Vegas needs 10,000 season ticket commitments to get an NHL team

Just 90 minutes after arriving in Las Vegas Monday afternoon, a relaxed Bill Foley, wearing blue jeans and a black long-sleeved V-neck, unpacked in his Bellagio 36th floor penthouse suite on the Strip and looked forward to Tuesday’s big announcement.

Foley, the 69-year-old pied piper of NHL hockey in Sin City, and his local partners, the Maloof brothers, will officially start accepting season ticket deposits for a possible big-league hockey club.

It will be game on for www.vegaswantshockey.com, which begins accepting deposits at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.

“I’m just getting ready for the whirlwind,” said Foley, whose other job is chairman of Fidelity National Financial, Inc., a mortgage company based in Jacksonville, Fla. The graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point also owns 14 wineries in the western U.S. and a cattle ranch and golf course community in Montana.

On Tuesday, Foley will be joined at the ticket drive announcement by a powerful hockey official — none other than the NHL commissioner himself, Gary Bettman. And Bettman is bringing two of his top wing men — Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly and Chief Operating Officer John Collins.

“He said ‘sell tickets,’” Foley recalled. “He said ‘don’t talk about anything except selling your tickets.’”

To do just that, Foley has enlisted a core group of 75 or so local Las Vegas business leaders, each charged with selling 60 ticket deposits. Four of the 75 have already reached their quota.

Foley’s big guns — Gavin and Joe Maloof, owners of the Sacramento Kings from 1998-2013 — are in charge of the 75.

“The Maloofs are my hammer,” Foley quipped.

Foley said a minimum of 10,000 season ticket commitments are needed to show Bettman, Daly, Collins and the league’s Board of Governors that Las Vegas is ready for the NHL.

Deposits range from $150 to $900, depending on the best seats. Those 10 percent deposits will be refunded if the NHL does not award a team to Foley’s group and kept if the league approves a franchise.

The team would play at the $375 million arena being built behind New York-New York by the powerhouse partnership of MGM Resorts International and Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG). The arena is scheduled to open in April 2016, and Foley is shooting for his team’s first season in 2016-17.

Foley isn’t shy about pounding the pavement with his sales pitch. He’s meeting electrical vendors working on the arena Tuesday morning and plans to sign up a bunch of new season ticket holders.

Foley is confident: he and his wife have bought a house in Summerlin’s Ridges section.

He said his embryonic hockey team should get credit for sale of 22 of the arena’s 42 suites and all eight of the “bunker” suites.

The buzz for hockey began two months ago when Foley/Maloof set up www.vegaswantshockey.com to collect names and emails of fans. The recent guerrilla marketing has resulted in 10,000 contact names, Foley said.

Some of the feedback also included chatter about the team’s place name. Though he initially thought that Nevada should be part of the name, Foley said he now realizes the franchise’s place name will be Las Vegas.

But Foley is focusing on selling ticket deposits. He never stops selling ticket deposits. Ever.

“If you want a good seat and priority, you have to sign up,” Foley said.

Get ready for that message on Las Vegas-area billboards, TV ads and radio spots.

“It’s up to Las Vegas to prove that it wants a team,” he said.

Contact reporter Alan Snel at asnel@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5273. Follow him on Twitter: @BicycleManSnel