NHL to Atlanta odds just increased significantly

[PensPlz]

Yeah there never used to be garbage teams at the bottom of the league when there were 20 teams…

No loser point back then. There is not really an excuse to be out of playoffs in December like more than a couple teams always are.

 

[biturbo19]

That's the thing that people who aren't from here just don't get. There is *no* downtown entertainment district in Atlanta, like Broadway in Nashville. State Farm Arena and Mercedes-Benz Stadium are next door neighbors to each other and are their own destinations. There's no real retail development around either one, and, for that matter, nor was there anything over by Turner Field (or whatever it's now called).

Atlanta is the quintessential commuter city. Almost no one lives downtown.

There are no meaningful walkable bars, restaurants, etc. to hang out at before and after a game. There's a Chick-Fil-A down the street, near the College Football Hall of Fame, and a McCormick and Shmicks upscale steakhouse, and that's just about it. I guess the dying CNN Center still has a food court with a Subway, an Arby's, and Dunkin.



That has it 100% wrong. It's smack dab in the middle of where the fanbase is and will be. Downtown is where most people in those same northern suburbs won't deal with hellish rush hour traffic to get to a weeknight game.

Yeah. This is the thing that really gives me pause on Atlanta as a hockey market though. It really is a true sprawling exurb hellscape. So far as i understand, it's been that way since my mother lived there for a bunch of years growing up way back in the day. Just all these weird insular little flung out suburbs stratified by income/socioeconomic demographics, and loosely strung together by highways.

It's where i can see why there's demand for these little enclaves of actual density. But they're also just splattered across the region and completely isolated by highways and a lot of mostly nothing.


I can see why the "Downtown Option" doesn't work for Atlanta. I remember seeing the Falcons stadium going up and just staring at the images wondering what on earth they're doing. Just interchange spaghetti cutting it off from everything else. That and the old Arena seem like they're just on an isolated "tourist island" or something. But not even a good one.

So it makes sense and i'm sure they've done heaps of research to understand that their real meaningful potential "fanbase" that could service an NHL franchise are actually in those satellite exurbs nowhere near actual Atlanta. And would be more likely to draw fans if it's located more convenient to those areas, rather than forcing people to go "downtown".


But it's still such a sketchy proposition to me. People will show up if a team is good. But if a team isn't as good (which often happens), in those leaner years, it's extremely difficult to maintain a serious draw if you cannot tie in to some other "nightlife" or "entertainment" component and make it a cheap part of a "night on the town" or whatever. If you can't integrate it with the nightlife, college demographics, fine dining, or some sort of younger group that is going to just go out drinking and partying and maybe enjoying a game while they're there...or something...it becomes a real uphill battle to draw decent crowds if the team isn't great. People just don't like driving out to a weird little place to watch a the home team get clobbered. You can't even get hammered to drown out/enhance the experience...because someone's gotta drive home.


Trying to sneak it in with a higher density development that'll have all those various restaurants, shops, amenities of a higher density mixed used community like that is certainly on the right track... But i do still worry that Atlanta's particularly nightmarish sprawling character might present an obstacle to sustainable viability even if they're a lot more aware of demographics and have a plan this time.

 

[AKL]

Just seems a little too far north for me. Will probably be one of those arenas that gets the "middle of nowhere, nothing else to do, no postgame/pregame dining" etc designations. I agree that suburbs would be better for a hockey fanbase than downtown Atlanta but this one just seems too far and I feel like they're going to get the same criticism that the Glendale arena and the Sunrise arena has gotten.

See post 287. That map is what the Braves presented when showing one of the many reasons for moving to the northern burbs. It shows who has bought tickets to games over the last several years. Since that move, their attendance has gone up and their development is a HUGE success. I'm betting the Gathering is using similar data.

