Los Angeles: The NHL took a significant step toward expanding to 32 teams when Commissioner Gary Bettman said Thursday the league had agreed to consider an application from a group led by renowned film and TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer and investment banker David Bonderman to place a team in Seattle “and to let them run in the next few months a season-ticket drive.” Bettman said the expansion fee was set at $650 million (Dh, which is $150 million more than Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley paid to establish a team in Las Vegas that made its debut this season.
“That doesn’t mean we have granted an expansion team,” Bettman told reporters after a Board of Governors meeting in Manalapan, Fla.
The process of allowing an application to be filed and measuring fan interest via potential ticket sales is the same the league carried out with the Golden Knights, who have been a success story on and off the ice in their first season. “We’re a little familiar with the city, but the level of due diligence that we will do is something the expansion process contemplates,” Bettman said of Seattle. “From everything I know viscerally I think it will be a good market. ... But we’ve got homework to do.”
Another team in the Western Conference would leave the league with 16 teams in each conference.
