Fans lined up under grey skies outside KeyArena. A buzz began to build as the smell of popcorn and hot dogs filled the concourse. The roars electrified the stadium as hometown favorite Kevin Durant dazzled on the court. For a brief few hours on a cool fall evening in Seattle, it was as if the NBA had never left town a decade ago ― a symbol of the team that was lost, and the league that could someday return again. This booming city hosted an NBA game Friday night for the first time since the SuperSonics relocated to Oklahoma City in… Read More
Andy Jassy runs the world’s largest cloud computing business. He also just joined an NHL franchise ownership group trying to bring professional hockey to Seattle. So the new team operations and arena infrastructure will use Amazon Web Services technology, right? “I don’t think anyone has gone that far,” Jassy said. It’s too early to tell how Amazon will be involved in the potential NHL team playing at a proposed redeveloped KeyArena, just blocks away from the company’s headquarters in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. But Jassy is already jazzed to be apart of it all. GeekWire caught up with Jassy,… Read More
Seattle Freeze didn’t even make the list. Speculation about what name could be bestowed on a potential National Hockey League expansion team in Seattle turned interesting this week with the revelation that a number of domain names have been registered by the group renovating KeyArena. According to a report by Clark Rasmussen at DetroitHockey.net, 38 domains representing 13 potential team names were registered by a lawyer representing Oak View Group. While the group and Seattle haven’t been awarded a franchise yet — potentially the league’s 32nd — it’s never too early to drop the gloves and fight over which, if… Read More
The International could be heading north. Valve isn’t yet talking publicly about its plans, but several clues point to the video-game giant moving its huge Dota 2 esports tournament from its backyard in Seattle across the border to Vancouver, B.C. The International is one of the largest esports events in the U.S., drawing sold-out crowds that pack KeyArena to watch the world’s top Dota 2 players compete for a $24.7 million prize pool. The tournament, which started in Germany six years ago, was previously held at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall before Valve moved it in 2014 to a larger venue at… Read More
OK, the Sonics aren’t coming back (just yet), but Seattle moved a step closer to giving hockey geeks (raise your hand — are you out there?) a reason to celebrate on Thursday when the NHL announced how it feels about an expansion franchise in the city. According to various reports — and tweets from Pierre LeBrun, a hockey guru for Canada’s The Sports Network — NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said during the league’s Board of Governors meetings in Florida Thursday that the process for expansion in Seattle has begun. And it’s not cheap. Bettman announces that the NHL Board of… Read More
