The Utah Hockey Club kicked off its inaugural NHL regular season with a 5-2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks in their home opener. Fans at Salt Lake City’s Delta Center celebrated the victory and their new team by setting a new arena record for beer sales. The $120,000 in total sales the highest ever for a single event at the venue.
The Delta Center has been home to the NBA’s Utah Jazz since 1991. It hosted two NBA Finals series in 1997 and 1998, both of which ended in Jazz losses to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. Despite those high-profile events, beer sales during those games never hit the numbers seen during Utah’s first-ever NHL game.
Although the arena saw record-breaking sales during its first NHL game, Utah fans drank at a slower pace compared to other professional hockey fanbases.
A study by Time2Play.com looked into how many beers individual fans were drinking at games across the league during the 2022 season. Compared to those rankings, the total of drinks consumed at Salt Lake City on Oct. 8 looks a lot smaller.
With beer prices at the Delta Center averaging $15 per beverage, approximately 8,000 beers were sold during the team’s debut matchup. That means, with 11,131 people reportedly in attendance not counting those in obstructed seats, each Utah fan consumed an average of a little under three quarters of a beer during the contest.
That number is well below the league-leading Toronto Maple Leafs’ average of 3.9 drinks per game, and even behind the last ranked New York Rangers total of 1.8 beers per game.