The Arizona Coyotes are moving to Salt Lake City (maybe, depending, check back later)

Yesterday, the interwebs started buzzing with talk that the Arizona Coyotes were, maybe, going to be moving to Salt Lake City next season. Things like:

The NHL is concurrently drafting two versions of a league schedule matrix for the 2024-25 season, one with the Arizona Coyotes and another with the Coyotes franchise playing in Salt Lake City in the event of relocation.

And:

The NHL would purchase the Coyotes from Meruelo in a deal believed to be worth around $1 billion. … The league source said that after purchasing the team, the NHL would then sell the Coyotes to [Utah Jazz owner Ryan] Smith at a price that could be as high as $1.3 billion — much higher than the $650 million expansion fee that the Seattle Kraken’s owners paid in 2021 to join the league. The source said the NHL’s other 31 owners would split $300 million as part of the sale.

And:

The team’s final game is at home against Edmonton next Wednesday. One Coyote indicated today that there are rumours of “meeting about the future” before everyone goes their separate ways for the off-season.

The reason behind this reported shift: Uncertainty around the league about Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo winning a June 27 public land auction for a parcel near the Phoenix-Scottsdale border and then being able to put together an arena financing plan. Though Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega on Tuesday walked back his statement the previous that an arena on the site was “not feasible, or welcome,” saying he’s now fine with it so long as traffic is directed away from his city, the whole deal is apparently flimsy enough that the NHL wants to have a Plan B — or maybe even a Plan A, as Daily Faceoff, citing “multiple sources,” asserted that “there is a real possibility that the Coyotes franchise is not based in Arizona come June 27.”

This morning brings no real updates, with the league remaining officially silent and even Coyotes players having been shielded from the press after last night’s game. So what can we make of all this?

First off, the Utah legislature’s vote last month to approve $500 million in spending on a new or renovated arena if the NHL comes to town definitely got some attention. The money is supposed to come from a 0.5% citywide sales tax hike plus kickbacks of sales taxes from a “10-block revitalization area” around any arena. How much an NHL-ready arena would cost overall remains unknown, as is how much Smith would pay to cover the remaining costs after plunking down maybe $1.3 billion for the Coyotes, but $500 million in the hand is worth some anonymously leaked move threats to the league, at least.

Whether the NHL would actually go through with a Utah move for the Coyotes, especially before the Arizona land auction has even taken place, is less clear. Salt Lake City may have some public money approved, and that’s certainly tasty to the league; it would also be one of the league’s smallest media markets, and by far the smallest with both NBA and NHL teams competing for winter sports ticket sales (1,148,120 TV households, behind Miami’s 1,720,970). Actually going ahead with the move would be a major bet on giving a team to whatever city coughs up a public subsidy and has an owner willing to overpay for a team because he once played roller hockey or something, and let them figure out how to actually sell tickets once the team gets there.

And then there’s maybe the weirdest twist to all of this, according to Sportsnet:

The real key is what the NHL will promise Meruelo to avoid this ending up in court.

Those same sources indicate he could be offered a five-year exclusive window to “bring back” the Coyotes as an expansion franchise — although there would be certain language stating what would need to be accomplished for him to return. (The league definitely desires a return to the market if it leaves.)

Sure, I guess? The NHL is clearly enamored of the Phoenix area’s size — though it’s smaller than Atlanta and Houston, which also don’t have teams and don’t seem to have drawn the same unrequited love from the league — and would be happy to have a team there, even if it’s one owned by Meruelo. If that “certain language” stipulates arena financing being in place and, say, season-ticket deposits from more fans than you can count on one hand, it wouldn’t be the craziest way of the NHL deciding where to stick an expansion team. (That would probably be this.)

All of this remains at the level of rumor, needless to say, even if true it could just mean that the NHL is coming up with contingency plans to ensure that the Salt Lake City arena has dates available for the Coyotes’ 2024-25 schedule. In the meantime, are people already wondering how a Utah Coyotes (yes, there are coyotes in Utah, at least more than there is jazz) would impact the Oakland A’s move options? Of course they are:

The longer any online discussion continues, the greater the chance that it will lead to somebody clowning on John Fisher.

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48 comments on “The Arizona Coyotes are moving to Salt Lake City (maybe, depending, check back later)

  1. Contraction can be a wonderful thing. The NHL did it in the 1970s and baseball nearly did so shortly after 9/11.

    1. MLB never seriously considered contraction — that was just a dodge to try to get new stadiums out of Minnesota (it worked, kinda, eventually) and Montreal (nope).

