The Sheet with Jeff Marek - On the Sheet: Ken Boehlke

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

Jeff Marek and Greg Wyshynski are joined by Ken Boehlke of SinBin.vegas to discuss his recent article examining attendance at Vegas Golden Knights games and what it reveals about the team's fanbase. They explore the changing atmosphere at T-Mobile Arena, the perception of the Golden Knights among fans in Las Vegas, and whether the excitement surrounding the franchise has shifted since its early years in the NHL. Plus, a broader conversation about the relationship between the Golden Knights and their supporters, the expectations that come with the organization's early success, and what the future could hold for hockey in Vegas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greg, let's talk about the Vegas Golden Nights. And let's talk about the sellout streak coming to an end. And let's talk to Ken Bolke from Sinbin, Vegas. Ken, first of all, thanks so much for stopping by the program today. Your piece raised eyebrows around the entire hockey world. I think when it was first announced that the sellout streak was over. And interestingly enough, it was while the Toronto Maple Leafs were in town, which you would think, although the situation between our tournament,

countries right now. Maybe, you know, betrays a reality that a lot of Canadians really aren't traveling right now. We know a lot aren't going to Vegas specifically. And as our producer, Zach pointed out, too, it's Canadian Thanksgiving as well. And if anything, Canadians are staying home or closing the cottage or et cetera, et cetera. But as best you can, Ken, and welcome to the program, walk us through some of the various theories why the sellout streak came to an end. Yeah, I mean, like obviously Canadian Thanksgiving and Canadian, Canadian travel that's clearly going to be a part of it. But there was about 4,000 seats that were empty.

So it's not visiting fans necessarily that were not here. Some of the theories that have been out there are the one that people love to say is success fatigue. And I like to put that in the quotes. Like they've been too good for too long and suddenly they don't want to go. People don't like cheering. Some of that. Yeah.

All this winning is boring anymore. Yeah, it's terrible. We hate it. And going back, though, like, They didn't actually sell out all of the tickets in the Stanley Cup final. So I think it ends up coming down to pricing. That's what it really is. It's pricing.

The pricing is not matching the value of what fans are willing to pay. Now, that can be concessions. That could be parking. People have told me it's $45 to park in a garage right across the street. That's a lot. That's not cheap. But then there's this new concept that the Golden Knights are sending out to everyone. And they're saying it's because we took the take.

tickets away from the ticket resellers, that no longer are we selling all these tickets to resellers, and therefore now we're selling them directly to the fans. But the problem with that is that the tickets are then still priced too high because the fans didn't buy them. Let me pick up on that too, because the broker issue is an interesting one. And you know, you can probably sharpen the pencil on this one more than I can. But I believe it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 tickets per game that were sold to brokers. So, you may have the quote unquote sellout, but you're only capturing 80% of the money involved. And like, look, Vegas isn't the only team to do this. Rangers have done this. Ducks have done this.

Blackhawks have have done this as well. How much do you think we look at this and say this is an adjustment period for the organization and their fan base versus this is going to be the trend? That because the everything around the ticket and the game experience is so expensive that it doesn't matter who's selling this thing, fans still aren't going to go. Which way do you sort of slide? Well, I'd push back a little bit on that in saying it does matter who's selling the tickets, because if the resellers have already purchased the tickets, then they're going to be incentivized to resell them for less. Therefore, there should be tickets. If there's 3,000 seats available, there should be tickets available for $15, $10, whatever people are willing to pay for them.

If you look at Thursday's game, they're playing Calgary, Canadian again, so here we go again. But they're playing a game on Thursday. The cheapest ticket available anywhere from the team is almost $80. The resellers have them in the ballpark of 37, 40, 50, but from what I've been told, the new resellers, so they didn't get rid of all of their resellers. They've got rid of some of their resellers. But the new ones that they brought in have been instituted floors. You can't sell lower than this price.

And the reason for that is because there are season ticket holders who have already purchased the tickets for a price higher than that floor. They don't want the resellers coming in and cutting that amount and making it so that the people who have already paid for the tickets are being undercut. That was a reason they've lost a lot of season ticket holders. So that's why they're trying to do it. So like the reset period comes in. But yes, you have to restore the value of the ticket. And I think that's what my article was about is saying, I think the value of the ticket, the value of the experience has been limited by a number of things that are somewhat under their control and somewhat not under their control. Greg, first off, it's good as you can.

