Fans on Thursday actually crashed an online submission portal set up through Ticketmastertwitter
The group trying to secure an NHL team in Seattle surpassed 25,000 season-ticket deposits in "just more than an hour" on Thursday and plans to "shut things down by the end of Friday," according to Geoff Baker of the SEATTLE TIMES. Oak View Group CEO Tim Leiweke, who is spearheading the ticket drive alongside potential team owners David Bonderman and Jerry Bruckheimer, said that the total was at "about 29,000 by mid-afternoon." Leiweke: "The NHL is surprised, very pleasantly surprised. And so I think they’re very happy. We still have work to do. But I think it sends a great message to the league and it’s what we’ve been telling them about Seattle." Baker notes an online submission portal went live at 10:00am PT, and the goal of 10,000 tickets sold had "already been surpassed" within 12 minutes. Fans actually "crashed the system" set up through Ticketmaster. Fans reported "long delays in processing requests, while some said the system hung up and forced them to retry several times." It took the Golden Knights' initial season-ticket drive "about six weeks to reach 10,000 commitments." The $500 deposits were for "general season tickets while another 5,000 'club' seats in the lower center ice level between the two bluelines quickly got snatched up for reservations of $1,000 apiece." Full refunds on deposits can "still be obtained once pricing becomes known." Leiweke said that they will "cap the drive by Friday simply because 'we don’t want to be sitting on people’s money beyond a certain number'" (SEATTLE TIMES, 3/2).
HUNGRY FOR HOCKEY: TSN.com's Frank Seravalli wrote if there was "any question about hockey’s popularity in the Pacific Northwest, there is no longer." Seattle "desperately wants NHL hockey, vindicating the league’s long-held fascination with the market." An NHL Seattle flag was "raised to the top of the iconic Space Needle on Thursday afternoon to commemorate the launch of the campaign." Almost everything Seattle does "fairly or unfairly ... will be compared to Vegas." The Golden Knights "collected 5,000 deposits in two days" in '15 and "maxed out at 10,000 in approximately 90 days." Seattle hauled in "two and a half times that total in the first hour" (TSN.com, 3/1). In Tacoma, John McGrath writes Thursday's ticket drive "wasn’t just a liftoff," it was the "full-tilt Cape Canaveral adventure." It is "fair to wonder if the astonishing verdict on the NHL’s expanding to Seattle was a statement of backlash at the NBA." While the NBA "yawns before taking its customary drool-spooling nap, the NHL has raced to Seattle’s forefront" (Tacoma NEWS TRIBUNE, 3/2).