      Contracting the Coyotes would require buying out Meruelo, whereas this way the NHL somehow thinks it can end up pocketing $300m. If the cost is only removing Salt Lake from the list of potential expansion cities, it’s not the dumbest possible outcome, especially not by NHL historical standards.

      1. Yeah they didn’t have any cities to threaten to move to, so Selig floated contraction to get the Twins a new park.

      2. The funniest part of that whole saga was how Carl Pohlad eagerly signed off on contraction and nearly forced Selig’s hand, like nobody ever told him it was all a ruse.

        Also, no player’s union would ever sign off on contraction unless the owners were willing to make massive concessions.

  2. A half cent sales tax in Salt Lake City, only the 117th largest city in the US, if the few retailers in the city can’t stop it, will fall well short of generating $500 million. So currently Ryan Smith owns the Jazz the Delta Center, an NBA Dteam, a couple soccer teams and a soccer stadium, what does Smith have to gain or lose by buying the Coyotes? If he pays $1.3 billion, that will come with debt service of at least $80 million. Add in a payroll of around $70 million, and his share of debt on the arena. This totals close to $200 million a year. On the revenue side, there is no TV deal in Utah, and probably never will be. Streaming and merchandise probably won’t be much better than in Arizona.
    The Coyotes have been propped up to some extent in Arizona by snowbirds and transplants following their teams, there’s no such audience in Utah. The risk that NHL hockey will cannibalize Jazz and Real Salt Lake ticket sales is extreme. If Tilman Fertitta is afraid of NHL cannibalizing Rockets revenue in the 4th largest city in the US, Ryan Smith is delusional if he thinks he can come close to making money on hockey in Salt Lake City. Ryan Smith can join Jerry Moyes, Richard Burke, Wayne Gretzky, Andrew Barroway, Glendale, Elaine Scruggs, Yvonne Knaack and RIP George Gosbee in the Coyotes Hall of Losers.

    1. According to Utah tax records, the current 0.5% sales tax surcharge in Salt Lake (for prisons) generated $49,828,782 in the most recent year available, which would cover $500m in debt quite well:

      https://tax.utah.gov/commission/reports/fy22report.pdf

      1. It was shocking to see that much sales tax revenue in Salt Lake City versus the rest of Salt Lake County. Will Salt Lake City voters get a chance to vote on this? I saw that Iron County voters will get to decide on a 0.4% County jail tax.

        1. This says more like $33m a year, but still should be enough to cover $500m in arena debt:

          https://www.utahfoundation.org/uploads/rr754.pdf

          Plus there’s the sales tax kickbacks from the arena district, whose official projected value is “unknown”:

          https://le.utah.gov/lfa/fnotes/2024/HB0562S02.fn.htm

        2. Per the state constitution, anything passed with more than a 2/3 vote in the state legislature is not subject to a referendum. The arena bill passed that threshold, so local voters won’t have a say. This is why the ballpark bill stripped out the statewide tax on hotels; there’s a good chance the House Speaker and Governor could’ve twisted enough arms to pass it with a majority, but the state hotel and resort association would’ve funded a ballot measure to strike it down.

          I’m not too surprised at the sales tax divide between SLC and the rest of the county. There are a lot of bedroom communities in the county that don’t really have many businesses besides your basic necessities like grocery stores and gas stations. Park City sits in Summit County, so a lot of the taxable economic activity from the Sundance Festival and the ski resorts goes there. The “Silicon Slopes” businesses are clustered mainly in Utah County to the south. SLC also hosts the LDS General Conference twice a year, where thousands of the faithful come from all over the world to conduct church business, listen to the Prophet speak, and check out the Temple grounds. Most of those folks don’t leave the city when they visit, so it further concentrates the sales tax.

  3. If Meruelo knows all of this from, I don’t know, reading the internet, why wouldn’t he just sell the team to Smith to begin with?

    If it’s just some priority on a Phoenix area team, it’s worthless as 1) the franchise has struggled for 25 years and had at least two arenas voted down and been evicted from a third. There’s no reason to think if Wayne Gretzky couldn’t make hockey work in Arizona that the failed Meruelo ever will and 2) as mentioned, Meruelo has been an embarrassing failure and there’s no reason to think he’ll ever have the wherewithal to be a competent sports owners.

