Bill Foley, the potential owner of a potential NHL franchise in Las Vegas, announced on Monday that his season-ticket deposit drive has crossed the 8,000 mark.

Please recall that they had 5,000 deposits within the first 36 hours of launching it on Feb. 10. The deposits are between $150-$900.

From Hockey Vision Las Vegas:

“This announcement is great news,” said Foley. “The goal of the season ticket drive is to demonstrate the long-term viability of an NHL franchise in Las Vegas. Securing more than 8,000 season ticket deposits – in less than one month – helps demonstrate that Las Vegas wants hockey. There is significant momentum in this campaign and we are looking forward to the day we can announce that we have hit our goal of securing 10,000 season ticket deposits.”

If a team is awarded, fans who place deposits for multiple years will have the opportunity to select their seats first, starting with 10-year season ticket holder. Within these groups, priority for seat selection will be based on the date and time the tickets were purchased. The deposit will be applied to the cost of the tickets. Ticket deposits are approximately 10 percent of the first year’s season ticket price. The deposit will be applied to the cost of the tickets.

There are a couple of ways to read this slow, steady progress towards the 10,000-ticket goal that was established with the NHL.

1. That the goal should have been met by now, considering it would have been met within hours had this been a market like Quebec. And that the longer they go scratching and clawing to that goal without reaching it, the more harm if does to the movement.

2. That the NHL is completely fine with these numbers, because it’s a collection of “real fans” and not the casinos and corporations that the League knows will sell out the building every night.

From Chris Johnston of Sportsnet, speaking with Bill Daly on the ticket drive:

"The numbers that are coming out are ... within very strict parameters," Daly told me [last] Wednesday in Toronto. "When they designed their ticket drive, they did it with our input and basically we told them what we'd like to see is how many local, non-corporate fans they can get to put up real money without a promise of having a NHL team.

"If you look at it through that lens, I think the response has been good. Because if you add to that what they probably have already in corporate and casino commitments, they basically have a full building."

That said, the people plunking down for tickets are also the people that will be buying the gear and watching the games on television and all the other things that “real” fans do. The jury’s still out if there are enough of them in Vegas. The question is whether that matters when the NHL knows what kind of corporate support the team’s going to get at the gate … the NHL being the most gate-dependent sport in the U.S.

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