By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher/Writer
From T-Mobile Arena just off the Strip to T-Mobile Park just off Puget Sound.
The Vegas Golden Knights added a new page to its seven-year history on New Year’s Day with a National Hockey League Winter Classic game at the baseball stadium of the MLB Seattle Mariners in downtown Seattle.
It’s a marquee game for the NHL, which does a nice job attracting fans to the home arenas of its 32 teams.
But TV ratings are a fraction of those of the National Football League at the NHL continues its struggle to cultivate lifelong fans in the Black and Latino demographics. That’s hardly news to the league because its own diversity and inclusion report in October 2022 showed there’s still much work to do in terms of diversifying teams’ workforces and their fans.
The NHL and TNT, which is broadcasting today’s game, highlighted former Seattle Seahawks football player Marshawn Lynch in the pregame show. Lynch has business ties to Las Vegas with his Beast Mode retail store at the Mandalay Bay Shoppes on the Strip.
The Mariners’ ballpark is considered one of the nicest venues in Major League Baseball. Its opening was quirky because the Mariners stadium debuted in the middle of the 1999 MLB season on July 15.
The stadium has a retractable roof that’s nine acres — a newsworthy number of acres because that’s the size of the proposed baseball stadium footprint for the planned Athletics stadium on the Tropicana hotel site in the Strip at Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue. The A’s want to demolish the Tropicana hotel buildings in late 2024 and start construction in 2025 so that the $1.5 billion, 33,000-seat baseball stadium is open in Las Vegas in 2028.
The matchup of the Golden Knights and Kraken is a division showdown between the league’s two youngest franchises. Vegas is the defending NHL champion, while Seattle is coming off a playoff appearance that ended with a seven-game series loss to Dallas in the Western Conference semis after the Kraken knocked out the 2022 Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche in the first round.
“Both markets turned out to be great sports towns,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told the TNT TV pregame crew.
Today’s VGK/Seattle game is the 39th Winter Classic outdoor game, which has been held in stadiums from Fenway Park to today’s baseball stadium in the Northwest.
The baseball stadium opened as Safeco Field as Seattle-based Safeco Insurance spent $40 million on a 20-year naming rights deal before T-Mobile bought the stadium’s title sponsorship for 25 years in December 2018. T-Mobile had also bought the naming rights to the VGK home arena in January 2016.
The baseball stadium was built partially with public money. After King County voters defeated a sales tax proposal to help fund the ballpark in 1995, the Washington state legislature held a special session to approve a different funding package that included a food and beverage tax in King County restaurants and bars; a car rental surcharge in King County, a ballpark admissions tax; a credit against the state sales tax; and a sale of a special stadium license plate.
Seattle leads Vegas, 1-0, after the first period on a goal by the Kraken’s Eeli Tolvanen, who did a nice job re-directing a slow shot from the point by Vince Dunn.
The Kraken took a 2-0 lead into the third period after a goal by Seattle’s Will Borden.
A Paul “Welcome Back” Cotter miscue when he was pickpocketed by Seattle’s Yanni Gourde led to Gourde scoring the Kracken’s third goal for a 3-0 lead in the third period.
Seattle goalie Joey Daccord played well. He shut out the Knights, stopping all 35 shots and sending Vegas to its fifth loss in six games.