Maybe NHL to Las Vegas isn’t such a done deal

A couple of weeks ago, a Vancouver newspaper report created a good deal of excitement around here by stating the NHL putting an expansion team in Las Vegas was “a done deal” once the new MGM arena opens for business.

The next day, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, or one of his deputies, whistled down that Vancouver report for being offsides. Nothing about the deal was done, said the league office.

Bettman usually has the last word when it comes to these matters.

This is what Sports Business Daily wrote Monday:

“Las Vegas has long been considered a potential expansion market and it has been said that it would be a feather in the NHL cap to expand there before the NBA does.

Still, a team in Las Vegas is far from a financial sure thing.

At least one-third of Las Vegas residents work at night when NHL games are played. Even with slot machines being added in private suites, it’s unclear whether casinos would be willing to encourage visitors to leave the gaming tables for more than three hours to watch a game.

Las Vegas is also not a large U.S. TV market, meaning the team’s local broadcast rights would not generate considerable revenue. (Las Vegas is the 42nd largest market, trailing Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Birmingham, Alabama.)

The latest U.S. census showed that in 2010, Nevada had the second highest increase in the U.S. poverty rate behind Florida. Las Vegas’s $26,993 per capita income was less than the $27,334 U.S. average.

A recent NBA-commissioned survey found that a team in Las Vegas would not make a profit.”

Oh.

This is where I would point out that NHL games still look pretty cool on big-screen TVs, especially NHL games that are played outside on New Year’s when it snows and one of the goalies wears a tuque.