Houston billionaire Dan Friedkin and the NHL are exploring bringing a second hockey team to Texas, the parties confirmed Tuesday.
Pursuit Sports, the company dedicated to The Friedkin Group’s professional sports properties, is beginning the process with the NHL to vet Houston and Austin for an expansion franchise. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman informed the league’s board of governors at their meeting Tuesday in New York, with a six-month timetable for the process of determining a potential 33rd team.
“Pursuit Sports, our family’s global sports ownership and operating platform, has reached an agreement with the NHL that provides us with the exclusive rights to bring an expansion NHL team to the State of Texas, with a primary focus on both Austin and Houston as potential markets,” the Friedkin family said in a statement to the Houston Chronicle.
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Friedkin, whose holdings including Gulf States Toyota and The Friedkin Group, has sports ownership experience in European soccer with AS Roma of Italy’s Serie A and Everton of the English Premier League.
While Houston, as the biggest market in the United States and Canada without a pro hockey team, has long been the subject of NHL speculation, either via expansion or franchise relocation, Tuesday’s developments are the most notable toward bringing a team to the Bayou City.
Houston, which had hockey teams in various eras since the 1940s, has been without a pro hockey team since the American Hockey League’s Aeros moved to Des Moines, Iowa, in 2013. A Tier II junior franchise, the Houston Bulls, will begin play in the amateur North American Hockey League this fall in Richmond.
Bettman told reporters Tuesday in New York that discussions over the past two years mostly revolved around Houston before Austin became another possibility.
“That’s part of the process is to determine what would be best, both for the league and for Dan Friedkin and family,” Bettman said.
Bettman said the total investment for a Houston or Austin franchise would be $3.5 billion, which would cover the expansion fee and a new arena. It would seem unlikely for a Houston team to be a tenant at Toyota Center, which is controlled by Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta. Fertitta has expressed interest in bringing an NHL team to the downtown arena since he bought the NBA franchise in October 2017, but has not graduated to the stage Friedkin has.
In a meeting with a group of sports editors in late April, Bettman said the league continually has conversations with prospective ownership groups. He said the NHL has four main criteria for expansion groups: Stable ownership, an arena, suitable market and that the franchise will make the league stronger. He said then the expansion fee would start at $2 billion.
See here, here, and here for some background. I wonder if Tilman Fertitta’s purchase of the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun affected the outcome here.
ESPN adds a few details.
Houston, which is the fourth-biggest metropolitan area in the United States, has long been believed to be the NHL’s next target. However, including Austin offers both optionality and leverage.
“Each city brings unique attributes that would make a new team a huge success – both have the infrastructure, passionate fan bases, and economic strength needed to support a championship-caliber franchise for years to come,” the Friedkin family said in a statement. “We have wanted for some time to bring an NHL team to Texas, and we are excited that the process has now begun. Selecting a new market for an NHL franchise is a special and important responsibility, and we are grateful to the league for their faith in us and their support.”
The NHL went from 30 to 32 clubs when it added the Vegas Golden Knights (began play in 2017-18) and Seattle Kraken (debuted in 2021-22). The expansion fee for Vegas was $500 million and for Seattle was $650 million. According to sources, several owners asked at Tuesday’s meeting how further the league plans to expand, and Bettman said he did not have an answer, though he was comfortable with having an odd number of teams in the league.
“Symmetry I don’t think should necessarily govern expansion,” Bettman said. “You expand if you think it makes sense and enhances what the league has.”
The league has seen record revenues this season — projected to be between $7.5 billion and $8 billion. The NHL salary cap is set at $104 million for the 2026-27 season, a $8.5 million increase from this past season.
Bettman stressed that the agreement with the Friedkin family did not prevent the NHL from exploring other expansion possibilities.
“There was an update on Atlanta, there was an update on Arizona and there was an update on South Texas,” Bettman said. “But neither Arizona nor Atlanta are quite as far along in the process as the Friedkin opportunities.”
Sure sounds like this is going to happen, and at a greatly increased price tag than for those two previous teams. And it sounds like there will be a new arena as a result, too – indeed, The Athletic quotes Gary Bettman saying both Austin and Houston “will require a new arena”. We’ll see how that plays out, and where it ends up being. If, say, Sugar Land or The Woodlands wants to throw a few hundred million in public funding at the Friedkins to get the arena built there, I sure won’t argue that Houston needs to compete with them for it.
The Mammoth didn’t require a new arena, so it is unclear to me why they can’t play hockey in Toyota. But I am also not a billionaire trying to extract municipal tax dollars.
I would bet on Austin, because we are shinier and so that they can continue to dangle the possibility of extracting yet another expansion fee from Fertitta. That said, Austin won’t contribute $ for an arena (no public money beyond property tax exemptions was spent for Austin FC), so if some Houston suburb falls for that, then it may tip that way.