Bettman: Future NHL expansion will cost substantially more than $1 billion
Expansion continues to be one of the biggest conversations with regard to the long-term focus of the NHL.
As the league has seen profits and popularity grow over the past couple seasons, it should come as no surprise that other people want to get in on the action. And even as the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken have rounded out the league’s two conferences to an equal 16 teams and their four divisions to an equal eight, the NHL would like to add more teams into the fold.
But, according to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, that’s going to come at a larger price than before. Bettman spoke with the media in Buffalo ahead of Tuesday’s game between the Buffalo Sabres and Boston Bruins, and among many things, talked about the future of expansion fees.
“People tend to forget, for the most part, when you expand the expansion fee is really to reimburse the existing clubs for revenues that you’re giving up,” Bettman said. “Because there is an economic value of your 32 teams, you expand to 33, you’re now taking national league revenues and instead of dividing them 32 ways, you’re dividing them 33 ways. And that incremental division has an economic value over time, whether you do it over 10 or 20 years.
“So based on the growth of revenues and everything else, and what’s going on in terms of franchise values, I would mention this day that $1 billion wouldn’t even be close to what we would exceed.”
This shouldn’t be a surprise, as the value of the league has grown significantly since the Golden Knights paid $500 million to register their team in 2016, or the Kraken paid $650 million to do the same in 2021. With the salary cap skyrocketing in the next few seasons alone, it’s expected that the expansion fee would skyrocket with it.
Bettman did not provide a specific number for the current expansion fee.
Atlanta and Houston have been discussed as the top options for NHL expansion right now. This would be Atlanta’s third franchise after having the Atlanta Flames from 1972 to 1980 (now the Calgary Flames) and the Atlanta Thrashers from 1999 to 2011 (now the Winnipeg Jets), while Houston would get their first NHL franchise ever, and first professional hockey team since the Houston Aeros of the WHA.
Another candidate for expansion is Phoenix, who lost the Coyotes franchise in 2024 due to arena complications. The team was deactivated after the 2023-24 season, with Ryan Smith paying a $1.2 billion fee to relocate all of their assets to Utah as a new franchise, now called the Utah Mammoth. The plan was to always expand back to Phoenix once they got an arena in place, but at this point in time, that has not happened.