Southern Utah's Berri on Las Vegas Getting NHL Team (Audio)

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is Bloomberg, Charlie, and we thank you, but again. Recapping a stock surge SMP five hundred index up twenty seven points to a gain today of one point three percent. I'm Charlie Pellett and that's a bloom Bred business flash. This is taking stock with Gathleen Hayes and Pim Box on Bloomberg Radio. The National Hockey League Las Vegas expansion filling a craving for money Gary Bettman is the commissioner of the NHL, and he brought the NHL and hockey to the Sun Belt, now offering hockey in a city

at is best known for floor shows and gaming. Here to tell us more is Dave Barry, sports economist at Southern Utah University. Dave, thanks very much for being with us, Thanks for having So what kind of money are we talking about? Because attendance is not great. I was looking at the attendance numbers for the Stanley Cup finalists. They

drew fewer than seventeen thousand fans per game last season. Yeah, it's well when you when you look at Vegas as a market, you can see why, you know, you can see why the NHL did this, given you know, what they're paying to join. But if you look at the viability of the franchise, of the big issues that people have raised and Bloomberg's own Kabatha Davidson racist actually years ago, is that there's so many people in Vegas who are not native to Vegas. Vegas has a huge population of

people who moved there. Uh, and so unlike a city like Cleveland, where you have people who have lived there for generations and they are immensely devoted to their sports teams, even though they didn't win until this year. It's really hard to see that that's going to happen in Vegas, where you have people who moved there from someplace else. So who is going to be the fan base for

this NHL team? And exactly why would somebody who really like hockey moved to a place like Vegas, So that that's it really is unclear why you why the NHL would want to do this. Well, Dave, thank you for saying that although there are like, you know, ice hockey teams in some really hot parts of the country, but I didn't have to do with tourism does have to do Oh, I can go to Las Vegas. Uh. You know,

you can play blackjack, honey while I watched some hockey. Yeah, I mean there's gonna mean there's gonna be tourists there who can go see a hockey game. And that's true. My sense of it is is, you know, around the same time we're talking about this, you know, we have Vegas is also really trying very hard to get an

NFL team to move to Vegas. Uh. And the NFL is is certainly a much more popular sport than than hockey is and by allowing you know, by having NHL moving to Vegas, it makes Vegas appear to be a major league city because now they're in one of the major sports, and I think it's strengthens their bid to get an NFL franchise, which is something that they also would like to do. Dave, how about five hundred million

reasons to go to Vegas? Isn't that the five hundred million dollars that's the expansion fee alone to enter the league and maybe start in the season. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, you know, yeah, it is. Actually, you know, it's clear the NHL is making money on this. It's really it's really not clear that this is a long run strategy that you know, there's a lot of questions if there's gonna be a fan base that's gonna be there supporting his team ten years from now or twenty years from now.

So there's again there'll be some initial excitement that they have a franchise, but that always wears off. And you know, so you think about this, five years from now, ten years from now, is there going to be a big enough fan base in Vegas to support in an NHL team down the road. Well, he's already said, for example, I guess we want to talk about billionaire businessman Bill Foley, right, because uh, he is the one who's going to be pooning up the money. He's already taken deposits, he says,

for fourteen thousand, five hundred season ticket holders. Uh. And well, I mean the franchise, as I said, four be five hundred billion dollars, right, I mean the first expansion since so what when the Minnesota Wild and the Columbus Blue Jackets were admitted? Yes? Uh and and and that is typically you know, what you're saying with those numbers is typically what you see with an expansion team is that initially there's a lot of excitement and again that it

does wear off. And you know, five years down the road, ten years or down the road, are those same fans going to keep renewing those season tickets? Especially if they don't if they're not successful. Day, Barry, put on your sports economist hat. That's why First Gotten started following your work how many years ago, big up in the New York Times about um, the NBA and productivity of players, right and and and people have this bad idea that if you shoot all the time and make and make

lots of baskets. Your productive your work has shown not necessarily, you've got to do a lot of other things as well. The NBA Draft is tonight Again in that context, why is it's so important, Well, the NBA Draft is where the losers of the NBA have a night where they get to dream that they're going to be successful. And so what you're gonna here tonight is a lot of players will have their name called. And when they are called, uh, you will hear analysts tell you that the person as

a future star. Uh. They are almost always wrong. They are not future stars. All you have to do do is look back at the history of every other draft they were not future stars. Uh. And so what typically happens is the players in the NBA in college who scored the most and played for winning teams, Uh, they will get drafted first. Uh. So studies have shown that that is typically what happens. Studies also showed those things are

not related to future NBA productivity. So there will be a collection of players drafted very early on, and the fan bases are gonna be very excited about these players. And then sometime probably next January or February, it will occur to a lot of these fans that those players were not quite as good as they were advertised. And then as a question, Pim of how good your investment was? Yes. Dave Berry, Sports Economists, Southern Utah University on the expansion

of the National Hockey League to Las Vegas. I wonder what their team will be called. We've got one vote for the game lurs. We'll see you're listening to Taking Stock. I'm Pim Fox, my co host Kathleen Hayes, and this is Bloomberg Radio. Taking Stock is brought to you by Sector Spider e T S Y by a single stock. When you can invest in the entire sector, visit sector spdrs dot com or call six Sector e T F