For those who don't know, Ken has been covering the Golden Knights since before there were Golden Knights. It's been a, like, it's the blog you went to when the Golden Knights were doing all of their building. I want a rat pack. Listen, I would have been, I've been having, as you probably. I've been having arguments with Vegas fans about the name of the team and whether it leaned into Vegas. And if you're like, it's got gold in the title, it's glittery. I'm like, the only reason you have that name is because the army trademarked black nights. Come on, we know this.

So to your example, I took my kids to a devil's game on Saturday. Once again, successful in that nobody took a picture of me in my Scott Stevens jersey. But the tickets that we bought were like $30. a pop in the sort of the mezzanine through a ticket master resell. And then the ones a row right behind us that were still on sale were like $96. So like the entry point for a resale is a key to filling these buildings. And sort of the change in that policy for some of these teams has been interesting to watch. But I wanted to touch on something else that you said because it fascinated me, which is that for years, the gold knights, according to you, have been building a fan base

and amassing a hockey culture in the area. And now it feels like a switch has flipped. And now it's less about adding people to the fan base than it is sort of doing what some theme parks, wink, wink, are known to do, which is milk these fans for as much as you can because they are the loyal customers and they will pay what you want for concessions and parking and all these things. How has that impacted the relationship between the team and the fans? Yeah, this is going to shock you guys. Like, you're not going to believe this, but billionaires like money. They're big on it.

They love it. Yeah, they're like, we can get some more money. Let's do it. This is natural. I understand that it kind of gets painted the way. And yes, I wrote the article. I painted the article. But, like, some of it's natural.

However, they do have to take a step back. if these seats are not being sold and understand why is this happening? Why is the value not there anymore? And I think part of that is because they've been pinching along the way. The price of parking never goes down. The price of concessions. They finally brought it down a little bit, but only on some items, not across the board. And they have that club, too, right?

They have that special membership thing, too, the teams are doing where if you're a member of the certain club, then your concession prices are lower than other people, right? That's what they do? Well, they initially said it was the locals menu. And so that was like some people thought you had to show in Nevada ID or something. It was just a branding name. But like you can everybody can get to lower concessions if you just ask for them or go to the right place. I just like I do also think and like I don't know how much of the piece of the puzzle this is or whatever.

I don't know. But like I don't know that the villain thing fits on the fan base that they grew. When you think about what the Golden Knight story was at the beginning, Everyone came into the Golden Knights because they arrived at the perfect time right after the worst moment in Las Vegas history. That's when they showed up. And everybody loved the first season of the Golden Knights, the Golden Misfits, and they're taking players who weren't wanted from other places and coming together. And this band of lovable losers is winning, even though they weren't lovable losers. But they're doing it.

They were a fun, awesome story that they made a documentary about it. I had to do like a nine hour interview to be in that documentary. Like that was happening. Then now, 10 years later, they're the death star that everyone hates them. Like you asked anybody around the league, you're hated. If you wear a Golden Knight jersey into an opposing rink, you will have profanities yelled at you. That was not the case nine years ago. And I don't know that that fits everybody or especially a lot of the new sports fans that became fans of this team.

Let me push back on that one because, and you're right, like, make no mistake about it. Everybody was behind Vegas. Everybody was behind the story. And everyone that I know was behind that. But that is not a recipe for long-term success, right? Like, at a certain point, like, that's great. And that was fantastic. And everybody got behind it.

But that can't be how you run your franchise. Like that can't, if you, if you, like, again, like, if you're going to win consistently. And Vegas is all outside of the. one year they didn't make the playoffs. They've always been involved in it. They've always been part of the picture. And you can't do that if you're just doing it on. We're the lovable misfits, a bunch of rejects that other teams didn't want.

There was something about how that all came together originally. But that's finite. And then at a certain point, you've got to be like, we've got to make tough decisions. So we stay competitive here. Yeah. You're not wrong. I just, the word I'll use is grace. I think they needed to use a little bit more grace in dismantle.

some of that, the way that it ended with Mark Andre Fleury. Why is this agent posting a sword going through his back on Twitter? Like, why is that happening? And then the ownership has told him, you will retire here. And then he's traded for Mikhail Heckerainen. Look that name up. Yeah, you mentioned, and you mentioned Marsha, I'd still believe that. You mentioned the way Marshall is handled.

But you also mentioned something that, I mean, I have no concept of how that played locally. But you also mentioned, say, like the signing of Carter Hart. And whether that tie, does that tie into the overall theory of rejection of good vibes from this franchise? Every fan's different. There are some fans that are going to look at that and say he was acquitted. He absolutely deserves another opportunity to play. Why, if the NHL is saying he could play, let him play. But there are some fans that are like, what are we doing?

