from Eli Segall of the Las Vegas Sun,
As a lifelong fan of the game, I’m excited to be able to watch live pro hockey, which is far better in person than on TV. (Anyone remember the “glowing puck” of the 1990s?) Locals who have never been to an NHL game will be wowed by the players’ skating speed, puck movement, shot-blocking, goaltending and overall athleticism.
As a business reporter, though, I look at a Las Vegas NHL team through another lens, and two main questions linger for me: As other people wonder, will locals buy tickets in droves? And will tourists want to spend a night watching hockey here?...
At least initially, the sport’s novelty in Las Vegas would draw fans, and people would turn out simply to watch the first major-league sports team ever to be based in America’s gambling mecca. But overall, 5 percent of U.S. adults say hockey is their favorite sport.
That’s tied for fifth with men’s pro basketball, below auto racing (6 percent), men’s college football (10 percent), baseball (15 percent) and the long-reigning champ, pro football (33 percent), according to the Harris Poll.
Tourists would almost surely go to hockey games here, helping make up for a possible shortfall in ticket sales to locals. There would even be people who plan their trips around NHL games, and it doesn’t hurt that Canadians are the biggest group of foreign tourists here.
About 1.9 million people visited Las Vegas from Canada in 2014, comprising 30.7 percent of all foreign visitors, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
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