HOUSTON — Houston has been talked about as an NHL city before. There have been conversations, in group chats, on message boards and social media. Hockey fans have done it. So have Houston sports fans watching a game at any one of the several venues — even during the time when the AHL was playing at Toyota Center.
The conversations still exist, but now they’re louder and more real because the voices include the NHL, its stakeholders, a potential owner and figures within Houston’s political and sports landscape about how the city could land an expansion team.
“I’m a big believer in that everything happens for a reason, right?” Harris County-Houston Sports Authority CEO Ryan Walsh said. “The right time, the right place, etc. Houston has been talked about as a destination for hockey for a long time. But I think Houston really is and has become a true destination for sports.”
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in late June the league is exploring adding a second team in Texas, with Houston and Austin as potential targets.
Bettman said the league entered into an agreement with The Friedkin Group that gave them six months to explore putting a team in either city. It included agreeing to a $3.5 billion investment, including an expansion fee and building costs for an NHL arena.
In late September, Bettman said the NHL is not in a formal round of expansion, noting that the NHL board of governors has taken a “wait-and-see attitude” when it comes to adding expansion franchises. He said there is an expectation that he’ll know whether the board of governors prefers Austin or Houston as a potential expansion target by the end of the year.
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said there’s a chance there might not be a vote on The Friedkin Group’s bid by the NHL’s next board meeting in December when the six-month exploration process has finished.
Houston’s viability as an option is concrete. As is the interest from influential figures in the city. But, much remains fluid when it comes to whether the NHL chooses to go to Houston, Austin or remain with 32 teams until a later time.
For now, Houston remains the largest market in the U.S. without an NHL franchise. To get one would add to the city’s distinction as one that heavily consumes sports. It already has MLB, the NBA, NFL, MLS and NWSL. Houston will see the return of the WNBA in 2027, with the Connecticut Sun relocating and becoming the Houston Comets.
With that many professional teams, two FBS programs in Houston and Rice, one of the nation’s strongest high school sports scenes and a host for other major events such as the World Cup, Houston’s status can be viewed as a double-edged sword. There’s an argument that adding the NHL would make it one of the most complete sports cities in the nation. Another suggests there could be such a thing as too much sports, and how it would be challenging for an NHL team to find its footing.
Mainly, there are two questions at the heart of how Houston finds itself in this current position even when taking those differing perspectives into account.
Why Houston? And why now?
“Houston sells itself,” Houston mayor John Whitmire said. “There are a lot of really fine cities, but there’s only one Houston.”
Houston’s hockey history
Minor league hockey first came to Houston in 1946, but the team ceased operations in 1949. It returned in 1965 with the Houston Apollos. They were the Montreal Canadiens’ farm team until 1969 when the team shuttered. The city got hockey back for a third time in 1972 with the arrival of the first iteration of the Aeros in the World Hockey Association.
The Aeros were in Houston for six seasons, won two league titles and were led by Gordie Howe along with his sons Mark and Marty.
“We knew absolutely nothing about Houston,” Mark Howe said. “The first day we moved in — Marty and I were still living at home at 18 and 19 — I want to say there was a hurricane and you couldn’t even see the house across the street. Then you go to the first day of training camp and it was 104 degrees outside. I think I sweated out 12 pounds.”
Howe said the front office had the players out in the community to attract fans while teaching people more about hockey. It worked; the Aeros were in the top five of WHA attendance three times over a five-year period.
At the time, few U.S. cities had as many professional teams as Houston. The city was home to the Houston Astros, the Houston Oilers and the Houston Rockets.
“Football, for me, is obviously the biggest thing down in Texas,” Howe said. “All the high schools played on Friday nights. If the Aeros played on a Friday night, we would probably be on page five or six of the sports section because of high school football. That’s the way it was.”
The Astros and Oilers called the Astrodome home. Even as Houston has changed and become much larger, there are still strong feelings about how the monument to advancement, which officially opened in 1965, remains the city’s greatest achievement.