To my definitely-not-an-expert eye, living in the Phoenix area, the Glendale situation was somewhat tri-fold:

1) Farther away from the bigger populations
-Gilbert/Chandler/Mesa/Tempe population is about 1.2M, (Scottsdale is another 240k)
-Glendale/Peoria/Surprise/whatever is less than half that

2) The money/disposable income is more abundant in the East Valley (Gilbert/Chandler/etc)

3) Demographically speaking, a higher percentage of the NHL's market lives in the East Valley than in the Glendale area

Bonus 4): The team never had a competent owner and GM who built any sustained success, which would be difficult for any market to overcome

I've never even been to Atlanta, but just based on some cursory research, 2 and 3 aren't going to be an issue in Forsyth County, and while there may be less of a population in Forsyth County than in downtown Atlanta, it's not just about raw population numbers (which is why 2 and 3 carry a vast majority of the weight). As a bonus, with the idea being that they'll have a competent owner and GM willing to commit to the teams success on the ice this time, and the new expansion draft rules that allow teams to be much more competitive much sooner, it shouldn't really be much of an issue.

Not to mention from a pure DMA standpoint, Atlanta is massive, encompassing Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and at least parts of Mississippi, Tennessee, and maybe North Carolina and northern Florida.

There's a reason the NHL wants to try Atlanta again. If it's succeeds it's one of the biggest sports markets in the continent. Certainly bigger than most Canadian markets, let alone the ones without an NHL team. It's bigger than Houston and Salt Lake City that people keep clamoring for. It's bigger than Kansas City and Portland and anywhere else I've seen people advocate for.

 

[cowboy82nd]

Yeah and what's the percentage of Canadians to Americans of those millions that are actual potential customers to the NHL? Basic math goes out the door at that point right.

38.25 million vs 340 million.

 

[beowulf]

Ohhh gawd.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

NHL is maxed out at 32 teams. More will only water down the game.

But… a billion dollars!!

f*** Bettman

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

These leagues are in most of the large markets (and are very successful in some small ones like Green Bay) in the United States already. Some of them are trying to grow their games in foreign markets even.
It wasn't always so though. All four leagues have now surpassed Boxing, Horse Racing, and Sailboat Racing in popularity now and are very wary about the growth of e-sports. The NBA itself was on the verge of collapse and battled hockey in the US as the #3 and nearly became a goon league to try and match hockey's growth. It wasn't expansion that saved it but profit sharing.
Tennis is growing the sport of pickleball with some success and everyone has their eye on soccer growing in NA. Also, Nascar. Formula 1 has moved into the US.

So is the NHL, why are they the only league looking to expand? do NFL NBA and MLB owners hate extra expansion money?

 

[AKL]

So is the NHL, why are they the only league looking to expand? do NFL NBA and MLB owners hate extra expansion money?

I'm not a fan of endless expansion either, but something the NHL has that the NFL, NBA and MLB don't have is six extra Canadian teams.

So without those 6 additional Canadian teams, the NHL is actually only at 26 compared to the other three leagues 30-32.

 

[dj4aces]

So it makes sense and i'm sure they've done heaps of research to understand that their real meaningful potential "fanbase" that could service an NHL franchise are actually in those satellite exurbs nowhere near actual Atlanta. And would be more likely to draw fans if it's located more convenient to those areas, rather than forcing people to go "downtown".

It doesn't hurt that the areas around where the prospective arena will be located is among the fastest growing in the country. I'm sure the developers, the county commissioners, and the league all see the growth -- particularly from other hockey markets -- and feel it might be a better bet to locate a franchise in this area versus closer to town.

 

[#37]

It doesn't hurt that the areas around where the prospective arena will be located is among the fastest growing in the country. I'm sure the developers, the county commissioners, and the league all see the growth -- particularly from other hockey markets -- and feel it might be a better bet to locate a franchise in this area versus closer to town.

I think a point that is being missed in this thread is that neither Fulton County, The City of Atlanta (Already have an arena), or Cobb County (still miffed about the deal the Braves got) is going to subsidize a new arena, where as Forsyth is willing to... and that is what sets the location.

Let us also note that this is an election year. What looks like a good deal today may be gone with the wind next November. So, this either moves fast or it might not move at all.

 

[TheLegend]

This I can agree with., But there's a caveat. Usa is untapped, but if you are going to expand and hope for success, do you try to target a region that's failed in 2 different generations, or do you try for a new one?

The game has grown alot since the days of gretzky going to LA, but it hasn't worked in many areas, which leaves the highest earning markets, which are majority Canadian, to cover the differences in profit share.

So I'd say while it's fine to target atl again, I don't feel they should get a heads up over ones that haven't had the opportunity or ones guaranteed to thrive.