    1. That this Phoenix metro area fixation continues into the cord-cutting era is really a head scratcher. I could understand the argument for staying there when every big four sports team was getting automatic cable dollars from virtually every resident. With that dead, wouldn’t you want to find a market that actually wants a team and will thuy pay OOT subscriptions, luxury suite fees, etc.? Maybe SLC fits the bill, but that they are even still worried about Arizona is mind-blowing to me.

        1. May have meant “OTT,” or “Over The Top,” the additional streaming things you pay for to get content you can only get there.

  4. While the dip in market size is sizable- Smith is such an improvement as an owner- I’m pretty sure this will work OK for the NHL.

    Utah’s experience with stadium subsidies is much more positive then other places- the 2002 Olympics were an incredible success and in many ways created modern Salt Lake City.

    I always thought Bettman’s adherence to Phoenix was simply- there’s a lot of people AND players, owners, league management etc etc enjoy spending a few days there in the winter.

  5. Lots of thoughts here. First off, in the unlikely event that Muruelo wins the auction, how can Scottsdale divert traffic away from their city when the whole reason that they are choosing that site is because the majority of their fans live in the Scottsdale area. Fans have to go home after the game I assume

    Next, I sort of agree with the tweets. I have no problem with SLC having 2 teams but a 3rd would make for a crowded situation. At that point, I see Sacramento expansion or Portland picking up steam

    Lastly, why does Muruelo have to sell to the NHL before selling to Ryan Smith? If the league thinks that they can get more than $1.3 billion for the team then wouldn’t it make more sense for Muruelo to bypass the middle man and sell right to Smith?

    1. “Lastly, why does Muruelo have to sell to the NHL before selling to Ryan Smith? If the league thinks that they can get more than $1.3 billion for the team then wouldn’t it make more sense for Muruelo to bypass the middle man and sell right to Smith?”

      This would make an excellent followup question for the unnamed sources, if I knew who they were.

      1. I would say, that Meruelo never bought the team, and only assumed the debt.

        Going back to 2017, Barroway was in for about $177 million, then the debt was reported at $250 million, when Barroway was seeking a $500 million valuation, just a year later, in 2018.

        In 2019, Meruelo purchased 95%, with Barroway still holding onto 5%.

        However, all of this occurred until the original IceArizona agreement, where the NHL’s seven-year ‘no move’ clause finally expired under Meruelo’s ownership.

        So, could one say that the NHL finally invoked that debt call, which is due now, and Meruelo cannot pay, so control reverts back to the NHL — keeping the artificially high valuation of the franchise — and in turn, protecting all of the other NHL franchise values, and then the NHL sells the franchise to Smith, keeping the public thinking those NHL valuations are realistic.

        But, the NHL, being a private company, it never has to show the public the real figures.

      2. The other $300m (or $200m, as some have reported) gets distributed to the owners as an expansion fee.

        I’m not sure why it’s structured this way.

      3. TempeTeaPot-
        I’ve always questioned whether the NHL has owned the Coyotes since Judge Redfield Baum caved to their league rules nonsense, leaving Moyes, Gretzky and especially Glendale taxpayers holding the bag. Ice Arizona and Gosbee had most of their equity wiped out in one season, the whole “ownership” stuff was based on bleeding Glendale taxpayers as much as possible. With no TV money, virtually no merchandise and unable to sell 3,800 seats consistently, the ocean of red ink the past 2 seasons is about the size of the Pacific Ocean. The NHL is hiding the true magnitude of the Coyotes fiasco, the billion dollar figure sounds roughly equivalent to the accumulated losses, or negative retained earnings.

        1. He didn’t really cave, though. Baum forced the NHL to buy the team back out of bankruptcy (for about $170m, iirc). The league’s position had been that Moyes could not put them into bankruptcy as the NHL already owned the surrendered/forfeit franchise. The court disagreed.

          One of the more humourous moments was that Bettman and Daly were allegedly in a plane on the way to Glendale to tell Moyes their were revoking his franchise when JM filed for/under Chapter 11.

    2. Scottsdale wants the hockey arena moved at least a mile west to the half finished 64th Street interchange, or 2 miles west to 56th Street next to City North. Phoenix has alot invested in City North, and might approve a hockey arena there, but then Meruelo can’t control the development. Scottsdale and the Grayhawk Community Association will definitely go to court if arena traffic gets dumped onto Scottsdale Road.

