like much, and certainly won't be enough to keep an NHL team afloat, but that's also for an ECHL product, I believe you'd draw a lot more casual local fans to NHL games on a regular basis than ECHL. and to put it in perspective, The Wranglers have a better turn out than more than half of all WHL teams over those same 5 years, and Adirondack has an average of 4082 fans show up, Abbotsford has an average of 3606 over that span as well. So more Vegas locals are showing up to watch far lower caliber hockey than a lot of cities with the best JR hockey, or semi pro hockey. Obviously Vegas has a far larger population, but again, I think you'll see that number climb substantially for an NHL game.

[calgarywinning]

Maybe locals will like being at the rink for the cooling effect of the ice.

I'm betting the NHL has done their homework and they have their reasons. Doesn't make sense to me, but I would love to hear them.

[chubeyr1]

Originally Posted by wretched34

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Las Vegas as a place to visit, I've been there, done that, too many times to find it enjoyable anymore, but I would definitely go out of my way to catch a few Flames games down there. I've always wanted to travel to catch some Flames games, and have always wanted to do a West coast Tour, and catch them in LA, San Jose and Anaheim, but financially, that's a pretty big trip.
Vegas is super cheap to get too, and stay in, and after the game, there's still things to do. Could make for some great bachelor parties, or birthday getaways.
Also, I think many are overlooking the local fan base. Their ECHL team over the past 5 years has pretty consistent season attendance, right around league average at 4354 people per game over those 5 years. Highest single year was this past season at 4581, lowest was in 2010-11 at 3940. I know, it doesn't sound like much, and certainly won't be enough to keep an NHL team afloat, but that's also for an ECHL product, I believe you'd draw a lot more casual local fans to NHL games on a regular basis than ECHL. and to put it in perspective, The Wranglers have a better turn out than more than half of all WHL teams over those same 5 years, and Adirondack has an average of 4082 fans show up, Abbotsford has an average of 3606 over that span as well. So more Vegas locals are showing up to watch far lower caliber hockey than a lot of cities with the best JR hockey, or semi pro hockey. Obviously Vegas has a far larger population, but again, I think you'll see that number climb substantially for an NHL game.

While I don't disagree those fans may like to migrate over to support an nhl team there is one huge problem. Price of tickets? What do season tickets cost for an ECHL team versus NHL?

[calumniate]

Originally Posted by SportsJunky

I hope Calgary leaves Wideman and Jones unprotected in the expansion draft.

Chris wideman and Jon Jones? They already play there!

[tripin_billie]

Originally Posted by Alberta_Beef

Vegas is a horrible idea for the NHL.

Since it is a small city where almost all the permanent residents work evenings, they will have no loyal fanbase. Sure tickets will sell as casinos buy them to give away and visiting fans invade the arena but they won't have their own fanbase. Which means small TV revenue and small merchandise revenues.

While I'm not a fan of a Vegas expansion, it's got a metro population of 2 million. Not what anyone from Alberta should be calling small. And no, the vast majority of the city doesn't work nights. Zappos is also there, pushing a changing corporate culture.

Not a fan of the move, but some of the posters on here have clearly never traveled more than a block off the strip.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by Fire

You would see hundreds of Calgarians flying down to watch the Flames play in Las Vegas. It would be a trip destination for any hockey fan.

Hundreds of Calgarians fly to Vegas every day as it is. The problem is that hundreds of Calgarians are only hundreds of people. They won't make a dent in an 18,000 seat arena.

WestJet has 3 flights every day to Vegas, Air Canada has 1. If each flight has about 150 people on it, and each guest stays 5 nights on average, that's about 3,000 Calgarians in Las Vegas at any one time.

Even if you bump that number to 5,000 and assume every single one of them will schedule their trips specifically to go to a Flames game while they're there, it isn't even a third of a full-house. The Flames are one of the teams that would likely have the largest travelling fan-bases to Vegas.



History has shown (and not just in hockey), that you need a solid local base of ticket holders to have a successful sports franchise. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are a good example from outside of hockey. They thought they'd be an easy sell with all the northeasterners who have moved to Central Florida and being in the same Division as the Yankees and Red Sox. What they discovered is that they get a bump in ticket sales when the Yankees and Red Sox are in town, but otherwise have consistently had some of the worst attendance numbers in the Majors.