OT: MLB commish - Las Vegas being considered for expansion team

[BattleBorn]

the issue I see is from what I saw from Edmonton and many other fans--last year there were a lot of fans who flew down from Edmonton--I do not know the number but I know many oiler fans are making it a yearly thing to go see all Oiler games in Vegas. Same with the hawks fans I know. Even though much of the Vegas population is considered transient, they need to be able to grow the game with the locals who are there year round and not have a large split on who the home crowd is going for

I was at every home game in Las Vegas last year with four exceptions, and I'll say that with very few exceptions the away crowds were always vastly overestimated. There was never a point where the arena was 30% visiting fans, let alone 50%. Yet, the common refrain on Twitter, Reddit, and the GDTs here was that the place was 50/50 or more visiting fans. It just wasn't the case. It may seem that way because it seems like every visiting team with a decent travelling fanbase wears red, orange, or light blue and that sticks out a little more than our drab-ass gray jerseys and black/gray dominated fan merchandise, but if you count the people in a visitor-dominated section (and I have) the majority of people are still wearing Knights stuff.

It's easy to say the place will be filled with visiting fans even if the Knights suck, but based on my experiences, you can expect the visiting fans to act as an insurance policy against crap attendance and not much else. If the place is sold to 60% of capacity, you can expect half of those people to be visitors. If that happens, there's a lot larger issues than that in Vegas.

 

[Llama19]

In other Las Vegas stadium news...

Las Vegas stadium to have Caesars-branded entrance

To quote:

"Caesars Entertainment Corp., the operator of Caesars Palace and eight other Las Vegas casino properties, has signed a 15-year agreement to be a founding partner of the $1.8 billion Las Vegas (Raider's) Stadium..."

Source (Paywall): www.reviewjournal.com/business/stadium/las-vegas-stadium-to-have-caesars-branded-entrance-1516255/

 

[KevFu]

VGK needs to be a local team, and they understand that, which is why they blocked out corporate sales during the season ticket drive.

I wasn’t really talking about companies buying season tickets. Obviously, that happens and there’s some overlap, especially with the suites.

But I was talking more about corporate sponsorship. Just looking at corporate partners as an example...

Buffalo has 44 companies listed on their websites. Vegas has 73.

Half of Buffalo’s are companies I’ve never heard of. (Half of Vegas’ are things I’ve never heard of either, but I lived in Rochester for 22 years and know a good number of Western NY businesses your average Californian doesn't).

For example, Perry’s Ice Cream. It’s delicious. They’ve got a Sabres-branded ice cream flavor. It’s a small company. Their CEO makes $350,000 a year.

Vegas has a deal with Ceasar’s. Their CEO makes $24 million a year. Which deal do you think is bigger?

Obviously none of NHL team’s sponsorship deals are public, and of course every team has some small local business sponsorship — to ingrain themselves with the community from an optics standpoint. That's just smart business.

But come on. There’s three Fortune 500 casinos that the Knights have corporate deals with. Their combined annual revenues total over $20 BILLION. There are zero Fortune 500 companies in Buffalo. And the biggest company in Buffalo (M&T Bank) isn’t the official bank of the Sabres.

If the Knights had THE BEST corporate support in the NHL, no one would be surprised. It's inconceivable that they'd be outside the Top 10.

 

[KevFu]

will Seattle NHL have a problem if team 32 is not as successful as the knights out of the gate since the sonics left the city feel in love with the Seahawks during their Superbowl run and the city gained the sounders.

Every city has "a problem" if the team is terrible compared to the others in the market.

I think people on this site tend to equate "not having a robust prosperity" as "doomed" or "about to fail."


But that's non-sense. We can name three dozen franchises who've had terrible finances for extended periods. Since the birth of cable TV with TBS and ESPN in the 1978-1979 range -- which changed sports business forever -- not a single Big Four team has folded.

 

[Kane One]

Every city has "a problem" if the team is terrible compared to the others in the market.

I think people on this site tend to equate "not having a robust prosperity" as "doomed" or "about to fail."


But that's non-sense. We can name three dozen franchises who've had terrible finances for extended periods. Since the birth of cable TV with TBS and ESPN in the 1978-1979 range -- which changed sports business forever -- not a single Big Four team has folded.

Not every team. Rangers and others do just fine.

 

[KevFu]

Not every team. Rangers and others do just fine.

Cornerstone franchises like the Rangers aren't terrible compared to the other teams in the market.

Sure, right now the Islanders are (inexplicably) in first. But the Rangers being so bad they had a fire sale, rebuilt and fired their coach isn't terrible by comparison to a team that ALSO fired its coach in the offseason. The Rangers have been terrible compared to the Islanders for only like, 9 weeks out of the last four seasons, tops.

 

[Kane One]

Cornerstone franchises like the Rangers aren't terrible compared to the other teams in the market.

Sure, right now the Islanders are (inexplicably) in first. But the Rangers being so bad they had a fire sale, rebuilt and fired their coach isn't terrible by comparison to a team that ALSO fired its coach in the offseason. The Rangers have been terrible compared to the Islanders for only like, 9 weeks out of the last four seasons, tops.

I was mostly referring to their historical attendance when they are a bad team.

I’m fairly certain their attendance was still a borderline sell-out and if not, still significantly better than teams like Boston and Chicago when those two teams were bad.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

will Seattle NHL have a problem if team 32 is not as successful as the knights out of the gate since the sonics left the city feel in love with the Seahawks during their Superbowl run and the city gained the sounders.

Maybe? The expansion Seattle team is certainly going to have almost impossible to please expectations out the gate, but even beyond that if their initial attempts to ice a roster mostly end up as a failure, it absolutely could set them back, especially if either the Mariners or Seahawks are competitive or if the NBA returns. That's a bonus for the Knights in their situation, thanks to their timing they built up a fanbase that'll likely be able to weather some bad times and increased competition from other teams arriving. The Seattle NHLers on the other hand already have built in pro sports competition and the possibility of another higher demand nostalgic team coming back as well.

Every market has a limit on how much they can spend on sports, and if Seattle starts out poorly it certainly won't help their cause. And that's not singling out Seattle, the same's the case for almost every sport in almost every market.

 

[KevFu]

I was mostly referring to their historical attendance when they are a bad team.

I’m fairly certain their attendance was still a borderline sell-out and if not, still significantly better than teams like Boston and Chicago when those two teams were bad.

Yeah, I was assuming everyone knows the difference between the cornerstone franchises in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and the NHL in Toronto and Montreal.

 

[Kane One]

Yeah, I was assuming everyone knows the difference between the cornerstone franchises in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and the NHL in Toronto and Montreal.

I’m knocking Chicago and Boston, both of which are cornerstone franchises.

 

[KevFu]

The point is that everyone is really just fine unless the owner directly bricks on the chest of the fans and the fan base turns on ownership.

 

[Centrum Hockey]

MLB realignment could result in a Phillies competitive nightmare – Phillies Nation
a Philly Boston NYY NYM division
Would be a great for baseball

 

[voyageur]

I had to check to see if I was in a baseball thread, when the mods go off topic, there she goes.

I don't like the idea of dissolving the NL and AL. That's essentially breaking tradition, which baseball is all about. And keep the DH out of the NL. Makes strategy a part of baseball.

But honestly baseball is losing it's clout. They have to do something I suppose. Montreal coming back in to the fold would be good. Vegas too? San Antonio? Portland?

I can't watch baseball without falling asleep. God bless the pasture sport, for its sheep.