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The current Arizona Coyotes have moved to Salt Lake City. But Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo will continue building a $3 billion arena and entertainment project in North Phoenix with an eye toward potentially reviving the franchise, NHL officials said. sportico Late Friday night.
Once the Salt Lake City deal is completed, the Coyotes' hockey operations and players will be sold, rebranded and relocated in time for the 2024-25 season at a cost of $1.2 billion, officials said. .
In a complicated deal, Meruelo will sell the franchise to Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith, but Meruelo will retain ownership of the Coyotes name, logo and trademark, as well as the AHL's Tucson Roadrunners. I will do it. He also has five years from the NHL to complete his proposed arena project and apply for another NHL franchise, the source said.
Meruelo will receive $1 billion of the sale price, with the remaining $200 million going to the NHL, which is brokering the deal. Once the arena is built, Meruelo plans to repay the league $1 billion in exchange for the rights to the new Coyotes.
Meanwhile, Coyotes players were told Friday night by general manager Bill Armstrong before their game in Edmonton that the current team will play at the revamped Delta Center in Salt Lake City. ESPN reported, and officials confirmed this.
Wednesday night's game against the fellow Oilers at Mallett Arena on the campus of Arizona State University will be the club's last game in the Valley.
Meruelo bought the team in July 2019 for $425 million and recently appraised its value. sportico The amount is $675 million, the lowest of the 32 NHL teams.
Mr. Meruelo agreed in June to help the club purchase a 95-acre parcel of untreated Arizona trust land on the border of North Phoenix and North Scottsdale for a starting appraised value of $68.5 million, the person said. He said he plans to continue pursuing the auction on the 27th.
If he wins that auction, the cost of the project would include $100 million in infrastructure in the first phase and more than $1 billion for an arena, training facility and theater.
If the Coyotes had lost the auction approved by the Arizona Land Department Board of Appeals last month, the team would have been at risk of relocation anyway.
“If we are not the winning bidder, we will probably be forced to move the franchise,” club president Xavier Gutierrez said in a recent phone interview. “This would be our only option.”
The team would have had to play at the university's rink, 4,600-seat Mallett Arena, for at least three more seasons. And that was a big problem for NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and his deputy, Bill Daly, who conveyed their concerns to Meruelo.
Both sides agree that such an arrangement would not be fair to the players, who are unhappy with Mallet's below-average conditioning. So they used a makeshift locker room outside the main building, which the Coyotes spent $30 million to build, and practiced off-campus at a nearby facility called the Ice Den in Scottsdale.
Coach Gutierrez said the team lost a “significant” amount of money playing in Bora over the past two seasons, declining to give specific numbers. sportico Those losses are said to be in the mid to high eight figure range.
The two sides reached an agreement in which, in exchange for playing for the Mallets, Meruelo's portion of the franchise would be inactive for up to five years while Meruelo completed the arena project while the players went to Salt Lake City.
In the meantime, there will be negotiations to relocate the Roadrunner from Tucson to replace the Coyote in Mallett, officials said.