John Reid of the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports: The Hornets are expected to release their first totals on season-ticket and luxury-suites deposits Friday, but Alex Martins, who heads the Hornets' business operations in New Orleans, already is pleased.

"From our initial responses, we're getting strong business support for suite requests," Martins said Monday. "We're getting them every day, and I had three today."

This week the Hornets will begin to contact the more than 7,000 fans who made a pledge to buy season tickets. The Hornets also have contacted people who have existing club seats and suites at the New Orleans Arena.

"Most expansion team campaigns don't reach 7,600 ticket requests after the first initial burst," Martins said. "We're very comfortable with the responses, and we hope to convert them all to deposits."

As part of the agreement reached between the state and the Hornets, ticket-sale benchmarks such as 8,000 general-seating seats, 2,450 club seats and 54 luxury suites, priced from $75,000 to $140,000, must be sold before March 15 or the team can back out of the deal.