Why are we the team taking this on? And my argument is they've always used the phrase, protect the unprotected. That's what the Golden Knight is supposed to do, protect the unprotected. I think there's a strong argument that that player is not fitting that mantra. Can I, can I get you follow up? One of the things that I find interesting about the Golden Knights, we all were over a barrel praising this franchise for being first in market. Like the Aces, yes, but there was no NFL, there was no MLB, there was no NBA. And so they became the model.

Like when people talk about the NHL going to Austin, Texas, it is to be. the Golden Knights. It is to get in there first, right? Now the NFL's there. Now the sphere is there. I know there were people talking about how many people spent money to go see Metallica instead of going to see the Maple Leafs that night in Vegas. The NBA is coming.

Baseball's coming. This seems like an inflectionment point for the Vegas Golden Knights where you're already in a city where there is such demand for your entertainment dollar. But now there's all of these other teams and all these other fan loyalties that are going to be creeping into the market in a way that they weren't there for the first several years of the franchise. Yeah, that just makes it more important to make the value of your ticket higher. Make it an event. Make it why you want to go.

Why would you want to pay for these tickets? And I think that as more things come in, you have to differentiate yourself away from Metallica at the sphere. Good luck doing that. That's tough. That's a cool ticket. I'll give it to them. But like, they have to find ways to bring value back.

And I think at the beginning, you could not find a person in Las Vegas that wouldn't drop whatever they're doing and go to the Golden Knights game. That was the thing to do. That was awesome. They need to find a way to bring that back. And some of it, what's crazy is they're winning along the way. This would be much easier to say if they're in eighth place in the Pacific. It's like, well, if they start winning again, people care again. Like, they have not stopped winning along the way.

So they have to find what went wrong. And I do think a lot of it's economic. A lot of it is other things that have happened that they have no control over, which I completely understand. But also, there are a lot of things they do have control over and they can do better. And until they recognize that as opposed to saying, well, we took tickets back from the resellers and that's why we didn't sell out. Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Why are people not buying the tickets that are available right now? You have to raise the value back in.

You have to find that value. and that is to me finding way to connect it to the community again. One of the things I think that, listen, man, I think we've all thought about this. Like at some point in the evening, the bartender says last call and the lights pop open and the built. Not in Vegas. Well, no, listen, so far not in Vegas. Well, that's actually true. But like in regular cities, like there's something called last call.

And it happens for sports teams too. You can only be good for so long until finally the natural evolution. We never thought that we see a date whether the Detroit Red Wings would be in the situation that they're in. But here we are. Like what I do wonder about, and listen, I'm not going to knock a team for like winning from the get-go. It's been an incredible story. We have not seen this in the NHL. This is one of the best stories of on ice success that's ever happened in this league.

But I think we all wonder, like, what happens when the winning softens? As it will one day. What then? Because normally the way that it goes is you don't monetize at every level while you're building or while you're developing your expansion team. And eventually you build up to the place where at every single rung we are going to monetize. This is the way the Toronto Maple Leafs do it. But it's a heritage team that goes back to 1917.

So like you understand like that fan base has been built up and they monetize it every rung of the latter. I do wonder if, not to say that, you know, they're victims of their own success, but there is an element of that. That Vegas fans are used to winning and they never really had a build. They never had like an embarrassing season where they only won 15 games and then they grew. They just started off by going to the Stanley Cup. They only won 38 last year, by the way. So. Okay.

But so what happens then? Like, I mean, I'm sure you've thought about this, you know, more than Greg and I. Of course. What happens?

Like, what happens with that marketplace? Because as Greg mentioned, I mean, there are options now. Yeah. I think the hope is that the initial build, the initial size of the fan base is going to be large enough to carry it through.

And I think that's the concern is like, wait a minute. It's, we're still in the winning. and now it's not getting there. I think that they're going to have to find a way to make sure that people once again connect to whatever they're doing.

I truly believe there are plenty of fans in Las Vegas. There are plenty of people willing to travel. And Vegas has done a very good job of becoming a team that fans that don't live here cheer for. A lot of people's second favorite city where they don't live is Vegas. So they've latched on to this team. Now granted, over the years people have latched on

hating the team as well. I think as they go through a rebuild, it's going to be how do you connect to your fan base during that rebuild? And then as you ramp it back up to being good again and remind people, remember how fun it was those first 10 years when we were awesome? This is what we're headed for again. How do you connect the new group, the new team to what's going on? San Jose is a great example.