      With or without baseball, and with tons of outdoor winter sports, I just can’t see Salt Lake City supporting NBA and NHL.

      1. The Salt Lake Valley also has top-tier college sports in the Utah Utes and BYU Cougars. Pro leagues are not the be-all and end-all of sportsball.

  6. You’d have to think that a lot of other wannabe owners would be pissed to all hell if the NHL essentially orchestrated a closed sale of a franchise without allowing any open bidding on a distressed franchise. For that matter, if Meruelo was interested in selling, why would he agree to some cockamamie scheme instead of selling to Smith directly, or just selling the team on the open market? Quebecor is a $10 billion telecom corporation that’s been very public about buying a team; do the owners not think they wouldn’t want try to match whatever Smith would pay? The details of this rumor are so weird and disconnected from normal business practices that it’s hard to make sense of it.

    Anyways, SLC would be a terrible NHL market for a litany of reasons. The Delta Center is also a garbage venue for hockey, and Smith himself said the arena could only host 11k for an NHL game (and honestly, even in that configuration there would probably be around 2k fans or so with terrible sight lines). The new arena wouldn’t be ready for years so that would have to be the setup while trying to get a foothold in a decidedly non-hockey market.

    Besides the population size, there are a bunch of other issues. Unlike most other cold weather cities, people here spend a good chunk of money and time doing outdoor shit in the wintertime and is definitely competition for people’s time and dollars. (Family ski seasonal passes alone cost thousands of dollars, not even including lift tickets). The transplants coming here are from the West Coast, so unlike Sun Belt cities we don’t have a bunch of latent hockey fans. Youth and rec league hockey are practically nonexistent, and the former probably wouldn’t catch on because families out here start having kids at a younger age and have more of ’em than the national average. If you think your stereotypical 31 year-old LDS dad in Davis County who’s supporting a stay at home mom and 5 kids on a middle manager salary (10% of that going to tithing) will magically find 3 thousand bucks in the couch cushions for junior to play bantam league defenseman, I got oceanfront property in Omaha to sell you. Lastly, our corporate base is surprisingly weak. The state doesn’t have a single homegrown company in the Fortune 700 (no, not a typo). Outside of resource extraction and real estate, we’ve got a crapton of MLMs and failed tech companies. I don’t see how there are enough buyers for sponsorships, season tickets and luxury suites for both the Jazz and the Golden Eagles 2.0.

    I wouldn’t automatically rule out MLB if the NHL came here either. If they get a ballpark built, MLB may not have many other options to turn them down. This isn’t like Tampa in the 80s.

    1. “So weird and disconnected from normal business practices that it’s hard to make sense of it” is the NHL’s middle name.

      1. Lol, touche. But seriously, if I own the Blue Jackets or some other lower-market club, I want a bidding war for the Coyotes because an inflated sales price for them would also goose my franchise’s value. That’s worth way more than $25 million or whatever I’d get from this weird transitory deal the league has cooked up. I’d kinda understand this deal if the NHL was trying to pull an Expos-like move to like, Houston or Hamilton or some other big market and figure out finding a local owner later. But Utah? They’re gonna do all this weird scheming for Utah?

        FWIW, the local scuttlebutt when Ryan Smith initially announced his bid for an expansion team was that it was all an elaborate ploy to make the otherwise perfectly fine Delta Center “obsolete” because it can’t host hockey, which would let him cut in front of Big League Utah in securing funding for a new arena and sweet land deal downtown. He’d make a bid, the NHL would go elsewhere but hey, he got his new publicly funded arena. It worked – his arena has a concrete funding line in place, whereas the ballpark’s finances are [404 error not found]. But if he really goes through with this, he’ll be owning 2 teams in a small market essentially cannibalizing each other. Then again, having worked for Ryan in a previous job, I can also confirm he’s a world-class bulshitter and an ace at jettisoning business assets at their peak value to leave some other poor sap holding the bag. The move could simply be that if it fails, he’ll sell a pro sports team for a profit and still have the Jazz.

        All of this reminds me of a Bill Scheft joke in the lead-up to the 2002 Olympics: “Utahns are excited. If they show absolutely no interest in Olympic hockey, the NHL will make them a top candidate for expansion.”

