Don’t get too caught up in Vegas hockey hype

The NHL’s decision this week to award an expansion team to Las Vegas has been met with near-universal acclaim, with parties stumbling over themselves to praise the move as a momentous achievement for the state of Nevada and for professional hockey.

But in the haze of hockey euphoria, what’s being overlooked is the obvious question of how having an NHL team will actually benefit Las Vegas in any concrete way. That’s particularly important because the league’s southward expansion over the past two decades has been a failure, and the on-ice performance of new teams has been lackluster.

It is true that the Las Vegas decision is an important milestone in the push to change stale and irrational attitudes towards sports betting, attitudes that have been propagated over the past quarter-century. I don’t think this point can be overemphasized, given the past reluctance of sports leagues to have anything to do with the city of Las Vegas or with casinos more generally.

Setting aside questions of the respective legacies of Bill Foley and the Maloof brothers, and the glitz and glamour of the NHL being the first major league to penetrate the city (which appears to have been driving force behind all this), the core premise of the expansion is highly suspect. Is there really sufficient consumer demand in Vegas for hockey, a sport that is as foreign to the region as the Vietnamese language?

First, the argument that has been used successfully in other cities doesn’t apply in the case of Vegas: that a professional sports team can be an important economic engine and a value-added form of entertainment. The city drew a record 42 million visitors in 2015 without having an NHL team. Say what you want about Vegas, but I’ve yet to see anyone criticize the city for its of lack of interesting things to do. At what point does adding yet another entertainment attraction yield diminishing returns?

Second, we already know that the NHL’s business model of expanding into the Sun Belt has failed to live up to expectations. The 1990s experienced a wave of teams from Canada and the northeastern U.S. relocating to the south, along with the aggressive introduction of new franchises into the region’s fast-growing cities.

But numbers don’t lie: these efforts have simply not been successful. According to Forbes’ 2015 Business of Hockey Report, five of the league’s six lowest-valued franchises – Tampa Bay, Nashville, Carolina (Raleigh), Arizona (Phoenix), and Florida (Miami)  – are all Sun Belt teams. (The sixth is the Columbus Blue Jackets, who were introduced in 2000 at the league’s last expansion.) Each of these teams is valued at around 20 percent of the New York Rangers, the NHL’s most valuable franchise.

These Sun Belt teams are struggling just to break even financially. Tampa Bay, Carolina, Arizona, and Florida managed to lose a combined $38 million in 2015. Or consider the Atlanta Thrashers. After being inaugurated in 1999 as an expansion team, the team relocated in 2011 to Winnipeg, a city rarely referred to as a sporting Mecca.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I have yet to see any convincing evidence that a team in Las Vegas will fare any better than the teams in these cities.

It is true that this all could be mitigated if the Las Vegas team performs at a high enough level to consistently attract fans and good TV ratings. But this brings me to my third point: the deck will be highly stacked against the as-of-yet unnamed Vegas team, to the point where it will have a very difficult time fielding a competitive product in its early years. Beyond that, it’s still questionable if the team ever will be competitive.

The team will begin constructing its roster through what’s known as an expansion draft, whereby a new team selects from those relatively untested younger players and over-priced veterans who have been deemed expendable by other franchises. Thus for the first years, Vegas hockey fans should expect to see their team on the bottom of the standings while it tries to build through the annual amateur draft.

After the first years, fans still shouldn’t set their hopes very high. By any metric, the on-ice performance of NHL expansion teams over the past two decades has been pitiful. Since 1991, when the expansion era ramped up, the nine added teams have combined to win a grand total of three Stanley Cups. By contrast, the “Original Six” franchises won a combined total of 10 titles during the period. And the Pittsburgh Penguins – not a member of the Original Six – alone won three titles, the same number as those nine added teams.

Why is this a problem? Because we can already discern from the financials that Sun Belt fans are less interested in hockey than their Yankee counterparts. Once the novelty wears off, Vegas fans will be even less engaged, as they realize that their team stinks and that this isn’t likely to change.

Now add a unique problem facing a Vegas team: the transiency of the city’s population. Die-hard sporting allegiances among fans don’t just develop overnight; they become are ingrained over generations. (Thirty-five years ago, the city’s population was only one-quarter of what it is today. Henderson’s population was then less than one-tenth of what it is today.) Most area residents who follow the NHL, such as the snowbirds from northern states, probably already have a deep allegiance to their hometown team,

Of course it’s possible to rout for two teams, but it’s just not the same. For example, I’ve lived in Washington, D.C., for almost a decade but still cheer mainly for Minnesota teams. I’ll pay attention if a Washington team is having a successful season, but if not, I’m not going to waste my time.

I hope I’m wrong, and I’m all for hockey in Vegas if it will actually benefit the region. But having a deadweight team that hemorrhages money is probably not what most proponents have in mind. After all, today they can just drive a few hours southeast to Phoenix to see for themselves what such a team looks like.