Report: Las Vegas Motor Speedway looking to host NHL outdoor game
We have seen hockey played in arenas, and at baseball and football stadiums. There was even that time when NHL teams played at Lake Tahoe.
What about a hockey game…at a race track?
That’s apparently the desire of one of the executives at one of the popular tracks in the United States. In an interview with Sports Business Journal, Aaron Crowley, the vice president of sales at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, admitted that his white whale event to hold is an NHL Stadium Series game, featuring the Vegas Golden Knights.
“Experience has become everything, whether it’s in sports or entertainment,” Crowley said in the story.
The interview focused on the large number of events Las Vegas Motor Speedway hosts each year. Crowley stated that, along with NASCAR and drag racing events, the track hosts over 3,000 event days each year. Other events at the thousand-acre, eight-track site include music festivals, SuperCross, corporate events with upward of 30,000 people, and more.
So, the idea of a hockey game being played at the facility just 10 minutes northeast of the Las Vegas Strip seems crazy, right?
The track, owned and operated by Speedway Motorsports, has seen a sharp rise in non-racing events hosted over the past decade. It has seemingly paid off for LVMS, making it a hot spot for a variety of industries.
There have been no reports of the NHL’s plans for the Stadium Series beyond 2027, when the Dallas Stars just happened to host the Golden Knights at AT&T Stadium.
There have been other non-racing sports held at race tracks on the other side of the country. Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee has hosted both college football and Major League Baseball games, with the small, half-mile oval’s bowl layout providing good sightlines for sporting events, including hockey. However, Las Vegas, which has a 1.5-mile oval for NASCAR, could pose challenges to ensure paying fans can get a good view of the game while also enjoying a very unique setup.
Next year will mark the third time the Golden Knights will participate in an outdoor game in franchise history. After losing to the Colorado Avalanche at Lake Tahoe in February 2021, Vegas was shut out by the Joey D’Accord and the Seattle Kraken in the 2024 Winter Classic.