For some people, the Astrodome is what put Houston on the map at the same time as the city was putting a man on the moon. This is what sports means to Houston.
“They support everything and they’re very proud of being Houstonians,” said Tom Garrity, who was the president of the second version of the Houston Aeros for five seasons. “When you look at all their franchises, it’s like anything. You have your ups and your downs. But I’d put Houston at the top of the list of supporting whatever is in town.”
The WHA played its final season in 1979, with four teams — the Edmonton Oilers, Hartford Whalers, Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets — joining the NHL.
The Aeros disbanded a year earlier following the 1977-78 season.
In 1994, the IHL granted Houston an expansion franchise, reusing the Aeros name in homage to the former WHA team. The new Aeros won a league championship in 1999 — but the IHL folded in 2001. The Aeros joined the AHL, and became the farm team for the Minnesota Wild. The Aeros also spent one season as a farm team for the Dallas Stars.
“It was a pretty traditional minor league hockey market. Weekend games were a way easier sell than a Tuesday night game,” said Minnesota Wild broadcaster Joe O’Donnell, who spent five seasons with the Aeros. “You had a hardcore fanbase, a booster club, a season ticket holder base that was super passionate. Then, from a marketing standpoint, it was about how do you find a way to separate yourself and get the word out there.”
Drawing fans was a gradual process. Eventually, the team reached the top five in AHL attendance. O’Donnell said one of the items that helped was the team playing its games at Toyota Center, home of the Rockets.
On the surface, the Aeros were playing in what might have been the nicest building in the AHL. They had future NHL players on their roster, won a league title in their second season and missed the playoffs only twice during their time in the AHL.
Why leave Houston?
“This is where the history of the owners of the Rockets and old Aeros comes into play,” said David Walsh, a professor in the sports and fitness administration program at the University of Houston. “They were at each other’s throats, egos, what have you. The old owner of the Aeros was Chuck Watson and the old owner of the Rockets was Les Alexander.”
An arena rights battle… and the end of the Aeros
Watson owned the Aeros, and also operated The Summit, the arena where the Aeros and the Rockets played before moving to the Toyota Center. Alexander, who purchased the Rockets in 1993, tried breaking the lease agreement. Watson denied the move, and Alexander was forced to honor the original lease agreement that was set to end in 2003.
Alexander and Watson agreed to an arena deal in 1997 that gave both teams equal control, but Harris County voters rejected it in a 1999 referendum.
Around this same time, Alexander sought to purchase the Edmonton Oilers with the intent of moving them to Houston. The NHL already had expanded to seven markets before 2000, while three franchises moved to new cities. Moving the Oilers would have been part of a wave that saw two Canadian cities, Quebec City and Winnipeg, lose their teams to cities in the United States. The Oilers remained in Alberta with the Edmonton Investors Group purchasing the club in 1998.
In 2001, Alexander reached an agreement with the city to build the Toyota Center. The Summit, which was renamed the Compaq Center, was sold right as the original lease agreement ended in 2003. The same year, Watson sold majority ownership of the Aeros to the Wild’s parent company, while staying on as a minority owner.
The Aeros moved to the Toyota Center, signing a three-year lease to become tenants of Alexander and the Rockets until 2006. Their second lease agreement was for a seven-year deal that ran through the 2012-13 season, but came with a significant rent increase.
Upon the expiry of the seven-year deal, it was reported that Alexander was seeking a 550% rent increase; instead, the Wild relocated the team to Des Moines, Iowa. Alexander later sold the Rockets to Tilman Fertitta, in 2017.
“I think he was very against any NHL team coming into Houston unless he owned it or owned part of it,” David Walsh said.
How the HCHSA stabilized the market
Although the Rockets won back-to-back NBA titles, Houston’s professional sports landscape was going through a challenging time during the 1990s.
