NHL Beats UFC, Books Draft For Las Vegas Sphere

The 2024 NHL Draft is expected to be held at the Las Vegas Sphere from June 28-29, making it the first major sporting event staged at the “Sin City” venue. That’s roughly three months before UFC makes its Sphere debut with the upcoming “Noche” card in September.

Contracts are expected to be signed in the coming weeks.

“I think it’ll be pretty dramatic,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said earlier this week. “It will the first sporting event in the Sphere and I think it’ll be a pretty-well viewed event both in terms of the draft itself and the viral use of the Sphere inside and outside using the globe. We think it’ll be fun. We think it’ll be dramatic and compelling.”

Las Vegas is home to the “Golden Knights” hockey team.

UFC is also based in Las Vegas and typically stages its pay-per-view (PPV) events at the nearby T-Mobile Arena, with “Fight Night” cards being produced internally at APEX. Sphere, which opened last fall, has a seating capacity of 17,600 and boasts 167,000 speakers.

Here’s a quick look at some of its features:

“I love challenges,” White said a few weeks back. “Everybody keeps saying to me, ‘I don’t understand how you’re going to put the Octagon in there. I don’t understand how you’re going to do this. I don’t understand how you’re going to do that.’ I’m going to remember that I said this to you tonight: I’m going to put on the greatest live combat sports show anybody has ever seen.”

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