SALT LAKE CITY ā As the Utah Mammoth played its home opener in the team’s second NHL season in Salt Lake City Wednesday night, the excitement wasn’t just on the ice. It was also in restaurants, shops and hotels throughout downtown Salt Lake City.
Local business owners say the hockey team’s arrival last year gave them an immediate boost, especially on game nights.
“For us, it’s another plus,” said Mike Katsanevas, owner of the downtown Crown Burger, located just a block from the Delta Center. “I mean, every extra piece of business that we get is a plus for us.”
Katsanevas said Mammoth home games consistently fill his restaurant before puck drop.
“Anything that goes on over there that they bring in, it’s just better for all the businesses around here because it generates more business (and) more people,” he said. “So yeah, it’s a win-win.”
For a business still recovering from pandemic losses, the crowds are a welcome sight.
“Especially after COVID hit and everything, we’re still scrambling to get caught up,” said Katsanevas. “COVID did a number on downtown. Everybody knows that. The extra business helps.”
COVID did a number on downtown. Everybody knows that. The extra business helps.
According to Dee Brewer, executive director of the Downtown Alliance, the numbers back up what business owners like Katsanevas are seeing.
“We see visitation is strongest in the evenings,” said Brewer. “We measure it in what we call customer days, which is any time somebody spends 90 minutes or more downtown.”
According to research Brewers’ team has done, in 2024 there were 21 million customer days in downtown Salt Lake City, with 63% of those coming from people who don’t live or work downtown.
When the Downtown Alliance looked at its busiest customer days of the year, one trend stood out.
“Seventy-one percent of those top days had events at the Delta Center,” Brewer said. “So that’s Jazz games, that’s Mammoth games, that’s concerts and Disney on Ice and everything else.”
Even with only a half-season of hockey in 2024, the results were noticeable.
“In 2024, ticket sales in all of our venues were up 18.5%,” Brewer said. “And the biggest drivers were the Delta Center and the Eccles Theater.”
Brewer expects the numbers to rise even more once a full season of Mammoth hockey is included in the data.
“It certainly helps to have 15,000 to 18,000 hockey fans 40 nights a year as well,” he said.
The growth is continuing beyond game nights, too.
Brewer said 11 new businesses are opening downtown in the next few weeks.
He feels it’s a sign that the energy from sports and entertainment is helping the city when it comes to downtown business.
“We’re seeing momentum downtown,” said Brewer. “It’s going to create more customer days, and customer days create opportunities for everyone.”
It has Katsanevas excited, especially now that the former Utah Hockey Club team name has a permanent name, the Utah Mammoth.
He feels it helps solidify fans, who come downtown to see the team play.
“The more busy we get, the better for us,” he said. “We like having the team nearby.”
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
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