Utah Hockey Capacity Set to Rise by 6,000—Literally

Smith Entertainment Group, parent company of the NBA’s Jazz and NHL’s Utah Hockey Club, is beginning an inside-out overhaul of the Delta Center, the downtown Salt Lake City arena that is home to both teams. 

SEG is gutting the event floor and lower seating bowl to solve an inherent problem in which the 33-year-old venue was designed for basketball, creating large amounts of obstructed views and seat kills for hockey when the Utah Hockey Club arrived last year. The company will install a custom-designed seat riser system this summer that will allow unobstructed views for both basketball and hockey, and the Utah Hockey Club’s official seating capacity will ultimately rise from 11,131, the smallest in the NHL, to about 17,000. 

During the debut season in Utah, the hockey team also sold several thousand obstructed-view seats at each home game, inventory that didn’t count toward the official seating capacity. Basketball seating capacity at the SEG-owned Delta Center, meanwhile, will rise slightly from 18,206 to about 19,000.

“The idea is that we have something built for both basketball and hockey, has an incredible fan experience for both, and neither is sacrificed,” said Jim Olson, Jazz president and a senior SEG executive.  

To help accommodate the new seat riser system and a new ice floor slab, SEG will also lengthen the arena bowl by about 12 feet at each end and raise the floor by two feet, in turn improving sightlines. A key part of the riser system is a noticeably higher pitch to end-zone seating compared to other multipurpose arenas. A standard NHL ice rink is nearly twice the size of an NBA court. 

“The Delta Center has been an amazing venue for basketball, in my view, the best in the NBA,” Olson said. “But when you plop in something the size of an ice sheet, the geometry doesn’t work, which is why we’re bringing in the riser system and raising the floor.”

The arena project has been contemplated since the NHL approved the relocation and sale of the former Arizona Coyotes franchise. 

Lower-bowl work will be complete in time for the 2025–2026 NBA and NHL seasons, and will also be the beginning of a much larger development effort in Salt Lake City in which SEG and city leaders are working to create a new, urban entertainment and convention district. Upper-bowl renovations at the Delta Center will follow in subsequent offseasons. 

SEG did not break out specific, updated costs for the current Delta Center work, but said it intends to invest at least $3 billion into the overall downtown district, including the arena. The company, meanwhile, also gained approval last year of $900 million in public funds through an increased sales tax to aid the effort, with $525 million of that earmarked for Delta Center renovations.

New Team Name?

SEG, meanwhile, did not substantively comment on widespread reports late Tuesday detailing how the official YouTube page for the Utah Hockey Club briefly changed its handle to @UtahMammoth. The Mammoth has been one of three finalists, along with Outlaws and the current identity, in a long and winding naming process.

The hockey team is still on track to unveil its new permanent identity in advance of the 2025–2026 season, and only said that “progress continues” on evaluating the choices.