Utah Hockey fans scoring big for downtown businesses

SALT LAKE CITY — Tuesday is a hockey night at the Delta Center, and if you're a bar or restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City, it's a good time to be in business. Since the Utah Hockey Club came to town, fans have been flocking to see the team and bringing their wallets with them. The new Utah fans, hungry for hockey, are big on going out for it, too. "On a game night, every seat is basically taken, every single seat," HallPass Managing Partner Mia Patmides said. At HallPass at the Gateway Mall, business has been up 15% since the NHL season started. UHC fans are now outpacing Utah Jazz fans for eating out on game nights. "The hockey team they just took over, they really did take over," Patmides said. That goes for bars too. At Flanker, just west of the Delta Center, the slapshot of new customers has been a shock. "It's been better than I thought it was going to be," Flanker's Special Projects Beverage Manager Ryan Hopay said. "Hockey fans are beer drinkers, and they want to hang out and have fun before the game and after and get rowdy at the games," he said. So far, every home UHC hockey game this season has sold out, with over 11,131 fans a night. When you add that to Jazz games and yearly Delta Center events, team projections from 2024 show the combination pumping $600 million into the local economy. Hockey fans are at the center of it. "They've fallen in love with our players, the atmosphere, and it's our job not to get in the way of that,"  President of Revenue and Commercial Strategy of Smith Entertainment Group Chris Barney said. The team is making a coordinated effort to draw fans downtown and make games something fans want to experience again and again. "Everywhere we can find a touch point to give something to fans that provides more value outside of just a ticket, we're doing it," Barney said. Right now, fans are eating up and washing down downtown. If you're wondering, are they just Jazz fans coming to hockey games too? The teams told KSL TV there's only an 8% crossover for basketball and hockey season ticket holders.

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