Calgary is a weird city in the sense they have pretty much-annexed everything that has a sizable population around it, whereas Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver all have very sizable cities bordering them. Although, Canada and the United States have different ways of measuring their cities. For example, we don't really have a comparable to CSA's and tend to not have as expansive MSA's when you compare something like Toronto/GTA/Golden Horseshoe to a region like Chicago/Chicagoland. But as for metro areas, pretty much every Canadian city outside Montreal, Toronto and to a lesser extent Vancouver/Lower Mainland is on the small side for having a professional sports team.
That's just the area they currently have carved out. They wouldn't have to pay them an indemnification fee. The cities are over 400 miles apart. When Vegas was created they took TV territory from other teams.
You don't get to buy that much television territory. NHL bylaws don't give him protection over a city 400 miles away. It's not like the Leafs or Montreal had any rights over Ottawa (hence why Ottawa got exclusive TV rights until about Belleville) which are much closer to them than SLC is to Las Vegas. Montreal is closer to QC, and they are in Montreal's tv area too. The same logic likely applies to Houston/Dallas. Bill Foley really has no power to block it outside of one vote on the BOG. Plus, theoretically, if Arizona moved, he could just try to claim most of Arizona as now part of his TV territory. You only get veto/indemnification money if a team moves within 50 miles of you, hence why Hamilton has so many hurdles.
I always forget about the complex regional cable arrangements/disputes in the United States since Canada is essentially an oligopoly of two companies with a couple of local regional players. And, the Canadian rights are all held by essentially two companies with a national presence. I just meant that I can't see Vegas having any real dispute with a team invading their TV territory when it comes to SLC considering we are talking two cities 400 miles apart. I know the West is more sparsely populated outside of the coast, but if looked up every NHL team within 400 miles of Toronto, you'd get at least 5 or so teams (Detroit, Montreal, Buffalo, Ottawa, Pittsburgh) with Columbus and most of the major Northeast Metroplex outside of Boston Columbus within 500 or so miles.
I'm getting the feeling that the BoG might start thinking that the "unfortunate human error" goes by the name of Meruelo (if they don't already).
Oh, I believe Denver teams tend to have an insane one (I believe Broncos had the largest NFL local TV area for years) given there are so few major sports teams in that region, so I can see St. Louis going far west given they are. I was purely talking about how I don't think Foley has any sort of claim to damages for a team moving to SLC.
