Kraken's victory in Winter Classic boosts Seattle's major sports profile

SEATTLE — Alex Camacho was grinning ear to ear as she sat next to her daughter Ysabel, taking in what she was witnessing from their seats and trying to sum it up in one word.

“Amazing,” said Camacho, of West Seattle, who has spent many years going to Mariners games and sitting with her daughter in the same seats along the first base line.

The Winter Classic was unlike any other sporting event held in T-Mobile Park before. It has hosted hundreds of baseball games, a couple of football games, soccer, wrestling, and even a Bernie Sanders rally.

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But never a hockey game until Monday.

“It’s so weird to see this on a baseball field,” said Ysabel as she looked out at the ice, a byproduct of years of planning and a couple of weeks of construction.

The Kraken weren’t bad either, defeating the defending Stanley Cup champions 3-0 in front of a sellout crowd of more than 47,000 people.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman walked triumphantly around the stadium before puck drop, as he’d been asked since the franchise’s inception about a potential outdoor game in Seattle. Lumen Field and Husky Stadium were both considered as true “outdoor venues,” but the league agreed to host the game at T-Mobile, with the hopes the roof could be open.

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Mother Nature delivered, too.

“It’s a perfect, perfect fan day,” said Sean Bagsby of Seattle, who stood near the Mariners dugout, which had been covered to hold the Kraken logo and colors.

While Visit Seattle says the game brought $30 million in revenue to the city, it is hard to quantify what the three-hour-long international broadcast also means. The US and Canadian broadcasts highlighted the stadium, skyline, and water on a mild Seattle weather day.

This kind of spotlight is good for organizations like the Seattle Sports Commission, which is working to bring future events to the city. It had two in six months between the Winter Classic and the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in the same location.

FIFA has yet to pick locations for the 2026 World Cup matches, and the NBA continues to say all the right things about a Seattle return.

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Bagsby said “It’s really cool, really cool, way better than I expected.”

Added Camacho about the spectacle of it all, “It kind of legitimizes us”.