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Originally Posted by Cleveland Steam Whistle
People go to New York and LA for different reasons. Your assessment on the fact that tourists don't do it in LA or NY with better hockey clubs or iconic buildings is fair..............but it's not really the comparable to the Vegas experience.
I could go to the casino here in Calgary, but I don't. I do when I go to Vegas. I could have gone to the Casino in Montreal when I was there but I didn't, but I do in Vegas. I could go see a show or a concert when I visit almost any city I travel to, but I don't, but I do when I'm in Vegas.
Different destinations offer desires and behaviours from the tourists. Vegas is all about attracting people down to see show's, exhibitions, events, then stay the weekend and get drunk and gamble. Hockey would be a part of this event entertainment package. Fair to question whether it will have enough appeal, but comparing the behaviour of NY and LA tourist patterns is pretty much irrelevant.
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True, but then again tourists are important part of the customer base for casinos everywhere. Same goes for museums, exhibitions, shows etc. There's a reason they advertise that stuff in hotels.
I've never heard of a sports club anywhere in the world that makes a significant part of it's income off tourism. Maybe FC Barcelona or Real Madrid could do it under some circumstances, but NHL is just not going to be that kind of attraction.
To me the math just doesn't add up either. There's 39 million tourists in Vegas every year. That means a little more than 100,000 visitors per day. How many of those are likely to be hockey fans on any level? Let's be very generous and say 10%? How many of those hockey fans are you going to attract to a game between a terrible expansion franchise and some random team they're not likely to be fans of? I think getting even 10% of those people would be surprising. At which point we're still talking only about 1,000 extra fans every night. It's a nice boost, but not going to keep a franchise in the black.
A team in Las Vegas needs to live off their local fan base and TV deals, just like any other sports franchise in the world.