Venues such as the Astrodome and The Summit were outdated. That led to tension between team owners and the city. In 1995, the Astros considered leaving for northern Virginia. In 1996, the Oilers relocated to Nashville to become the Tennessee Titans. Plus, there was the struggle between Alexander and Watson.
That led to Whitmire, then a state senator, helping establish the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority. The HCHSA was created to serve two purposes: Managing debt for professional sports venues, and attracting major sports events.
It became instrumental in the Astros building a new stadium, the NFL awarding Houston the Texans and the Rockets building a new home.
The venues for those three teams — Daikin Park (named Enron Field when it opened), Reliant Stadium and Toyota Center — opened within three years of each other in the early 2000s. The HCHSA oversees Shell Energy Stadium, home of the Houston Dash and the Houston Dynamo, which opened in 2012.
Houston has also hosted the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four, the College Football Playoff National Championship game, the Super Bowl and the men’s 2026 World Cup.
The HCHSA has supported 130 sporting events since 2011 that have generated an estimated $4.3 billion in economic impact for the region.
“All in all, the sports authority has really helped create the fundamental parts and pieces of that foundation that make Houston a sports city,” CEO Ryan Walsh said. “I think it’s naturally a sports city anyway just based on our location, based on the interests that Houston has and the economy that we got certainly lends itself toward those participatory sports as well as consumer and spectator sports.”
Don Lee, another professor in the sports and fitness department at UH, explained that there are several items that make Houston a viable option for an NHL franchise.
Houston has a proven professional sports infrastructure, further strengthened by the frequency of hosting major events.
The city also has the financial strength to support another team because of how much the city has grown economically over the past decade. Greater Houston’s economic output has increased from $584.5 billion in 2014 to $785.3 billion in 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. It makes Houston the sixth-largest economy in the nation.
Census estimates put Harris County as the third largest in the nation behind Los Angeles County, California, and Cook County, Illinois. Those figures also reveal that Harris County has had the most population growth of any county in the nation since 2020, while Greater Houston has also had the most growth of any metropolitan area within the same window.
Greater Houston is the only metro in the top six that doesn’t have an NHL team. Atlanta is the only other market in the top 10 that doesn’t have one.
Adding Houston as a market could also serve another purpose for the league.
“The TV market is a big, big selling point for the NHL as they’re going into negotiations for the next TV contract,” David Walsh said. “That seems very coincidental of looking at this in the here and now, and things starting to line up in places where in the past there were hurdles that were too tough to overcome, and other cities that might have been more palatable to go to.”
The NHL’s U.S. broadcasting rights deals with the Walt Disney Company and Turner Sports are set to expire after the 2027-28 season.
Lee pointed out that expanding to Houston would come at a time in which the league is seeing its Sun Belt teams thrive; six of the last seven Stanley Cup champions are from that part of the league’s regional map.
“I think it can be a really interesting approach,” Lee said.
Why an NHL team in Houston might not work
Houston has its strengths — economic prosperity, population growth and countless entertainment and sports options — but there are also disadvantages.
Whitmire admitted the city has its challenges much like other major U.S. cities. Houston has traffic problems, education challenges in its public schools and an aging infrastructure in a city that keeps growing.
“To solve problems you have to admit you have problems, and I’m not in the denial business,” Whitmire said. “We’ve got challenges. … We didn’t get like this overnight. I know I’ve spent time saying what a great city it is and how prepared we are, but I am also honest enough to say that’s why we would welcome a franchise because they will be our partners going forward.
“You’d like to think they need us and we definitely need them because that would contribute to that quality of life issue.”
Another concern: Where the team fits within the overall entertainment and sports landscape.
Houston has developed a reputation of being a city that musical artists skip in favor of other cities such as Dallas or Austin. One of the items outlined in a Houston Chronicle story was how Houston has a “walk-up” mentality that sees fans deliberate if it’s worth going to a concert.
