NHL Formally Announces Expansion Process, Starts To Accept Application

National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman formally announced on Wednesday that the Board of Governors has agreed to explore the league’s franchise expansion and will now examine bids from interested markets.

NHL owners met in Las Vegas prior to the league’s annual awards ceremony and discussed the topic about expansion process. Bettman said NHL will accept formal applications for expansion bids on July citing Las Vegas, Seattle, Quebec, and a second team in Toronto as the markets to have expressed serious intentions. He also added that they received interests from Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Portland over time. However, the NHL commissioner said that the Board of Governors has not decided how many teams to add because they have not finalised a decision if they want to expand at all.

“The fact that we’re going through this process, doesn’t mean we’re going to expand. It means we’re going to stop just listening to expressions of interest and take a good hard look at what they mean and represent. Expansion is a very serious and important business decision. You don’t do it frivolously. No one is going to be persuaded by marching bands, nor would we consider seriously jottings on a napkin,” Bettman said as per Yahoo Sports.

The league gave potential owner Bill Foley permission late in 2014 to begin a trial season-ticket-drive in Las Vegas, one of the interested markets for the expansion process, to gauge the level of interest for an NHL team in Sin City. Since then, the 70-year-old billionaire produced over 13,000 commitments of season tickets from individuals, which could give Las Vegas a strong chance to host the 31st team in NHL.

Anschutz Entertainment Group and MGM Resorts International are constructing a new arena on the edge of The Strip in Las Vegas and is reportedly scheduled to open in the spring of 2016. The 20,000-seater arena worth $350 million can either house an NHL or NBA team, or both, but according to NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly, the earliest that any potential expansion team would play is the 2017-2018 season. Meanwhile, RLB Holdings Sports and Entertainment, the group planning to build an arena in Tukwila just outside Seattle, issued a statement in response to the NHL’s expansion review opening according to reports from ESPN.

"Our group continues to make significant progress on the Northwest Arena at Southcenter. We are pleased the National Hockey League has decided to take the next step in growing its great sport to new markets. Should the opportunity present itself, we would welcome any dialogue with the NHL with regards to the expansion process,” the statement read.

Bettman felt the arena situations in Seattle still seems to have uncertainty, and while Quebec City posts as a strong candidate for the expansion with its Videotron Centre opening later this year, the NHL commissioner would still have to wait and see how real and serious the markets are in participating in the expansion process.