LVSportsBiz.com’s Inside Look At How Las Vegas Grew An NHL Team In The Desert
By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
The date was Feb. 10, 2015 and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and a wealthy businessman from Jacksonville, Fla. at the time by the name of Bill Foley were sitting quietly in an MGM Grand casino-hotel hallway nook and chatting about the idea of creating an NHL team in Las Vegas.
About an hour later, Bettman would tell a packed room at MGM Grand that he officially endorsed Foley’s season ticket deposit campaign to measure how much the Las Vegas market would back big-league hockey in the desert.
Then at 1:30 p.m. that very same day after Bettman blessed the campaign and sports-loving brothers Joe and Gavin Maloof joined Foley at the announcement, Las Vegas’ hockey fans started making season ticket deposits of $150 to $900 on a website called vegaswantshockey.com.
Even Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak — LVSportsBiz.com calls him the county’s “sports commissioner” — came to that MGM Grand meeting with check in hand. He gave a season ticket deposit of $1,000 to Foley at the occasion.
Foley was confident Las Vegas’ market numbers would deliver the initial goal of 10,000 season ticket commitments. The man who made millions of dollars in the property title insurance business told me in January 2015 that there were 130,000 “avid hockey fans” who had annual incomes of at least $55,000.
And Foley also told me he would be “shocked” if the campaign collected at least 10,000 commitments and NHL didn’t award Las Vegas a team. “It would be a big advantage to be the first professional franchise in Las Vegas,” Foley informed me at the time.
That type of confidence exuded by the 1967 West Point graduate prompted Bettman to tell me that day in February 2015 that he had a private conversation with Foley to advise him to not be so cocky about thinking that 10,000 season ticket deposits would automatically translate into a NHL franchise in Las Vegas.
“What you’re hearing is Bill’s enthusiasm,” Bettman told me in 2015.
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About 1,200 days later on May 27, 2018, the NHL staged a Stanley Cup Final Media Day event at T-Mobile Arena because Foley’s Vegas Golden Knights were vying for the NHL championship.
The team that grew out of that Feb. 10, 2015 meeting when Bettman came to Sin City is hosting the Washington Capitals Monday in Game 1 in the Finals.
I didn’t see Foley at Sunday’s Media Day. And Bettman is expected to meet the media Monday.
But I chatted with Golden Knights defenseman Jon Merrill, who told LVSportsBiz.com today that if the Knights secure the NHL championship, he would enjoy taking the Stanley Cup into Red Rock Canyon and just hang out with the most famous sports trophy in North America amid the stunning natural landscape outside Las Vegas.
“It is a peaceful place,” Merrill said of Red Rock.
The NHL Media Day featured team stars such as Golden Knights goalie Marc-Andre Fleury and Capitals’ high-scoring forward Alex Ovechkin.
Ovechkin cracked the joke of the day. He told the hockey media that Russian President Vladimir Putin “called me and wished me luck.”
He then delivered the punchline. “That’s a joke.”
The media loved it and roared with laughter.
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Remember that season ticket deposit campaign striving for 10,000 back in February 2015?
The Golden Knights had more than 14,000 season ticket equivalents this season, generated gate revenue that was in the top five in the NHL and has next season’s season ticket portfolio sold out.
How did the Golden Knights grow into a revenue powerhouse, which boasts the league’s best-selling jersey, millions of dollars in corporate sponsorships and licensed VGK merchandise being sold to fans in 90 countries across the world?
While Foley chatted with Bettman before that Feb. 10, 2015 meeting at MGM Grand, it was Joe and Gavin Maloof — the former owners of the NBA Houston Rockets and Sacramento Kings — who had the ear of Bettman for years before Foley arrived in Las Vegas.
The brothers were advising Bettman that the NHL should expand to Sin City.
Joe Maloof, the eldest of the Maloof brothers, recalled also getting Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval on board with Bettman.
Before Foley appeared on the scene, the Maloofs had been traveling to New York to lobby Bettman on the feasibility of the NHL in Las Vegas. The Maloofs had known Bettman since 1978, when the NHL commissioner worked as former NBA general counsel.
“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 Maloof, who, with his brothers, owned the Kings from 1998-2013. “Now, every league is dying to get in.”
LVSportsBiz.com’s story in early April explained the Maloofs’ role in bringing major league hockey to Las Vegas.
The Maloofs’ California sports lawyer, Scott Zolke, worked for a law firm that also knew Foley. So, Zolke’s law firm played matchmaker between the Maloofs and Foley. The Maloofs contacted Foley in December 2013 about an NHL team in Las Vegas.
An ownership group was born.
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On Jan. 29, 2015, Joe and Gavin Maloof walked into Brando’s Sports Bar in south valley and sounded the call in the Chicago sports bar on Blue Diamond Road for fans to plunk down season ticket deposits. The bar keeps a newspaper story on the Maloofs’ January 2015 visit in a frame on a wall.
“This is a historic event,” Gavin Maloof told fans that January night in 2015. “We are trying to get the first major league sports team in the 150 years of the state of Nevada. And it will be at the finest arena in the world.”
The Maloofs’ pep talk worked. Inside the bar with the Brothers Maloof was a young ticket sales guy named Todd Pollock, a ticket director hired by Foley to run the deposit campaign.
Pollock collected names and contact information for the ticket sign-up launch that Bettman officially endorsed two weeks later.
Pollock turned out to be Golden Knights Employee 1.
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By the time Kerry Bubolz showed up for work at the Golden Knights in October 2016, Foley had the Golden Knights brand and logo already baked.
Bubolz, who spent 13 years at the Cleveland Cavaliers (he enjoyed the Cavs’ Eastern Conference Finals Game 7 win Sunday night) and was VP of sales for the NHL Carolina Hurricanes, said Foley comes to the VGK headquarters in Summerlin ready to be engaged with business staffers.
Foley is no absentee owner. He makes impromptu visits to check in with Jim Frevola to see how corporate sales are going, Brian Killingsworth on how merchandise is selling and Pollock on ticket sales, Bubolz told LVSportsBiz.com Sunday. Foley is also known for congratulating players after big wins, too.
“His interest for business is intense every day,” Bubolz said. “He’s not one to just have a scheduled meeting.”
Before talking with LVSportsBiz.com, Bubolz took a few moments to address local hockey media members who were tasting arena concessionaire Levy Restaurants’ gold-sprayed strawberries and cupcakes, along with other suite-level offerings.
Bubolz asked the media if they can tell the out-of-town reporters that Las Vegas is more than just the Strip — that Las Vegas has a community of neighborhoods and places of worship and places to be explored from downtown to Red Rock Canyon.
Who saw that coming? Out-of-town and international media coming to Las Vegas for a single purpose — to report on Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals that is scheduled for Las Vegas Monday.
Back on Feb. 10, 2015, Bettman just wanted to see at least 10,000 season ticket commitments. The NHL commissioner wanted to see how the Las Vegas market would respond to the ticket deposit drive.
“We’re listening (to the Foley-Maloof group),” Bettman said back then. “Let’s see what happens over the next few weeks.”
Things turned out well. The Stanley Cup was hanging out in T-Mobile Arena Sunday for either the Golden Knights or the Capitals to claim during the next two weeks.
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