        1. “…he’s a world-class bullshitter and an ace at jettisoning business assets at their peak value to leave some other poor sap holding the bag…”

          Ahhh! So he’s the poster boy for NHL ownership then!

    2. Only one stay at home wife?
      Again, what happened to Houston and all those oil companies? Or Kansas City who lost the Kings decades ago and, along with St Louis, is MIA from the NBA? Davis County? What about fabulously wealthy Weber County, or Hildale? WASHINGTON COUNTY WOULD BE AN AWESOME NHL HOCKEY MARKET!!! I’m sure those ski zillionaires in Park City with $10 million houses that sit empty 10 months a year want to drive down and up Parleys Canyon to sit through a sport they know nothing about. 15 years ago I couldn’t believe how idiotic the Coyotes situation was with the revolving door of potential Coyotes owners. This has now gone way beyond the Land of Oz on steroids. It would be ironic if a buyer from Hamilton made a deal with Meruelo for 2 or 3 billion and….end of the land of Wile E. Coyote.

    3. If anyone else wanted to buy the Coyotes, they haven’t said so publicly. They don’t owe it to anyone to wait around for more offers.

      There is a group working on it in Atlanta and Houston claims to be working on it, but there’s nothing else really happening.

      SLC was not the league’s first or second choice for what to do with this damned franchise, but no other real option in Arizona, Atlanta, Houston or anywhere else has emerged. If Ryan Smith has $1.3bn and a viable building, he is the best option.

      This is happening now because the owners just decided they could not stomach three more years, at least, with a team in a small building. I’m sure they asked the Suns if they could share somehow and the answer was no.

      All this bitching about Quebec and Hamilton and Portland and Saskatoon or whatever just illustrates the fans’ willful ignorance of how this works. The league can’t just move teams around. Each team needs an owner and, as Neil has explained, a civic coalition that can get its hands on a billion dollars for the franchise and who knows how much for a building.

      1. Except Quebec has a new NHL calibre building, a fan base and a multibillionaire owner ready. And there isn’t a team there because the NHL won’t move or issue a franchise for that location (as it’s right).

        Ditto a ‘second team in the GTA’ – which during the Coyotes BK hearings, was revealed as “likely being the fifth or sixth most valuable franchise in the league” if it were awarded. No shortage of potential billionaire owners there either, and the former Copps Coliseum is undergoing a significant upgrade to NHL standards as we speak.

        They don’t want to go to either of those markets (for very different reasons). So Salt Lake City may be the best ‘palatable’ option for Bettman and co to consider, but it is far from the only viable one. It is not even the best viable market out there. But that’s where they are going.

        Houston is also a viable market with a wealthy owner and perfectly serviceable building. It’s not getting any consideration at the moment either.

        So, yeah, the NHL absolutely can move franchises around. And they do (See Jets I & II, among others).

        I’m sure they don’t like it. But when they feel they have no ‘local’ options in an existing market, they do it.

        Quite why they have taken the decision that “now” is the time to bail on a Phoenix location that has been hemorrhaging money for three decades as opposed to a month ago, a year ago, a decade ago or next month, I don’t know. But just like spurning better markets for crap ones or accepting a TV deal with a network that almost 70% of the US couldn’t get (Vs), it is the NHL’s right to act according to it’s own inspired strategic thinking.

        This is, after all, the league that selected Bruce McNall, John Rigas, John Spano, Boots Del Biaggio, Norm Green et al as top quality club members.

      2. “All this bitching about Quebec and Hamilton and Portland and Saskatoon or whatever just illustrates the fans’ willful ignorance of how this works. The league can’t just move teams around. Each team needs an owner and, as Neil has explained, a civic coalition that can get its hands on a billion dollars for the franchise and who knows how much for a building.”

        Except that pro leagues have in the past moved teams around when they’ve wanted to, then found local ownership later. MLB did this exact thing with the Expos when they moved them to DC, then sold them to Ted Lerner in the middle of their second season at RFK. MLB also acted as the guarantor for the stadium financing when Deutsche Bank demanded it. So let’s put to bed this idea that pro sports leagues are somehow hapless entities when it comes to team location and ownership. If the NHL really wanted to, they could ship the Coyotes to Hamilton, negotiate a lease with the FirstOntario Centre, then find a local buyer. Or Kansas City, Portland, or wherever else. Nobody is holding a gun to their heads that they have to sell to a techbro in a smallish US market who hasn’t even conducted a basic feasibility study (or if he has, won’t release the results).

