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[ FE A T UR E ]

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rom day one, Bill Foley, the Vegas
Golden Knights majority owner,
had a vision of molding and build-
Fing a new team into something his
new city would come to embrace. Most likely,
even in his quietest of moments, Foley never
could have dreamed how quickly his plan and
vision would become a reality, especially the
part where the team was among the best in
the National Hockey League after 20 games.
His—and Vegas’s Golden Knights—are
playing to capacity crowds at T-Mobile Arena
and have gotten off to the best expansion start
in National League history, and headed into
2018 in first place in the Pacific Division with
a stunning record of 26-9-2.
Almost immediately, the question of,
“Could professional hockey work in Las
Vegas?” had been answered with a resound-
ing yes.
Foley embraced Las Vegas from the outset.
It was the only city in the world where he
wanted to bring expansion pro hockey.
“I really felt like Las Vegas was a great op-
portunity for us to do something special and
make an impact,” Foley said via an email for
an article I wrote for Sports Business Journal.
“No one had ever brought major professional
sports to Las Vegas before so it was exciting
for me to try and make that happen. When I
was approached with the idea of owning an
NHL team, I was told I might be able to get
involved in St. Louis or I might be able to get
involved in other places. I said, ‘No, it must be
a place where I want to live and put my roots
down.’ Vegas was perfect on every level.
“When so many people put down deposits
to watch a team that didn’t exist, that hadn’t
been granted by the NHL, to play in an arena
that didn’t exist, I knew we had a real winner,”
he continued. “Las Vegas is much different
than people think. It’s not sin city. It’s not The
Strip. It’s really a community of 2.2 million
with great people who are sports starved. We
are a team that was created in Las Vegas and
supported by the local community: firefight-
ers, teachers, lawyers, doctors and nurses.
It’s a unique group of people that put down
deposits on season tickets and actually con-
verted and now own season tickets. It’s not
the casinos. They have some tickets but not
many. It’s just locals that want to go to hockey
games and want to support a team.”
It was June 16, 2016, when NHL owners

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