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NHL Utah surpasses 34,000 season ticket deposits, will sell discounted ‘partial-ice-view’ seats

NHL Utah surpasses 34,000 season ticket deposits, will sell discounted ‘partial-ice-view’ seats

Utah’s NHL team might be playing its inaugural season without a nickname, but the startup hockey club has already made quite a name for itself in the market.

The team’s chief commercial officer Chris Barney told reporters on a Zoom call this week that more than 34,000 people have now placed a deposit for season tickets for the team’s inaugural season. During the team’s launch event in late April, owner Ryan Smith revealed that roughly 29,000 fans had paid a $100 deposit to be on the list for season tickets.

That means an additional 5,000 fans have added their name to the list over the past five weeks.

“The demand has been totally overwhelming,” said Barney.

The club is opening the doors of the Delta Center this week to allow prospective season ticket holders to get a glimpse of the arena with the ice surface in place and potentially choose their preferred seats. Since the number of potential season ticket holders (34,000) far exceeds the maximum capacity for NHL hockey at the Delta Center — which is expected to reach as high as 16,000 for this season — some fans may come up short when trying to secure season tickets for the 2024-25 campaign. At this point, the demand is going to heavily outweigh the supply.

“The math just doesn’t work for everybody to get a seat,” said Barney.

But that is an enviable problem to be facing heading into the first season of NHL hockey in Salt Lake City.

With so many people flooding the market looking for tickets, the hockey team is looking for creative ways to figure out how to maximize its audience this season. Barney says there are a “bunch of levers we will pull” to figure out how to cap the season ticket number, allowing fans to purchase tickets in smaller quantities, such as half-season packages, mini packs or single games.

“The stated goal is to give as many people to have an opportunity to be in the building as possible,” said Barney.

To that end, the club is still fiddling around with the seating capacity for this season. The Delta Center was originally built as a facility dedicated to basketball, so engineers and designers are still studying ways to add as many seats as possible on nights when the arena is hosting an NHL game.

“There is some configuration stuff that we’re still working on,” said Barney. “And in the spirit of…

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