Ryan Smith Interview on ESPN

[The Miami Ute]

Ryan Smith

According to him, the Utah hockey team has received over 5000 season ticket deposits in the first 45 minutes that they were made available.

[Ute Dub]

11,000 now.
https://x.com/ryanqualtrics/status/1781114241350807880?s=46

[The Miami Ute]

Wow, that’s incredible…it’ll be a total sellout considering that the arena will be reconfigured for hockey.

[Utegator]

This is interesting though:

“But hockey in Arizona might still have a future. The NHL’s announcement on Thursday gives Meruelo the rights to the Coyotes if he can build “a new, state-of-the-art facility appropriate for an NHL team” within a five-year period. In the meantime, Smith gets an expansion team in Salt Lake City and will take control of the Coyotes’ assets.”

[The Miami Ute]

Yeah, that’s what it took to get Meruelo to sell the team. One of my longest, closest childhood friends from Miami lives in LA and runs all of Meruelo’s media holdings and he told me that Meruelo was losing his ass on the Coyotes since he bought them.

[Utah#1]

The moment I found out Ryan Smith is a BYU booster who ponied up $30M to help hire the BYU MBB coach but is pushing SLC local government officials to help finance his plans for a new MLB stadium and hockey arena, I lost interest in anything he’s involved in SLC related. And all the proof I need is the Jazz still suck (unfortunately) thanks to him and Danny Ainge! Denver, Golden St, Toronto, and San Antonio have all won NBA titles in the last decade and Utah still trying to figure it out.

[The Miami Ute]

Better Smith than a guy like Meruelo…

[Ute Dub]

I’ll give him my money for an NHL team. Just take it already.

[Stone]

He is bringing the NHL to SLC – every owner of every major sport team asks the local city and state for support (financial and otherwise) for their franchises. This is not a scandal. He also happens to be a huge booster of BYU sports. He also owns the Utah Jazz. He is a billionaire that lives in Utah and loves sports. You obviously do not need to care about hockey, sports in Utah, etc. But if your basis for not liking the new franchise in SLC is based on him funding the coaching position at BYU and/or asking government officials for support, you may want to reconsider your moral purity test for allegiances.

[Utegator]

It doesn’t upset me at all if he’s a booster for BYU, but does BYU need boosters? I thought the church is $$$.

[Stone]

EDIT – meant to be a reply to @utegator

Assuming this is a sincere question (although seems troll-ish), the answer is yes, BYU needs athletics boosters. Every institution has funding priorities. The U of U is funded by a state with a budget of approximately $29 billion for year 2025. very large budget, indeed, and the U of U itself has a multi-billion dollar annual budget. So one could argue that the U of U does not need boosters because the state or the university itself has plenty of $$$$$.

But of course, that is not how it works. There are many other priorities that must be met with that money. It is the same for BYU.

Just for reference, Stanford has an endowment in the tens of billions. It still needs boosters. Same with Notre Dame and Northwestern. They still need boosters.

[Utah]

I’ve seen the Jazz financials. They are doing really, really, really well in so many ways. It’s shocking.

They have some difference ways to get money from corporations and it was worked amazingly well…like their revenue in some key areas is top 3 in the NBA (and were consistently bottom three with the Millers).

Like him or hate him, he’s making a s**t ton of money right now and having an arena with two professional teams…he’s not dumb.

[Utah]

What this means for BYU? He will continue to do these types of deals and BYU will benefit greatly.

He pays $30 million to BYU. BYU legislatures give him hundreds of millions for his sports teams.

Taxpayers…well they get to pay for it all.

[Author]

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