Fans packed the Delta Center for the introduction of the new NHL franchise on April 24, 2024 in Salt … [+]
After starting the pre-season with a 5-3 win over the St. Louis Blues in a neutral-site game in Des Moines on Sunday, the Utah Hockey Club is ready for its close-up.
On Monday, NHL’s newest franchise will make its home debut at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City against the Los Angeles Kings (9 p.m. ET). Earlier in the day, SeatGeek announced that it is partnering with the club for its inaugural season, helping not just to get fans into the building but also to elevate their experiences around the games.
“I believe SeatGeek is a technology company that ultimately is selling tickets,” said Chris Barney, the president of revenue and commercial strategy for Smith Entertainment Group which owns the new NHL club and the NBA’s Utah Jazz. “We were really interested in leaning into a technology company and what they believe they’re going to build natively well, that really aligns with the values and what people in Utah are interested in. It’s a very tech-savvy community, so it actually lined up perfectly.”
Founded in 2009, SeatGeek started out as an aggregator of secondary-market tickets. The company began its move into the primary market with Sporting Kansas City of Major League Soccer in 2016. That roster has since expanded to include other MLS clubs along with the NWSL, English Premier League, six NFL teams and three NBA teams, including the Jazz.
“We’ve only really been launched as a primary ticketing provider for seven-and-a-half years, two of which were obviously pandemic-filled,” said Jeff Ianello, SeatGeek’s head of North American sales and executive vice president. He joined the organization in 2015 after spending more than a decade on the sales side of the sports world, with the Phoenix Suns and then the NBA.
“If buying a ticket was too difficult, one of our company values is to start with fans,” he said. “When I left the NBA, it was at a mission to try to invoke change in the space.”
NHL hockey arrived in the Beehive State with the blinding speed of a Connor McDavid breakaway. Less than three months after the Smith Entertainment Group requested the initiation of a formal NHL expansion process in January of 2024, the players and hockey operations staff from the now-defunct Arizona Coyotes were being introduced at the Delta Center as the foundation of the new club.
The main entrance of the Delta Center in April, 2024, with the “NHL in Utah” logos. (Photo by Chris … [+]
There wasn’t much time to set up a platform for fans who wanted to come to games, and the agreement between SeatGeek and the Smith Entertainment Group only covered ticketing for the Jazz.
“The first thing I did was call Jeff and say, ‘Hey, man, this isn’t public yet — we’re getting a hockey team,’” Barney recalled. “The rumblings were out there, but it’s officially happening. We have got to get the ticket deposit campaign set up.”
In a flash, a website was assembled. And when the link was made public, the deposits began to roll in.
“We went live, and the whole team was back in the conference room with the folks that are over at our website,” Barney said. “We just watched the first 40 people get on the website, and then it jumped to 300 and then it jumped to 1,500. Before long, there were 30,000 people on our website trying to transact ticket deposits.”
Add in a little marketing, and the total reached 34,000 deposits within the first 30 days after the launch — more than enough to get a new NHL team off the ground. And many of the names were new: Barney says 92 percent of those depositers are not current Jazz season-ticket holders.
Once the initial database was populated, it was time to convert those deposits into full and half-season-ticket holders.
In its current configuration, the Delta Center is not an ideal venue for hockey, where the playing surface is much larger than an NBA basketball court. The challenge is similar to what the New York Islanders dealt with when they played at Barclays Center in Brooklyn starting in 2015, before returning to Long Island and, in 2021, moving into their new home at UBS Arena.
According to Barney, a three-year renovation plan will eventually bring the Delta Center to 17,000 seats for hockey. This year, the announced capacity will be 11,131 — the current number of seats with unobstructed views of the ice. For higher-demand games, the club will also make ‘single goal view seats’ available, setting up the opportunity for the team to play to more than 100 percent of capacity.
SeatGeek’s technology allows fans to see and understand what they’re buying before they hit the ‘purchase’ button.
“We want to be super-transparent with our fans on what the experience is like,” Barney said. “Learning from past experiences of people has given us a great opportunity to be really, really smart with how we’re communicating with our fans. So we’re calling them single goal view seats, to really set the expectation of what those are.”
At its heart, SeatGeek’s technology is about more than just the ticketing process. Ease of use is paramount. So is gathering useful data for clients and elevating fan experiences.
In a tech-savvy state with a demographic that skews young, that means providing a strong experience on mobile devices, and providing custom add-ons that can range from ordering a ride to purchasing food and beverages or merchandise, or accessing custom perks.
“They want to talk to that fan, whether it’s me and my daughter who’s going to her first game, or a really premium suite-holder,” Ianello said. “They want to collect that data, and they want that experience to be hyper-tailored.”
The Utah Hockey Club is SeatGeek’s second NHL partnership, after the current Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers signed on in 2023.
Utah will host phenom Connor Bedard and the Chicago Blackhawks for its regular-season home opener on Tuesday, Oct. 8.
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