Utah Hockey Club partners with SeatGeek to launch NHL franchise

After beginning its preseason campaign on Sunday with a 5-3 win over the St. Louis Blues in a neutral-site game in Des Moines, the Utah Hockey Club is now ready for its next test.

On Monday, the 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, SeatGeek announced that it has partnered with the club for its inaugural season to not only help bring fans to the stadium, but also to enhance their experience around the games.

“I believe SeatGeek is a technology company that ultimately sells tickets,” said Chris Barney, 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 tying ourselves to a technology company and something that they want to build well from the ground up, that really aligns with the values ​​and interests of the people of Utah. It's a very tech-savvy community, so it was actually a perfect fit.”

Founded in 2009, SeatGeek began as a secondary market ticket aggregator. The company began its foray into the primary market in 2016 with Major League Soccer's Sporting Kansas City. That roster has since expanded to include other MLS clubs, as well as the NWSL, the English Premier League, six NFL teams and three NBA teams, including the Jazz.

“We've only been a primary ticketing provider for seven and a half years, two of which were obviously shaped by the pandemic,” said Jeff Ianello, North America sales director and executive vice president at SeatGeek. He joined the company in 2015 after more than a decade working on the sales side of the sports world, with the Phoenix Suns and then the NBA.

“When buying tickets is too difficult, one of our company's guiding principles is to start with the fans,” he said. “When I left the NBA, my mission was to make a change there.”

With the breathtaking speed of a Connor McDavid breakaway, NHL hockey arrived in the Beehive State. Less than three months after the Smith Entertainment Group filed to begin a formal NHL expansion process in January 2024, the players and hockey staff of the now-defunct Arizona Coyotes were unveiled at the Delta Center as the foundation of the new club.

There wasn't much time to set up a platform for fans to attend games, and the agreement between SeatGeek and Smith Entertainment Group only covered ticket sales 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. “There were rumors, but it's officially happening now. We need to get the ticket deposit campaign up and running.”

In no time, a website was put together. And when the link was published, the deposits started pouring in.

“We went live and the whole team was back in the conference room with people going to our website,” Barney said. “We just saw the first 40 people come to the website, then it went up to 300 and then 1,500. It wasn't long before we had 30,000 people on our website trying to make ticket deposits.”

With a little marketing effort, the total number of deposits reached 34,000 within the first 30 days of launch — more than enough to launch a new NHL team. And many of the names were new: Barney says 92 percent of those deposit recipients were 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 ice hockey because the playing surface is much larger than an NBA basketball court. The challenge is similar to the one the New York Islanders faced when they played at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn starting in 2015 before returning to Long Island and moving to their new home at UBS Arena in 2021.

Barney said the Delta Center will eventually have 17,000 seats for hockey after a three-year renovation plan. This year, the announced capacity will be 11,131 – the current number of seats with a clear view of the ice. For higher-demand games, the club will also provide “single goal view seats,” giving the team the opportunity to play at over 100 percent capacity.

SeatGeek's technology allows fans to see and understand what they are buying before they click the buy button.

“We want to be completely transparent with our fans about the experience,” Barney said. “Learning from people's experiences in the past has given us a great opportunity to really communicate very, very intelligently with our fans. That's why we call them single goal view seats to really set the expectation of what that is.”

At its core, SeatGeek's technology is about more than just the ticket sales process. Ease of use is paramount. Equally important is collecting useful data for customers and improving the fan experience.

In a tech-savvy state with a predominantly young demographic, that means creating a compelling mobile experience and providing custom add-on features that can range from ordering rides to purchasing food and beverages or merchandise to accessing custom perks.

“They want to talk to the fans, whether it's me and my daughter going to their first game or the owner of a really first-class suite,” Ianello said. “They want to collect that data and they want the experience to be extremely tailored.”

The Utah Hockey Club is SeatGeek's second NHL partnership after the current Stanley Cup champions Florida Panthers joined in 2023.

Utah hosts phenom Connor Bedard and the Chicago Blackhawks for their first home game of the regular season on Tuesday, October 8.