Adding say a Quebec, that's printing money, which would be added to the support of the financially unstable like Arizona. Then u could add a Houston or etc. If the Utah owner really has a hard on there, I'd rather go there first, at least give them the shot.

If this happens, it really just feels like one man's mission (Bettmans) to push a square peg into a circular hole, and make his decisions work instead of admitting mb it's not the right time.

Rest of league owners, majority don't gaf where it is, cuz they all share a take of the expansion fees, which will be same for whoever comes in, which if based on the past 2, this one will be probably 800 to just a shy under a billion dollars

Failures are often due to bad business planning. Not the actual product.

Arizona for the last 27 years has been a prime example of what NOT to do on several levels.

OTOH.... Vegas has shown itself to be an example of what you should do.

One was dumped into a market with little to no preparation, the other took 2-3 years to cultivate a following before the first sheet of ice was laid down.

Now you mention Quebec.... it would indeed print money at the gate, but not much anywhere else. And by that I mean corporations jumping on the bandwagon. The league did take a look and determined that there just isn't enough it there.

The reason why they're looking at Atlanta again is twofold.

1) It's one of the top ten media markets in the US. And that plays heavily when you're negotiating a TV contract.
2) There's a person (or group of people) who want to put the money up and give it a go.

With SLC they have the latter, but are not a relatively large TV market. However, it's a growing one and they currently are a broadcast area for both Vegas and Arizona due to them having the same local broadcast partner (Scripps).

Plus SLC is about to become a Winter Olympics site, with adds to some of the momentum towards it.

 

[doublechili]

I don't buy the "watered down talent" argument. Back when there were 12 or 16 teams in the league the vast majority came from Canada with a smattering of players from a few other countries. The idea of the US winning an international competition or having a major award winner was laughable. Now there are stars from countries that used to never produce NHLers, and the talent from the US especially is increasing tremendously.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

I'm not a fan of endless expansion either, but something the NHL has that the NFL, NBA and MLB don't have is six extra Canadian teams.

So without those 6 additional Canadian teams, the NHL is actually only at 26 compared to the other three leagues 30-32.

odd way of looking at it, especially with a niche sport like hockey in the U.S

in either case, its about the watering down of talent

 

[TheLegend]

Yeah and what's the percentage of Canadians to Americans of those millions that are actual potential customers to the NHL? Basic math goes out the door at that point right.

Well there's an old saying in business.... you either grow or die.

How far do you think the NHL would have got if they just stuck to the original six and not gone anywhere else?

 

[#37]

If this were to happen.... I imagine the team name won't have the words 'Atlanta' associated with it, but more likely 'Georgia'... Paying a billion dollars to represent another municipality? I doubt it. It'd be great if they named them after the biggest city in Forsyth County, Cumming. Who wouldn't root for the Cumming Thrashers? I am sure the abbreviation on the score boards will be entertaining as well. I like it, it has spunk...

 

[AKL]

odd way of looking at it, especially with a niche sport like hockey in the U.S

in either case, its about the watering down of talent

Please lower your tone when you speak to me. As of December the bottom 10 in attendance was 30% Canadian teams, despite the fact that they only make up 22% of the league.

If your only concern is "watering down of talent", you're never going to understand that the NHL doesn't care about that.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

Please lower your tone when you speak to me. As of December the bottom 10 in attendance was 30% Canadian teams, despite the fact that they only make up 22% of the league.

If your only concern is "watering down of talent", you're never going to understand that the NHL doesn't care about that.

my tone was "high"...?

 

[FlyguyOX]

So essentially...they're putting in a couple privately operated toll lanes?

That's been pretty thoroughly proven to have a negligible positive impact on "traffic". Adding lanes and additional roads in general tends to actually operate completely the opposite way and actually make things worse.

At the end of the day, an Arena and NHL team without any sort of rail or other meaningful transit access is the sort of thing that is going to bring tens of thousands of extra bits of traffic to that corridor/area every game night. Which is inevitably going to cause slowdowns and inconveniences.

There are benefits to that additional draw. It can help support more commercial/retail stuff in the area. Restaurants, bars, etc. in particular. But there's a definite trade-off.
Roadway Updates – The Gathering at South Forsyth


What am i looking at here? lmao. Without a proper legend for context, it just looks like a super crappy Cezanne painting of the Atlanta area or something.

