It certainly didn’t take long for Utah hockey fans to register their excitement about the Coyotes moving to the Beehive State. 

Less than 24 hours after the formal announcement on Thursday of the team’s relocation to Salt Lake City, new team owner Ryan Smith said more than 20,000 season ticket deposits, costing $100 each, have been made to see the team at the Delta Center (above). Smith also owns the NBA’s Jazz and two local pro soccer teams, and priority access for the season-ticket deposits was given to current Jazz plan holders.

The Delta Center, which was originally designed for basketball, currently offers 12,000 seats that have unobstructed views for hockey, but part of the broader renovation plans for the 32-year-old building is to boost that number to 17,000.

The arrival of the NHL franchise in Utah, meanwhile, provides further momentum behind a broader facility vision that is still being formulated. That plan could include both redevelopment around the Delta Center in downtown Salt Lake City, and over a longer term, potentially a second arena that would be a focal point of the city’s ongoing bid for the 2034 Olympics. 

Uncertain Name

The nickname for the Utah franchise is one of the leading unanswered questions in the move, though Smith could speak further about any emerging plans there at a press conference with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman scheduled for Friday evening. Here’s what we do know:

• The full team name will start with Utah as opposed to Salt Lake City, mirroring the naming for the Jazz. 
• Smith has hired ad agency Doubleday & Cartwright, which has aided the rebranding of several other pro teams, to help develop the team’s name and logo. 
• Earlier this week trademark applications were filed with federal authorities for the Utah Blizzard, Utah Venom, Utah Fury, Utah HC, and Utah Hockey Club. The applications were anonymous, and it’s not certain that Smith or the NHL is involved. But the timing of those filings closely preceded the formal announcement of the franchise move. On Thursday, a subsequent application from the same group was also filed for the Utah Yetis. 
• It’s possible that the team will at first have a generic moniker, such as Utah HC, serving as a placeholder while the broader rebranding continues. If so, that more graduated process will resemble the transition undertaken by the NFL’s Commanders, previously known as the Washington Football Team.

An Unexpected Local Rebuke

Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo acknowledged publicly he is on board with what’s happening with the franchise, saying that he agreed that it was “simply unfair” to maintain the status quo at Arizona State’s Mullett Arena, a 5,000-seat venue far smaller and less equipped than what is standard in the NHL. But it was surprising to some that criticism of the move came from MLB’s Diamondbacks, a team seeking to solve their own growing facility problem.

The team released a statement saying in part that, “we firmly believe that we deserve and can support teams from each of the major sports and are troubled that a solution could not not be found for all parties involved. We are sad for all sports fans and all who care so deeply who care about our community.”

The Diamondbacks, however, not only said in February “we may run out of time in Phoenix,” and they also were part of a unanimous vote in November certifying the planned relocation of the A’s from Oakland to Las Vegas.

Netflix is ending its customary quarterly reporting of subscriber totals, a move that could blunt its growing sports ambitions. 

The publicly traded streaming giant said Thursday that it will no longer disclose those subscriber numbers, starting with the first quarter of 2025, and will instead focus on other financial metrics such as revenue and operating margin. The shift immediately jolted Wall Street, prompting a 4.5% drop in Netflix shares in after-hours trading Thursday, and a 7% fall once full trading opened Friday. 

Netflix already has the largest subscriber base in the industry, reaching 269.6 million globally in its last quarter, a figure 16% higher than a year ago. Company officials say a continued focus on subscriber totals is not in line with its growth into a more mature company that is developing additional revenue sources, such as advertising. 

“Each incremental member has a different business impact,” said Greg Peters, Netflix co-CEO, in an earnings call with analysts. “And that means the historical math that we all did—number of members times monthly price—is increasingly less accurate in capturing the state of the business. So this change is really motivated by wanting to focus on what we see are the key metrics that we think matter most.”

Out of Step With Sports

Ted Sarandos, also Netflix co-CEO, reiterated on the call a more tempered strategy in sports relative to others, saying again, “we’re not anti-sports, but pro-profitable growth. And I think that’s the core of everything we do in all kinds of programming, including sports.” Within that strategy, however, has been a clear escalation in the company’s sports efforts, most recently shown by its acquisition of live rights to a Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight, and for the WWE and its weekly flagship show, Raw.

But much of the sports industry, and the advertising that helps support it, relies on clear and publicly available audience metrics for media content. Nearly every other major streaming entity—including ones controlled by Disney, Comcast, and Warner Bros. Discovery—regularly reports its streaming subscriber figures. On television, Nielsen audience totals have been a benchmark for decades. Even Amazon, another entity that historically had been more opaque about its streaming metrics, has worked with Nielsen for the past two years to help give a clearer view of its audience for Thursday Night Football.

“Eliminating regular reporting of membership data raises questions around management’s confidence to further grow the base, though it is not implausible that the change is intended to reduce quarterly sentiment volatility around relatively small changes in true economic drivers,” wrote Michael Morris, an analysts with Guggenheim, in a research note.