Prior to officially landing an expansion team, much was made of Vegas’ incredibly successful season ticket drive.
One of the people most impressed by the results? The club’s owner, Bill Foley.
In an interview with Forbes, Foley said the Golden Knights are “number five, six or seven in terms of ticket revenue in the league,” adding that they’re ahead of the Boston Bruins, Philadelphia Flyers and the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins.
“Edmonton has more revenue in their brand-new arena,” Foley explained. “The Rangers, Toronto, Chicago Blackhawks, they’re all ahead of us. Montreal is right with us.
“We have more revenue than the Flyers, Penguins, the Boston Bruins. Most of our tickets are multi-year. The lower bowl is three to ten years.”
In September of 2016, Vegas announced it had received deposits on all 16,000 season tickets available for the 2017-18 season. That capped off an impressive 19-month run that began in February of ’15 with the stated goal of 10,000 deposits.
Vegas hit the halfway mark in two days -- more than 5,000 tickets were sold within the first 48 hours -- and the organization later stated 9,000 season tickets were sold within a month of the launch.
Foley said the organization was able to accomplish this despite knowing virtually nothing about how to do a ticket drive. He also told Forbes local fans were showing an impressive amount of faith, buying “season tickets for a team that did not exist to play in an arena that had not been built.”
That arena -- T-Mobile, opened in April of last year -- has a capacity of 17,500 for hockey. Foley told Forbes the Golden Knights have also sold all of the suites for this season.