Same situation the Braves are in and they're doing fine. Public transportation is simply non-existent in and around Atlanta and doubt that ever changes much. Hasn't stopped all the major SP500 companies from being HQ there or from MLB and MLS teams breaking records.

Not really sure you're fascination with something that has zero bearing on the popularity of the team.

This is a terrible idea. That arena will be, at the least, an hour drive from the airport.

That's a perk, not a con.

I kind of inferred it was probably something like that. But certainly ambiguous without a legend.


From what i understand of the Atlanta area, I'd imagine it also likely doubles as at least a vague facsimile of a sort of "affluence heat map"? Easy to see where there's a potentially large sports fan base to draw upon, with disposable income...in that northern exurb sort of belt. If it's easier for them to just drive in to that highway oriented community, rather than having to go into town.

I still think the key to really thriving as a market (especially a non-conventional one) is a Downtown Arena that becomes entrenched in the whole experience, the nightlife, etc. Nashville is the textbook example of this. But i guess Atlanta is also a bit of a unique case in terms of layout, demographics, etc. And i'm sure that this time they won't just dive in without understand the dynamics that are important to making it work there.

That downtown bit you wrote is only applicable if downtown has a draw for the inhabitants regardless of NHL team or not.

And, ATL does not. In fact most of the population and people with money try their best to avoid downtown when at all possible. I know it's a weird concept compared to every other major city, but that's just how it is.

 

[abo9]

NHL is maxed out at 32 teams. More will only water down the game.

But… a billion dollars!!

f*** Bettman

Its already watered down

 

[FlyguyOX]

Atlanta people, you know your population base better than anyone here, and I know you're probably excited to have a team. But Forsyth County looks like a potential Glendale situation here. I.e. far from lots of people where they might not choose to deal with traffic to make the game.

Metro atlanta has a population greater than 3x Nashville's.

 

[AtlantaWhaler]

Ohhh gawd.

I'm excited too!

 

[AKL]

my tone was "high"...?

I don't think you can keep using the crutch that Canada is better at hockey than the USA when the USA is doing just as good as Canada at supporting their teams, if not better. The top 7 teams in terms of % capacity of arena filled to start the season were American. There were 11 teams that averaged 100.0% or better, 10 of them were American. Vegas and Seattle, being the two most recent expansion teams, are among those 7-11 teams. Carolina, Dallas, Tampa and Nashville, all southern markets, are among those 7-11 teams.

Hockey is succeeding in southern markets, hockey is succeeding in the US. The only time hockey doesn't succeed is when there's severe dysfunction and/or the team just isn't good on the ice, and that goes for Canada just as much as it does the US.

 

[FlyguyOX]

Just seems a little too far north for me. Will probably be one of those arenas that gets the "middle of nowhere, nothing else to do, no postgame/pregame dining" etc designations. I agree that suburbs would be better for a hockey fanbase than downtown Atlanta but this one just seems too far and I feel like they're going to get the same criticism that the Glendale arena and the Sunrise arena has gotten.

There's more to do in terms of restaurants and shopping around the potential location than there is in downtown Atlanta....

The Halcyon (casual dining and brewery plus outdoor play area) is a stone's throw from this location and The Avalon (upscale shopping and food) is just one exit down the interstate as well.

Sure, there's no strip clubs. Sorry bout it I guess

To my definitely-not-an-expert eye, living in the Phoenix area, the Glendale situation was somewhat tri-fold:

1) Farther away from the bigger populations
-Gilbert/Chandler/Mesa/Tempe population is about 1.2M, (Scottsdale is another 240k)
-Glendale/Peoria/Surprise/whatever is less than half that

2) The money/disposable income is more abundant in the East Valley (Gilbert/Chandler/etc)

3) Demographically speaking, a higher percentage of the NHL's market lives in the East Valley than in the Glendale area

Bonus 4): The team never had a competent owner and GM who built any sustained success, which would be difficult for any market to overcome

I've never even been to Atlanta, but just based on some cursory research, 2 and 3 aren't going to be an issue in Forsyth County, and while there may be less of a population in Forsyth County than in downtown Atlanta, it's not just about raw population numbers (which is why 2 and 3 carry a vast majority of the weight). As a bonus, with the idea being that they'll have a competent owner and GM willing to commit to the teams success on the ice this time, and the new expansion draft rules that allow teams to be much more competitive much sooner, it shouldn't really be much of an issue.

