Lightning win the Pandemic Cup. Photo: NHL Twitter
Golden Knights 

NHL Concludes Pandemic Stanley Cup Tournament With Solid Game Presentation Minus Fans

Alan Snel ,

 

By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com

And so it ended, the most unique Stanley Cup playoff tournament in National Hockey League history.

The Vegas Golden Knights bowed out to an opportunistic, defensive-minded Dallas Stars team in the Western Conference Finals in the Edmonton Bubble, while the Tampa Bay Lightning found redemption during this COVID-19 pandemic after being upset in the 2019 Stanley Cup playoffs.

Lighnting celebrate. Phoeo: NHL Twitter

The NHL team owners took a mighty financial hit with no fans and not ticket revenues. The NHL postseason is an especially lucrative time for the league and for team owners because they increase ticket prices big-time, with the league getting s nice cut of the playoff game ticket revenues.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said ticket revenues, directly and indirectly, account for about half of the teams’ revenues.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman

That’s because the NHL does not command multi-billionaire-dollar TV rights contracts like the National Football League.

The NHL did a solid job staging its pandemic playoffs in Edmonton for the Western Conference teams and in Toronto for the Eastern clubs.

There were no fans, but the level of play was intense and the NHL tried to include some hometown touches for teams like having Golden Knights national anthem singer Carnell “Golden Pipes” Johnson sing the anthem via video before the VGK playoff games.

Now, it’s time for the NBA Finals in their Bubble in Orlando, while Major League Baseball today launches its wild card games.

Alan Snel

Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com. Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle. In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com. After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent. Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.

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