The Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League is headed for Las Vegas, a source briefed on the situation confirmed to The Athletic on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The league is expected to announce Vegas as the home of the PWHL\u2019s 10th franchise Wednesday afternoon, and an invitation was recently distributed by Foley Entertainment Group, which owns the NHL\u2019s Vegas Golden Knights, touting an announcement. Vegas will be the second of what could be four expansion teams for the 2026-27 season; PWHL Detroit was announced<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re invited to join us for a historic Las Vegas sports announcement,\u201d the invite, which was sent to youth hockey teams in the area and obtained by The Athletic, said. \u201cThis event will bring together our sports and hockey community, recognizing our city\u2019s passion and spirit, while celebrating the future of the sport in our city with a look ahead at what\u2019s to come.\u201d<\/p>\n While Foley Entertainment Group might be involved with the team in some capacity, the league itself operates under a single-entity ownership model. Mark Walter \u2014 the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers \u2014 and his wife, Kimbra, own the PWHL and all of its teams, a difference from other major pro sports leagues such as the NHL, NFL and MLB.<\/p>\n A PWHL team in Vegas would likely play at T-Mobile Arena, home of the Golden Knights, which has a capacity of 17,500 for hockey and one of the best atmospheres in the NHL. There\u2019s also Lee\u2019s Family Forum in Henderson, Nev., home to the AHL Henderson Silver Knights. However, a 5,567-seat arena is likely too small for the PWHL, which averaged 9,304 fans per game during its record-breaking 2025-26 regular season.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Las Vegas has quickly become a hub for major professional sports. After the NHL\u2019s Golden Knights \u2014 led by owner Bill Foley \u2014 broke the seal on Las Vegas as a professional sports market in 2017, other leagues quickly followed suit. The WNBA Aces relocated from San Antonio in 2018; the NFL\u2019s Raiders moved from Oakland for the 2020 season; MLB\u2019s Athletics, also formerly in Oakland, plan to open a ballpark in 2028; and the NBA in March approved exploration of placing an expansion team in the city for the 2028-29 season.<\/p>\n The Aces have become a dynasty franchise in Vegas, winning three league titles in four years. In March, the organization announced it was the first WNBA team to sell out season ticket allotments for three consecutive seasons. The Aces play at Michelob ULTRA Arena and have drawn big crowds for select games hosted at T-Mobile. In July 2024, the Aces played against Caitlin Clark\u2019s Indiana Fever in front of 20,366 fans \u2014 the largest regular-season crowd at a WNBA game since 1999.<\/p>\n Vegas has also become a premier destination for NHL players, which was on display yet again this summer when the Golden Knights landed Mitch Marner in a sign-and-trade with his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs.<\/p>\n \u201cPlayers don\u2019t want to leave,\u201d Foley said in a July interview with The Athletic\u2019s Jesse Granger.<\/a> \u201cOnce they get here, and they see our facilities and where we play, and they see the way we take care of our players, scouts and coaches, and how everyone is all in, they don\u2019t want to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n PWHL Las Vegas and Detroit will join the original six markets of Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Boston, New York and Minnesota and the league\u2019s first expansion teams in Seattle and Vancouver.<\/p>\n San Jose, Calif., and Hamilton, Ont., have also emerged in recent weeks as two of the league\u2019s other prime options to reach 12 teams for next season, according to chatter in league circles.<\/p>\n Teams in Las Vegas and another western market, along with another in the east, would make the league more geographically balanced, potentially placing four franchises in the West, two in the Midwest (Detroit and Minnesota) and six in the East. Having that kind of footprint might also allow the PWHL to split into two conferences and potentially four divisions; PWHL executive vice president of business operations Amy Scheer told the Associated Press<\/a> the league is exploring the idea.<\/p>\n Selecting expansion markets has been a fluid process for league executives, who have spent months working through the available options.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a line of cities eager to have us there, whether it\u2019s for a couple Takeover Tour games or for a full-time team,\u201d Stan Kasten, the president of the MLB\u2019s Los Angeles Dodgers and a PWHL advisory board member, said last month. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have news about that in the next few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League is headed for Las Vegas, a source briefed on the situation confirmed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[227403,204009,244931,208773,385,275945,227402,99,1794,275943,275944,1793,82958],"class_list":["post-639184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-boston-fleet","tag-minnesota-frost","tag-montreal-victoire","tag-new-york-sirens","tag-nhl","tag-ottawa-charge","tag-seattle-torrent","tag-sports","tag-sports-business","tag-toronto-sceptres","tag-vancouver-goldeneyes","tag-vegas-golden-knights","tag-womens-hockey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}