8th in media market size. They passed up DC this year, but got leapfrogged by Atlanta. The top 6 have been pretty stable for awhile (NYC, LA, Chicago, Phildaelphia, DFW, SFO). Like most Houston teams, the team would have to be good to get consistent support. That's always been the issue with sun belt cities and the NHL. At this point, however, they're the only city in the top 16 that hasn't been at least given a chance to fail.
Nah, gotta rebrand that trash franchise. Go with Aeros and use Rockets colors (their old colors look too much like Dallas).
I'm pretty sure the safer bet for easy money would be Aeros with the Oilers colors if you wanna watch them jerseys fly.
It was necrobumped from back when the Astros, Texans, and basically all-sports-not-NBA were lumped in one forum.
I’ll never forget in the late 90s when Houston was one of (5) cities vying for (4) NHL expansion franchises. Seemed like Houston getting a team was inevitable, but when the dust settled they were the odd town out with the likes of Nashville and Winnipeg landing expansion franchises over the 4th largest city in America (Atlanta and Minnesota were the other 2).
The lease at the summit was the main sticking point there as there was no clear-cut ownership group that made sense. Chuck Watson (Aeros owner) owned the lease and he would have been the only viable bid financially... but as we know, he wasn't necessarily as pocket deep as the major league sports owners and the NHL decided he was too risky. Les had the resources, and assets as being owner of the Rockets, but when he stupidly relinquished the summit lease to Watson in the years previously, he didn't have an arena that he could put a future NHL team in. At one point they talked about refurbishing the Astrodome to host NHL games. That's how convoluted the Houston-NHL saga has gotten. Similar lease stipulations exist now where Tillman would be the only person who could both own an NHL team and have them play in the Toyota Center. Of course, as previously discussed here, any other potential owner could decide to build their own arena in the suburbs and put a team there. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but it seems that NHL teams do not universally share arenas with NBA teams anymore (nor are there a lot of two arena sport cities). Maybe still a handful of examples (LA, NYC, Dallas, DC, Philly, Chicago, Boston, Denver). Saw the same thing with cookie cutter stadiums and NFL/MLB teams back in the 80's/90's... and now they all have their own stadiums.
Nashville, Atlanta, Minnesota and Columbus were awarded expansion teams. Atlanta eventually moved to Winnipeg due to lack of fan support.