That team is so lovable at the moment because of all of what they've gone through to now get to this point. The Golden Knights may have to go through that. And yeah, it's like any building in the league. Like, this is not a city that has 50 million people. We have like two here, three. It's going to be emptier if they're not winning. So that's why it's so jarring that while they are winning, it's empty or empty.

A team that made the cup final last year. So that San Jose example is a good one. He had Drew Remenda on last week on the show. And he was talking about how the passion for that team seems like is even more intense than it was when they had Joe Thornton and Lord Guter and all those guys because they went through the pain and now they're growing up with the Maclin-Cellibrini Will Smith version of this franchise. So the hunger is real.

Like hunger can stoke the flames of a franchise in ways that perpetual winning maybe doesn't. I think it's a good point. You mentioned traveling and you mentioned a couple times like being on the road as a Vegas fan. What do you think the situation with the stadium series game is going to end up looking like? That's a big building. How much are they going to travel to go to go play Dallas and Jerry World? So I'll argue that that game has massive value. That game is unique.

That game is different than the other 41 that are being played at T-Mobile Arena during the regular season. I still can't get used to that. But I think there's something special about that game. That's one where you think to yourself, if I'm sitting at home and don't go, to that. Am I going to have the FOMO? Am I going to feel like, darn, I should have paid the 130 bucks or whatever it is to go to that. I think a lot of people are.

And I've talked to a lot of people that are no longer season ticket holders that are planning on going to Dallas. Now, granted, I also run a website and I have a Discord where like, these are the diehard of the diehards. I have a hard time judging, you know, like what's it going to actually look like? But I think it's going to be pretty good. Because

when are you ever going to get a chance to go watch the hockey game at a football stadium in Dallas, one of the more famous football stadiums in the world. That's cool. So I think people are going to be willing to do that. And that's because the value of the ticket is there, where apparently it is not there at the same

level right now here. We've got to hustle quick. Greg, anything else for Ben? I just wanted to ask you about the situation on the ice. Jack Eichel gunning to become the first 100 point player in Golden Knights history. But for real, like Ryan Craig took over this team.

It was a controversial. she'll move considering how well torts coached them. And obviously, John wanted to come back and was told, hey, we're good here. We have this person that we've been growing in a lab since he was in Brandon to become the coach of the team. But like the way this team is currently constructed, do you, I mean, could they get over the hump as currently constructed or do they need something else on the roster to make that happen? I mean, they're the golden nights. They're going to add something to the roster. We know that's inevitably going.

Like, come on. We know that's going to happen. But like the team's good. I think what I was saying yesterday is I think there's a they're kind of pretty close to a finished product in October, which is rare. Like they're playing the same style. They're doing the same things that they did a year ago. And they're doing it against teams that are kind of still trying to figure themselves out. So they look really good right now.

Last night, notwithstanding. But like they're, they're a pretty darn good team. Do they need a little bit more? They could use a goalie. And I was listening last segment. There seems to be one that maybe, maybe. Well, I know. Right.

that fits. You know, what would this team look like if they had him? Certainly curious about that one. How much would that cost and how would they make the cap space work? But nonetheless, Vegas, the one thing that I always have admired about Vegas and Kelly McCriman is the way they handle, the way they handle their salary cap,

it's almost like, you know what? We're happy to make a mess of this during the year because in the summer we're just going to clean it up. You know, we're happy to make a hash of this during the year. And then we're going to clean the whole thing up in the summer. That's such a logical move for all of that just bad feelings and toxicity going on between Helibuck and Winnipeg and then he becomes a Golden Knight. That's just like the story writes itself.

But, but, you know, are you saying this is a possibility because for the first time in franchise history, Kelly hasn't traded away prospects. There's a actually drafted gold nights players. Did you know there's a first round draft pick that's playing on the team right now and actually scoring goals? Did you know what? Kelly's, Kelly's trigger figure is itching right now. He's like, I've got to trade this guy. I don't know how this happened. Greg, he has two first round picks in the same draft coming up.

Oh, my God. You must be going out of his mind. Yeah, we can't have that. We can't have that. He must have misread the, yeah, he must have misread the spreadsheet. I don't know how those guys snuck through before they were traded off for veterans on the expiring contracts. Absolutely. Ben, it's been a lot of fun and informative too.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Listen, continued great work. And I'll tell you, so I can, I apologize. Ken, thanks so much for stopping by. Really appreciate it. For trining a light on an interesting issue on a very fascinating team. Really appreciate it.

Thanks, Ken Volki. There he is. Ken Volki does Sin bin. So the piece is called Why I Believe the Golden Knights nine-year sell-out streak ended. Ken Volki has been our guest. Last night, I went to the doctor.