Oak View Group on Saturday morning "opened a waiting list" for season-ticket deposits for a potential Seattle NHL team after "receiving 33,000 total deposits" since the ticket drive began Thursday morning, prompting OVG to shut it down at 5:00pm PT Friday, according to Geoff Baker of the SEATTLE TIMES. OVG CEO Tim Leiweke, who spearheaded the ticket drive alongside potential team owners David Bonderman and Jerry Bruckheimer, said that those making deposits will "receive a 'priority number' by next week in the order in which they paid their reservation fees." OVG then "expects to have a computerized seating configuration of KeyArena worked out by April and will begin contacting people by May about seat location and pricing." Full refunds on deposits can "still be obtained once pricing becomes known." Leiweke said that his next priority for now is "hiring a team president and getting expansion approval for Seattle on to the agenda" of the NHL BOG meeting in June (SEATTLETIMES.com, 3/3).
IMPRESSIVE SHOWING: THE ATHLETIC's Eric Duhatschek wrote if there was ever any "lingering doubt about Seattle as a viable expansion destination, it was mostly put to rest Thursday." According to the NHLSeattle Twitter feed, it "took 720 seconds to reach the preliminary goal of 10,000 tickets sold, which is pretty close to Winnipeg-like in terms of measuring interest in a marketplace." It was an "impressive opening salvo" for Seattle. Duhatschek: "Even more instructive I would argue was the fact that when the potential ownership group raised an 'NHL 2020' flag at the Space Needle, they were permitted to use the NHL shield in its advertising campaign." The fact that league intellectual property was being deployed "tells you how favorably the NHL views this group and its potential." However, the success of Seattle's expansion bid so far is "bad news for the NHL's aspirants in Quebec City." If the NHL "didn't think Quebec was financially viable" with a $500M buy-in, then the new price tag of $650M makes the "dream of returning the Nordiques even less likely." Quebec could "lure a franchise north in the same way Winnipeg did, but those price tags are massively inflated, too" (THEATHLETIC.com, 3/2). NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said of the successful season-ticket drive, "They have begun what looks like an amazing expression of interest. Obviously, that's one of the many factors that we have to evaluate as we go through the expansion process." But he added of Seattle's standing in the expansion process, "There are some boxes we have to evaluate and check before the board gets anywhere close to having to make a decision" (CALGARY HERALD, 3/3).
