Seattle pays up For its NHL Dreams
Emerald City hockey fans show serious interest in supporting a new franchise
SEATTLE If having Seattle’s NHL season-ticket drive compete with what Las Vegas managed was anyone’s goal, that turned out to be a race akin to Carl Lewis facing former Mariners first baseman Daeho Lee in a 100-metre sprint.
Las Vegas needed six weeks to top 10,000 season-ticket deposits. On Thursday morning, the Oak View Group said Seattle’s drive topped 10,000 in just 12 minutes.
By about 11:15 a.m. — only 75 minutes after the drive began — more than 25,000 deposits had been obtained. At the two-hour mark, they’d surpassed 26,000 and the company indicated it would likely cut off requests by today. While there is no limit yet on how many of the $500 and $1,000 deposits will be taken, OVG was encouraging fans to keep plunking down cash before the cut-off point.
One reason is, the deposits are refundable and the full cost of season tickets has yet to be made public. A sizable portion of the deposits could still be taken back once fans are given the full cost of season-ticket packages by next year.
Deposits taken Thursday were $500 for “general” season tickets and $1,000 for “club” seats at the lower level centre-ice zone between the two blue-lines. Those making the deposits will be informed by next week of their priority in line and then invited to a screening of where seats will be and what the prices for them are.
OVG sources say the group is aiming for an “average” cost of NHL season tickets and will not gouge the Seattle market.
In Las Vegas, the cost of a lower-level centre ice club seat was $9,460 for 44 home games — three of them pre-season. The cost of the best lower-level blue-line seats were $5,500, while the best upper-deck seats were $3,300 and the cheapest “upper-end” seat in the house was $1,100.
So, NHL ticket pricing is not for the faint of heart and the numbers Thursday do not represent what final purchases might be. But for a Seattle market trying to show where it stands in its desire for winter sports, it put its money where its mouth is.
Would-be Seattle hockey owners David Bonderman and Jerry Bruckheimer say the NHL assured them any expansion team here could be built under the same draft rules as a highly successful firstyear Las Vegas franchise.
Both also say they ’re prepared to become owners in an NBA team if that league chooses to make one available through expansion or relocation.
That word came as billionaire investment banker Bonderman, 75, Hollywood producer Bruckheimer, 74, and their Oak View Group partners launched their season-ticket drive Thursday.
“We’ve had some discussions with the commissioner on this,” Bonderman, the hockey group’s managing partner, said of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, adding he hopes to have the expansion team announced by June. “And the idea is they want to keep the same format as they did in Las Vegas, which was a little more favourable to the Golden Knights than people expected. It shows you what you can do to make an expansion team a real player in the game.”
The Seattle team would cost a record $650 million. Vegas cost a then-record $500 million when awarded two years ago.
The NHL held its first of several expansion drafts in 1967, but the Vegas franchise — due to the record price tag — was given arguably the most generous player choices in league history. Teams this time were allowed to protect only seven forwards, three defencemen and a goalie or eight forwards and defencemen of any combination, plus a goalie. They also had to make available a defenceman and two forwards who’d played at least 40 games last season or 70 games over the past two seasons. In the previous NHL expansion draft in 2000, teams could protect nine forwards, five defencemen, and one goalie, or two goalies, three defencemen, and seven forwards.
On the subject of reviving the NBA Supersonics, Bonderman and Bruckheimer insisted they would do what it takes to bring a basketball franchise here and become owners in that as well. Bonderman, already a minority owner in the Boston Celtics, said he is prepared to sell his stake in that team so he could become a Sonics owner here.
“It makes a lot of sense, actually,” Bonderman said. “And if there’s a franchise on offer, we would be in the thick of the fray trying to bring it home to Seattle.”
Bonderman said his fellow NBA owners already hold Seattle in high regard.
“I think it’s fair to say that everybody I’ve talked to among the NBA owners think that we’re doing the right thing by coming to Seattle,” Bonderman said. “A lot of them said ‘Why hockey? Why not NBA?’ And what we said to them is ‘We love hockey and it’s the place to start here.’”
Bruckheimer, a lifelong hockey fan originally from Detroit, who is close with Bettman, said he’d gladly follow partner Bonderman into NBA ownership as well.
They ’ve already put down a nonrefundable US$10-million deposit with the NHL, which would be put toward the $650-million price tag for an expansion team once one is awarded.
Bonderman and Bruckheimer say they’ve begun discussions with some potential team employees and executives. They say they can’t name the team until one gets awarded, but hope that happens this summer. When it does, they say they won’t have a public naming contest, but will engage with fans for ideas on the best names possible.
They ’d keep the traditional Sonics colours if an NBA team returns, but are not yet set on any colour scheme for the NHL franchise.
Leiweke said the group will “protect” the Sonics colours and not use them for hockey.
“That’s a high priority for this group and this arena.”