By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
Before a soft-spoken Swede made time stand still in Las Vegas Saturday night with hockey’s greatest shot this season and a defenseman beat the powerful Tampa Bay Lightning with a shot with two seconds left in a December game and the new NHL club scored four goals in the first nine minutes in its first regular season home game Oct. 10, there was the “Founding 75.”
You can find the financial roots to the Vegas Golden Knights’ startling, unprecedented ascent to the National Hockey League’s Pacific Division championship in a group of 75 Las Vegas area business, political and civic leaders who believed in the big leagues of professional hockey in Las Vegas more than three years ago.
And before the Founding 75, there were the Maloof brothers — Joe, Gavin, George and Phil — and they worked behind the scenes to sell NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman that major league hockey could work in Las Vegas. They would later combine forces with a property title insurance tycoon named Bill Foley to form the ownership foundation of the NHL’s most compelling team and story line this season.
“For years, the NFL, MLB and the NBA did not want Las Vegas. But it was Bettman who took the leap of faith. He was the guy,” said Joe Maloof, who, with his brothers, owned the NBA Sacramento Kings from 1998-2013. “Now, every league is dying to get in.”
You’ve heard a lot about Golden Knights majority owner Foley, the white-haired former West Pointer who made his millions in the title insurance industry while also building wineries in California and a restaurant group based in western Montana that has a pizzeria in the Knights’ Summerlin training center.
Foley’s leadership and foresight behind this team’s unprecedented first-year success is unquestioned. In the third period of the franchise’s first regular season home game against Arizona nearly six months ago, the chant, “Thank you Foley,” was heard throughout T-Mobile Arena.
The season ticket push to plant an NHL team in a dazzling arena officially began Feb. 10, 2015 — more than three years ago — when Foley worked with the Maloof brothers and another 75 NHL team boosters called the Founding 75 at an event on the Strip that received the in-person blessing of Bettman.
The Founding 75’s work was essential to get locals to literally buy into the season ticket deposit campaign, which called for Las Vegans to place a $150-$900 deposit on season tickets at a website called, “vegaswantshockey.com.” It worked. The Golden Knights have 14,000 season ticket equivalents. And the team filled T-Mobile Arena to the tune of 103.9 percent of capacity during its maiden season — fourth highest in the NHL.
The Maloofs used the Founding 75 concept to spearhead ticket sales in Sacramento, where the family enjoyed great relations with NBA Kings fans for a long time and had sellout streaks of 497 and 354 games when the old Kings teams were one of the league’s most successful and entertaining squads. Things went south when an arena proposal fizzled and the Maloofs sold the NBA club for $585 million five years ago.
Joe Maloof said the Founding 75 concept was even used as a sports marketing technique by his dad, George Maloof, Sr., the Coors distributor for New Mexico, who had bought the NBA Houston Rockets for $9 million in 1979. But in 1980, the elder Maloof died of a heart attack — and his sons became the young owners of the NBA Rockets.
A lot has been reported about Foley paying a $500 million expansion fee to the NHL. But what hasn’t been reported by the local media is that others contributed to that $500 million fee.
And the historic legacy of a first-year NHL club that drew 18,042 fans per game for 41 home dates in a building with official hockey seating capacity of 17,367 was shaped by Foley — and also the Maloofs and those Founding 75 members.
It should be noted that a few years before that official February 2015 season ticket campaign launch with Bettman in attendance, Joe and Gavin Maloof had been already traveling to New York on their own dime to sell Bettman on the feasibility of major league hockey in Sin City. The Maloofs have known Bettman since 1978, when the NHL commissioner earned his pro sports league stripes by working as a former NBA senior vice president and general counsel.
In fact, the Maloofs, who live in Las Vegas, also introduced Foley to key local political leaders like Clark County Chairman Steve Sisolak. And Joe Maloof also recalled getting Gov. Brian Sandoval on board, too, for the NHL in Las Vegas.
Joe and Gavin, both fun-loving sports schmoozemeisters who enjoy chatting with fans, made the rounds to sports bars and golf clubs to recruit season ticketholders in early 2015. And so did Foley, who made pit stops at places like the Born and Raised sports bar and the sports bar at the Suncoast hotel-casino in the west valley.
“We did decompress the minute the Kings were sold (in 2013),” Joe Maloof told me three years go.
Then, Joe’s brother, Gavin, who was listening in, noted to me with laughter: “It took 24 hours to decompress and we were in Bettman’s office.”
Then, the Maloofs went out and recruited a big business hitter to create an NHL team in Las Vegas.
Foley.
It was actually the Maloofs’ California sports lawyer, Scott Zolke, who worked for a law firm that also knew Foley. So, Zolke’s law firm played sports team owner matchmaker between the Maloofs and Foley.
At the time, Foley was chairman of Fidelity National Financial, an umbrella financial services entity that focused on several property title insurance brands that was based in Jacksonville, Fla.
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Foley, a fourth-generation Texas and 1967 West Point graduate, would become a lawyer who negotiated federal military contracts for Boeing in Seattle decades ago. He then led a buyout of a small title insurance company in Phoenix and grew the company into a national title insurance giant.
Yet, he’s no title insurance company stiff. Just the opposite, in fact. The easy-going Foley prefers blue jeans to suits and went on to build a small winery empire and even a golf course community in Montana.
Foley, the self-professed deal-maker who also enjoyed buying restaurant brands, was exploring buying a professional sports team when he met the Maloofs. He found the NHL the best option because the cost of acquiring an NFL team was too pricey for him, and Major League Baseball and the NBA did not appeal to him.
So, he found a partner in the Maloof family and the road to the NHL is Las Vegas — and Stanley Cup playoffs that begin this month — was just beginning to be mapped.
LVSportsBiz.com emailed Foley to see if we could chat with him for this story. We didn’t hear back.
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The Golden Knights finish their inaugural season with three away games in Canada — in Vancouver Tuesday, Edmonton Thursday and Calgary Saturday.
Then, the team begins its hunt for the Stanley Cup next week. Continue reading LVSportsBiz.com for more coverage.
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