As major cities in the United States go, Houston has as close to a perfect sports scene as you could hope for. We currently have baseball, basketball and football teams that are, at the very least, competitive. Our college sports scene is pretty decent, especially if you expand out to the alumni bases for Texas schools outside of Houston. Finally, very few big cities do big events as well as we do, as we are learning during this World Cup.<\/p>\n
The only thing really missing from the Houston sports scene is a professional hockey team. However, if the smoke signals coming from the National Hockey League offices are any indication, that could change very soon. According to multiple reports, the NHL has signed an agreement with Houston billionaire Dan Friedkin to explore an expansion NHL team in either Houston or Austin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Houston has brushed up against the possibility of the NHL coming here at other times in recent years, with the Fertitta family looking at possible relocations of teams that never came to fruition. This latest news about Friedkin and the NHL seems to be the first concerted effort to give Houston its own team, not another city\u2019s hand me down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reportedly, the total investment from Friedkin, whose family fortune stems from their exclusive, five state Toyota distributorship, Gulf States Toyota, would be $3.5 billion, which includes funding for a new hockey arena. The Friedkin empire already includes two professional soccer teams, AS Roma and Everton, so this would not be their first foray into professional sports.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s appetite for professional hockey is somewhat of a question mark. The last time we had hockey in Houston was the minor league Houston Aeros, who moved to Iowa in 2011. This we know \u2014 if it\u2019s a winner, Houston will back it, and I\u2019d have to believe that, based on market size alone, Houston has the upper hand over Austin.<\/p>\n
Either way, it would appear Friedkin will be the owner, so here are three other things you should know about Houston\u2019s prospective owner:<\/p>\n
3. Friedkin is kind of a quiet \u201cmystery\u201d man<\/p>\n
Apparently, if you had \u201cDan Friedkin interview\u201d listed as a scavenger hunt item, you\u2019d have an awful time checking that box. Quite simply, Friedkin doesn\u2019t do much media. By all accounts, he stays out of the limelight. In fact, he has a reputation, with his European soccer clubs, of \u201cparachuting in\u201d (figuratively, of course), spending time watching a match or practice, and then leaving quietly without telling anyone or talking to the media. In Houston sports owner terms, he is the anti-Fertitta, as Tilman Fertitta never met a microphone he didn\u2019t like. Speaking of which\u2026.<\/p>\n
2. Friedkin tried to buy the Rockets back in 2017, when\u2026.<\/p>\n
\u2026..it wound up in the hands of Tilman Fertitta and his family! In other words, this isn\u2019t the first time Friedkin has tried to own a team on the Houston landscape. What gets interesting is the new arena that would seemingly be part fo this deal. Having two hockey\/basketball sized arenas in town would mean major competition for the OTHER events that take place at those sized venues \u2014 concerts, WWE, Disney on Ice, etc. Nothing like seeing billionaires battle over live events!<\/p>\n
1. Friedkin is a licensed pilot with some related film credits\u00a0<\/p>\n
Indeed, Friedkin is an aviation enthusiast, with a passion for flying and restoring old military airplanes. He performed aerial stunt-diving in the movie \u201cDunkirk\u201d and received a producer credit. Additionally, he is a World War II history buff. As an aside, his father Thomas, who founded Gulf States Toyota and started the company\u2019s business empire, has some acting credits, as well, most famously with a role in the 1958 adaptation of \u201cOld Yeller.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As major cities in the United States go, Houston has as close to a perfect sports scene as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[125162,1116,226,56,58,57,37117,2484],"class_list":["post-351242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-friedkin-companies","tag-hockey","tag-homepage","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-houston-sports","tag-nhl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}