Why not play in the Dakotas where the population is more spread out.
Populations
Sioux falls 180k
Rapid City 70k
Fargo 120k
Bismarck 70k
You could basically run a 4 city square where all the locations are a few hours drive from each other, or a 1 hour private flight. Basically a modified NCAA tournament. Those cities are big enough to have some fans attend but not in the 300k-2m range where theres a large concern about viral spread. This is really about TV so I dont understand why it has to be in a glamour spot. Play everyones last 6 regular season games, make the 1st 2 rounds of the playoffs best of 5, still in the Dakotas. Conference Finals and Championship best of 7 in the normal cities, by then we should be in September anyway so there should'nt be much issue of being in a major city. Season ends in mid October and the new season starts Christmas day with a shortened schedule