Not to mention from a pure DMA standpoint, Atlanta is massive, encompassing Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and at least parts of Mississippi, Tennessee, and maybe North Carolina and northern Florida.

There's a reason the NHL wants to try Atlanta again. If it's succeeds it's one of the biggest sports markets in the continent. Certainly bigger than most Canadian markets, let alone the ones without an NHL team. It's bigger than Houston and Salt Lake City that people keep clamoring for. It's bigger than Kansas City and Portland and anywhere else I've seen people advocate for.

Yes, people need to be looking at METRO ATLANTA population as the customers. Not merely Forsyth County.

 

[tucker3434]

The best place to put an arena would have been at Perimeter Mall. But it's not for sale. It also would have been viewed as too far north ~25 years ago. Atlanta is growing fast. You think Atlanta is a sprawl now, wait another 25 years. South Forsyth County will be right in the middle of things.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Yeah. This is the thing that really gives me pause on Atlanta as a hockey market though. It really is a true sprawling exurb hellscape. So far as i understand, it's been that way since my mother lived there for a bunch of years growing up way back in the day. Just all these weird insular little flung out suburbs stratified by income/socioeconomic demographics, and loosely strung together by highways.

It's where i can see why there's demand for these little enclaves of actual density. But they're also just splattered across the region and completely isolated by highways and a lot of mostly nothing.


I can see why the "Downtown Option" doesn't work for Atlanta. I remember seeing the Falcons stadium going up and just staring at the images wondering what on earth they're doing. Just interchange spaghetti cutting it off from everything else. That and the old Arena seem like they're just on an isolated "tourist island" or something. But not even a good one.

So it makes sense and i'm sure they've done heaps of research to understand that their real meaningful potential "fanbase" that could service an NHL franchise are actually in those satellite exurbs nowhere near actual Atlanta. And would be more likely to draw fans if it's located more convenient to those areas, rather than forcing people to go "downtown".


But it's still such a sketchy proposition to me. People will show up if a team is good. But if a team isn't as good (which often happens), in those leaner years, it's extremely difficult to maintain a serious draw if you cannot tie in to some other "nightlife" or "entertainment" component and make it a cheap part of a "night on the town" or whatever. If you can't integrate it with the nightlife, college demographics, fine dining, or some sort of younger group that is going to just go out drinking and partying and maybe enjoying a game while they're there...or something...it becomes a real uphill battle to draw decent crowds if the team isn't great. People just don't like driving out to a weird little place to watch a the home team get clobbered. You can't even get hammered to drown out/enhance the experience...because someone's gotta drive home.


Trying to sneak it in with a higher density development that'll have all those various restaurants, shops, amenities of a higher density mixed used community like that is certainly on the right track... But i do still worry that Atlanta's particularly nightmarish sprawling character might present an obstacle to sustainable viability even if they're a lot more aware of demographics and have a plan this time.

This is a good post and, I think, very fair to what Atlanta is and isn’t.

Namely, it is not a traditionally-oriented city where everything converges on downtown. “Downtown” as a concept barely exists there, compared to most other cities. Downtown is a half-developed, poorly accessible area that one only goes if forced by business duties, or as an out-of-town tourist. It’s not really all that central to the cultural life of the city, and therefore not the default location for amenities.

I will be transparent and say, I think Atlanta sucks a lot for a city its size. It’s chaotic and poorly planned on every level, largely stemming from being so completely dominated by highways. On a practical level it’s more of a conglomeration of independent suburbs than an actual unified city with an identity and a heart. Living in Marietta or Norcross is only very nominally living “in Atlanta”.

This all makes it really tough to sell people on the idea of season tickets to a downtown arena. And having the arena out in the burbs makes it really tough to connect them with any sense of shared identity. It’s a weird dynamic. I think there’s potential there, and that Atlanta is just as viable as Tampa or Dallas, but it’s not as simple as slapping an arena in the clearly-defined downtown of those cities. This is closer to a Glendale or Ft Lauderdale type of situation where the organization actually needs to bring something marketable to the table if they want to be successful. “It’s hockey, buy our expensive tickets” is not going to get it done, there needs to be an actual competitive team on the ice this time.