        Also, nice job conveniently ignoring that Quebec City has a well-capitalized prospective ownership group that already owns a new arena and put together an expansion bid that ultimately went to Seattle. They’ve done way more homework and financial vetting than SEG has for purchasing a club. SLC does NOT have a viable building; they have a basketball-only arena and a deal for a new venue that would open no earlier, at the very soonest, than the proposed site in Phoenix that Meruelo is proposing.

        If SLC is the least-worst option, the NHL ain’t acting like it is. If it were, they’d be more willing to listen to other offers and carefully weigh which market will have the best long-term yield. As small as Quebec City is, there’s absolutely no doubt that it’s a better market than Utah. This just looks like classic Galaxy-Brained Gary of impulsively jumping at the newest shiny object to “grow the game” while stiff-arming other perfectly viable owners and markets. Which, ironically, is how they got into this mess in Phoenix in the first place.

        1. Gary, 40 MILLION people live in Central Mexico, and the Peso has been going up for the last 4 years. That’s alot of $$$pesos$$$ and 40 million potential viewers, did I say 40 million, thats 40 million, Gary, thats 30 million more than Southern Ontario that you hate so much. Mexico is the real sunbelt you love so much, even though you’ll have to search really hard to find anyone vaguely interested in hockey. What an opportunity to “grow the game”. Go Federacion Mexicana de Futbol!

  7. It’s not complicated to see why the NHL has put itself (back… it did this before, remember) in the mix as an agent/broker in the deal.

    If Meruelo sells direct the price will be minimal. This will make the people who paid $500m + in expansion fees look like suckers, and will also make the owners of ‘generic’ (IE: non big market/high revenue) clubs appear to have inflated franchise values (which they do). That’s bad for business (and more to the point, draws the attention of bankers).

    By sticking themselves back into the mix as buyer and flipper, the NHL can control the price the team officially sells at (think about the next 4 oops 8 franchises they plan to sell for expansion) while making the math work for both Smith and Meruelo.

    They have admitted that they expect to get $300m out of the deal. Mad Alex paid roughly the same to buy the team from Barroway IIRC. Smith will not be paying more than a true ‘expansion’ price once the dust has settled. Whether that is $650m (like Seattle) or $900m or whatever the next fool pays for an expansion franchise I do not know. But he’s effectively buying an expansion franchise.

    He may transfer more money than that to the NHL as part of this official deal, but the extra will find it’s way back to him one way or another.

    The only thing that really annoys me here is that another scumbag carpet bagger owner is walking away with hundreds of millions in capital appreciation despite literally doing nothing to benefit the business, hockey fans or anyone else involved.

    If the homeless Coyotes are gone, that is a good thing for the NHL overall. I agree that SLC has some issues as a market and we’ll have to see if Smith can make those work. But it literally cannot be as bad as Phoenix has been the past 30 years.

    1. I agree with Ian, Salt Lake City could be worse than Phoenix for all the reasons we’ve mentioned. Glendale has been raving about the monster 100 million plus TV ratings the last 2 superbowls held there have achieved. There is no equivalence between the so called 4 major sports. There’s the NFL Rottweiler sitting on top of everyone, then the BIG10 and SEC football powerhouses. Ever been to the Horseshoe for a game, it is unreal. Then there’s NBA and NCAA basketball, followed by MLB. Finally there’s a scrawny, yippy pomeranian mix named Bettman a couple miles back.

      1. I’m not saying there aren’t issues (and some quite serious).

        But I’m interested to know how you believe it could be worse than a franchise that can’t fill a 4600 seat arena and who’s TV viewers barely number in the tens of thousands?

        One of the reasons the NHL agreed to allow the 5k arena is that Meruelo convinced them that he could make just as much money selling 5,000 tickets at $80-100 as the franchise had historically made at the Westgate arena (which was typically less than $500k per game). At one point their Neilsen numbers put tv viewership at about 7,000 people per game in market.

        I don’t know if he is maintaining the high avg ticket price he claimed for ASU, but clearly he’s not able to sell all the tickets (nor even close to it. There are hundreds of empty seats visible for most games) at whatever price he is getting.

