PWHL to add teams in Hamilton and Las Vegas ahead of next season

The PWHL will add expansion teams in Hamilton and Las Vegas ahead of next season, the latest step in the league's rapid expansion plan.

Hamilton and Las Vegas will bring the three-year-old league to 11 teams, with another location likely to be added in the days to come. Detroit was announced as the ninth PWHL team last week.

It comes as the league targets a major U.S. broadcast rights deal and more corporate partnerships, something the league's leaders believe will be easier to do with 12 teams instead of eight.

Hamilton drew more than 16,000 fans to a game between the Toronto Sceptres and Seattle Torrent in January at TD Coliseum, where the PWHL team will play its home games.

Seventy per cent of the people who came to January's game in Hamilton were attending their first PWHL game, the league's data showed. That helped give the league confidence that a Hamilton team won't siphon fans from the Sceptres, which play in downtown Toronto at Coca-Cola Coliseum.

“Hamilton and its surrounding communities have long been central to the growth of girls’ and women’s hockey, producing generations of talented players and passionate fans,” Jayna Hefford, the PWHL's executive vice president of hockey operations, said in a statement.

"This is a region with deep hockey roots, and the response we saw during our Takeover Tour game at TD Coliseum made it clear that fans in the region are ready to rally around a team of their own."

The city "boasts one of the largest and most concentrated areas in the world for girls’ hockey participation" and will look to draw fans from nearby Ontario communities, such as Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, the Niagara region and London. Sarah Nurse, Renata Fast and Emma Maltais are among the most notable PWHL