David Walsh described it as “a psychic cost” fans throughout Greater Houston must weigh when it comes to their entertainment options.
“Let’s say you want to go to a Texans game. Some things start running in your mind,” he explained. “Obviously, the actual cost of the ticket. But then it’s, ‘How do I get the ticket? What about traffic? What about parking? What about food costs? I don’t like crowds. Do I have to stand in line?’ These are all these little hurdles that financially, mentally that might make that person say, ‘Eh, I’d rather go to a movie tonight because it’s right down the road.'”
Professional sports fans in Houston have been conditioned to drive downtown — or just south of downtown — to watch games. The Astros, Dash, Dynamo and Rockets play within two miles of one another in downtown Houston, while the Texans play eight miles south. And that can involve a frustrating amount of time in the car.
“In terms of a joking answer, it’s every Houstonian’s God-given right to be in traffic for an hour to go three miles,” Ryan Walsh said. “Houston is known for a lot of things and one of them is we have a very expansive area. The area is growing even more. I’ve joked that College Station is going to be a suburb of Houston. But I don’t think people mind traveling to see something they want to do.”
The discussion around a potential arena site is one of the more intriguing questions. The Friedkin Group, which didn’t respond to requests for this story, have remained tight-lipped regarding potential expansion.
Market saturation is another potential problem. After adding the NHL, the city would have seven teams in the major professional men’s and women’s leagues in addition to the collegiate and high school teams.
Ryan Walsh noted that each sport can attract a unique audience — along with Houstonians who want to support the local team regardless.
“I was driving in this morning and saw a truck with a tow hitch cover that must have been custom made because it had the Rockets logo, the Texans logo, the Astros logo and the Dynamo logo on it,” he said. “You’re playing all the bases on that one, right? People in Houston just like sports.”
Is Austin still in play?
There’s also another potential obstacle facing Houston’s bid for an NHL team: Austin.
The state capital has drawn interest for a number of reasons, principle among them growth.
The city of Austin reported that its population has gone from 656,562 residents in 2000 to what is expected to be 1,137,983 by 2030. Right now, 32% of residents came from other states, which would hypothetically include those who grew up in a hockey market.
One of the reasons for the growth is Austin’s emergence as a tech hub. Dell Technologies, the Oracle Corporation and Tesla Inc. each have their respective headquarters either in Austin or its suburbs. The region has a $248.1 billion economic output, per the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Professional sports also work differently in Austin compared to Houston. Austin FC is the area’s lone professional franchise, having begun play in MLS in 2021. The NHL would have a chance to be first of the largest four major professional men’s leagues to be in the state capital.
“We look at the Chicago Bears. Would you have thought 20 years ago they would have gone to Indiana? No way,” David Walsh said. “I promise you Hammond, Indiana, was a plan B or plan C. They will never admit it. … But they gave them everything they wanted and more. And so if you don’t treat Austin as a serious threat, then you’re not understanding the sports world. So they are a serious threat because they can come in and say, ‘We’re going to give you everything and more.'”
The city is also home to the University of Texas, with one of the most passionate followings of any college or university in the nation. Austin hosts major events such as the annual Formula 1 United States Grand Prix and the NASCAR Texas Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas.
“If you’re a UT fan, that’s where you want to be,” Whitmire said. “And UT sports is pretty outstanding. But they’re not … I’d say they’re not professional sports. But now what they pay their football players is going to be hard to say it’s not professional sports. Austin is a great city, but it’s not Houston. It doesn’t have our international communities. It doesn’t have our diversity, and it doesn’t have our sports venues.”
As for Houston’s chances? Whitmire said that there are no limits to what the city and the stakeholders will show as it relates to getting a team.
“I can’t think of anything off the top of my head as long as it’s lawful,” Whitmire said. “We’re not going to start selling dope out of an arena or anything. But if it’s lawful, we’ll pull that trigger.”
