By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
They arrived in Las Vegas Sunday morning fresh off a visit to metro Phoenix Saturday night for an NHL game between the Arizona Coyotes and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Puck fans Justin and Nikki Good travel around the country on a mission outside of their regular day jobs back in the Tampa, Fla. area.
The married couple is in Las Vegas for the SEMA car show and the duo added T-Mobile Arena and the Vegas Golden Knights to their Bucket List quest of visiting every arena in the National Hockey League. T-Mobile Arena is the eighth venue visited on their list. Justin, 38, and Nikki, 42, wear Good’s Arena Tour jerseys and add team patches to the back of the jerseys every time they visit a NHL arena.
Justin Good, a graphics designer who does commercial car wraps, came away impressed with T-Mobile Arena: “The arena is great. The coldest and loudest I’ve been in,” he said.
The arena-hopping couple watched the Golden Knights defeat the Ottawa Senators, 4-3, in overtime after the VGK fell behind, 2-0, to the Sens. The VGK’s Jonathan Marchessault scored on an OT penalty shot to give the Golden Knights the win. The VGK record stands at 5-5-1.
Sports tourism is big business in Las Vegas and the Goods’ visit to T-Mobile Arena is a classic example of Las Vegas convention show visitors also carving out time and money in their discretionary spending budgets to attend a local sports event in Sin City.
It’s the X-Factor in the Las Vegas sports economy — a share of the 42 million annual Las Vegas visitors spending tourism dollars on sports events while in town. In fact, former LVCVA chief Rossi Ralenkotter last year estimated that about 25 percent of fans at Golden Knights home games — on average — are Las Vegas visitors.
Even though the Tampa Bay Lightning is the couple’s hometown team, they missed Friday’s Golden Knights-Lightning Nevada Day matinee in Las Vegas. But they did see the Lightning drop a 7-1 decision to the Arizona Coyotes Saturday night.
“I think the Lightning partied too much after the Vegas game,” quipped Nikki Good, a health care project manager back in the Tampa Bay region.
The difference in the ticket costs for the Coyotes and Golden Knights games were stark. Nikki Good said a seat a few rows off the glass in Arizona cost only $80, while the two seats in the T-Mobile Arena upper bowl in section 214 were well over $200.
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The Beatles Love Cirque du Soleil show from the Mirage hotel-casino was back in action at the VGK game between periods one and two. The VGK have multiple partnership deals up and down the Strip.
It was also good to hear and see Las Vegas’ own Carnell “Golden Pipes” Johnson perform the Canadian and American anthems before Sunday’s 5 p.m. game. Johnson sang the anthem before the home games during the VGK home playoff games last season.
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