Thursday, June 23, 2016
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS
The NHL is making a big bet on Las Vegas.
The league will expand to Las Vegas for the 2017-18 season after awarding its 31st franchise to billionaire businessman Bill Foley on Wednesday. Commissioner Gary Bettman announced the decision after the league’s board of governors met on a 109-degree day and unanimously voted to put an ice hockey team in the Mojave Desert’s gambling mecca.
“We think this is a tremendously exciting opportunity, not just for Las Vegas, but for the league as well,” Bettman said, calling Las Vegas “a vibrant, growing, global destination city.”
Foley will pay $500 million to the NHL’s other owners as an expansion fee. The new team will play in T-Mobile Arena, the $375 million building that opened just off the Las Vegas Strip in April.
Bettman also announced that an expansion bid from Quebec City was “deferred” indefinitely, allowing Las Vegas to enter the league alone in the Pacific Division. The league’s alignment and playoff format won’t change.
With nearly 2.2 million people in the last census, Las Vegas is the largest population center in the U.S. without a team in the major professional sports. Vegas was an economic boomtown in the previous decade, and Foley is betting that its slowed growth hasn’t curbed the city’s appetite for sports and spectacles.
“We want everyone to be a fan,” said Foley, who fell in love with pond hockey while growing up in Canada. “We’re dedicated to it. We’ll leave no stone unturned in our dedication, in our pursuit of hockey for Las Vegas, not just for our team, but for the community.”
The NHL is expanding for the first time since 2000, when Minnesota and Columbus each paid $80 million to join the league.
Bettman said the league made the move largely due to the persistence and strength of the ownership group led by Foley, a financial services tycoon, who has been working on the idea for three years. Foley is joined by minority partners Joe and Gavin Maloof, the former owners of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.