By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
The Vegas Golden Knights are a popular sports brand in Las Vegas and elsewhere, which helps explain why the four-year-old NHL franchise has more than 100 sponsors in its business partnership portfolio.
The Golden Knights routinely send out media releases hyping sponsorship deals and the release also appears on NHL.com. VGK sponsorship deals typically don’t cause much of a stir or controversy.
But Wednesday’s announcement by the Golden Knights that the team has a sponsorship deal with sports betting recommendation company UpickTrade from Mexico certainly caught the attention of many in the sports betting world. Darren Rovell, former ESPN business of sports reporter and current writer for actionnetwork.com, tweeted this:
The Golden Knights crowed in the UpickTrade press release, “The partnership marks the first sponsorship deal between a Mexican-based company and an NHL club. As an Official Partner of the Golden Knights, UpickTrade will be featured on Vegas Golden Knights web and social media platforms, as well as an in-game feature and in-arena branding on the boards.”
In response, Patrick Everson, former Las Vegas Review-Journal staffer and now senior writer for covers.com, told LVSportsBiz.com Thursday: “When you’ve got sportsbook veterans, gaming industry insiders and well-known sports bettors — including some who themselves sell picks through sports services — saying this partnership creates bad optics, that’s pretty revealing. I’ll be interested to see if the NHL delves into this further and, after doing so, gives this deal its Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.”
LVSportsBiz.com sent emails to the Golden Knights and the NHL Thursday morning requesting comments and we will include their responses if they send answers to our questions.
Other sports betting people on social media asked whether UpickTrade could get inside info like injury details from the Knights because of its business partnership with the NHL team. NHL teams are notorious for not providing much injury information about players.
The Golden Knights’ scheduled game tonight with the San Jose Sharks in California was postponed because a Sharks player is on the NHL COVID-19 protocols list. The Knights did generate some revenue Wednesday by starting to sell tickets to fans for seven games in March.
The Knights’ next game is in Anaheim against the Ducks Saturday.