        I completely agree with you two that there are hurdles to be overcome in SLC. But Smith could move this franchise to Wichita or Tulsa and still draw more fans than it does now.

      2. Salt Lake is a good fit for the NHL based on climate and, more importantly, demographics. Quebec City would be a better fit except the NHL doesn’t want to get entangled in Quebec nationalist and Quebec separatist politics in the run-up to a general election.

        On a parallel track, bragging about “4 major sports” is really saying “I don’t need to know nothin’ but U S and A”.

    2. Agent Allen Walsh said on this podcast that he knows that, if Mereulo gets a $1bn, Mereulo will still come out ahead on his ownership.

      He paid $300m plus took on a bunch of debt, but the inside word is the total was still less than a billion. That seems like a reliable estimate.

      I can see why the owners want to pay him a premium to just make Mereulo go away.

      Ryan Smith’s willingness to pay this much suggests he thinks the expansion fee in the next round will be at least a billion and that he might face stiffer competition from Atlanta, Houston, or Southern Ontario, so he should overpay now to get his team.

      Billionaires should not exist and they do make big mistakes. Being rich is largely luck. But I would trust he can afford accountants and marker researchers to figure out these basic questions better than random people on the internet.

      Elliotte Friedman reported the other owners simply have a lot of faith in Smith. They want him in their club.

      He’s a great salesman, he actually likes hockey and he has a viable arena plan. That makes him the high bidder at the moment.

      Also, Utah is fairly wealthy and growing. It’s only around 2.2m now in the metro area, but that’s still way more than Quebec and easier to make happen than Hamilton or staying in Arizona. Atlanta and Houston are not ready.

      It will be the smallest market with an NBA and NHL team. However, it is also the *only* market with an NHL and NBA team but no MLB or NFL team. So there’s really no direct comp.

      There are just too many variables in motion to predict how this will go. Anyone who says they know is fooling themselves.

      But Friedman also reported that Smith is planning to start spending immediately on free agents. The Coyotes have s lot of cap space, a very good crop of prospects. I’m not sure if they can win the draft lottery, but they’ll have a high pick.

      They should be able to sell season ticket packages easily. I suspect he already has.

  8. It’s Back to Winnipeg everybody! Manitobans will definitely support two pro hockey teams, why “winter” is practically in the name of the city! Believe me, I’ve passed through there a couple times. Winnipeg is ready for the Old Jets AND the New Jets!

    The only question here is whether the Coyotes qualify as the Old Jets or the New Ones, after the relocation. These are trifling matters. This CANNOT FAIL.

    I’ll need $1.7 billion (Canadian) to make this second NHL-calibre hockey rink happen, though. I’m building it on top of the first – like a second floor – except for hockey rinks. Details TBD.

  9. I’m in favor of them moving to SLC for one simple reason unrelated to stadiums–I feel only cities where ice can naturally form should have hockey teams.

    While that’s my personal opinion, it also makes hockey a bit unique of all the sports. You can’t just compare number of people or TV sets because hockey is objectively much more popular in cities where people are actually able to play hockey, for the same reason Brazilian don’t gather around their set to watch the Winter Olympics.

    To be fair, though, you did compare Salt Lake City to Miami, and Miami is basically Long Island with palm trees.

    1. Well, then in 20 or 25 years when no place can form ice naturally except Manitoba and Alberta, the NHL will be way smaller.

  10. Apparently the You-tah Yotes are a done deal:

    “Arizona Coyotes players were informed Friday that the team is relocating to Utah, sources told ESPN, confirming a report by PHNX Sports.”
    https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/39931044/arizona-coyotes-players-informed-team-relocation-utah

    1. Management has repeatedly lied to the Coyotes players and staff over the years, so it wouldn’t be a shock if this announcement is also premature.

      Probably not, given everything that is in motion, but until the puck drops in SLC next season, nothing is certain.

  11. Mereulo’s repeated failure to secure an NHL-quality arena in the Phoenix metro area gives the NHL an opening to replace his embarrassing and incompetent ownership with a better owner who also has much deeper pockets. Mereulo appears to be just as much of a worthless clown as John Fisher. If only MLB had the cojones to get Fisher out of its owners’ club.

    1. They have to give Mereulo the expansion rights to close this deal now without going to court.

      He’ll have some limited time to get a building built. Five years, I suppose.

      It’s a lot like what the NFL did with Cleveland.

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