It looks as though all four of the big professional sports leagues are taking a gamble on Las Vegas.
With the approval of public funding for the new MLB stadium being signed by Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo last night, the MLB owners are expected to unanimously approve the relocation of the Oakland A’s to Las Vegas, despite the City of Oakland apparently offering a much bigger offer for a new stadium. This will mark the third league (NHL, NFL, now MLB) to have a team start playing in Vegas since 2017, and the second at the expense of Oakland losing a franchise (along with the Warriors moving across the bay to San Francisco… yikes, rough time for Oakland sports fans. I feel for them). Additionally, with rumored NBA expansion coming after the new TV deal, Vegas is widely expected to get an NBA team as well.
Clearly, there is a concerted effort to bring professional sports to Vegas. The city had zero franchises not too long ago, and it’s looking pretty likely that within a 10 or so year window, they’ll have a presence in all 4 major American sports leagues.
Now, I’ve never been to Vegas, so I might be missing something here, but I don’t completely get it. Vegas has so much to do in terms of entertainment, and after extensive Wikipedia research, I’ve found that it’s not even a top-35 metropolitan area in the US by GDP (it’s 36th), and it’s only 29th by population. There are plenty of markets well above Vegas in these rankings that lack presence from some (or all) of these leagues. So with a small market and so many alternatives for how to spend your time and money, why is there such a rush to get to Vegas?
Much of Vegas’s economy is centered around tourism. I don’t feel like looking up some numbers or statistics about that but I feel like that’s a pretty safe assumption. When I think of Vegas, I think of guys’ weekends and bachelor parties. Fellas gambling degenerately on casino games they pretend to know “the key” to, indulging in a substantial amount of alcohol consumption, frequenting establishments where women seem to disregard clothing, and engaging in whatever other nefarious activities they can, but leaving either feeling like they just had the greatest time of their lives, or unable to look at themselves in the mirror. At no point in this hypothetical travel itinerary is a timeslot for game 57 of the Las Vegas Athletics’ (20-36) baseball season.
I’m going to go through possible positives the leagues see for having sports in Vegas now to display that I’m smart enough to look at both sides.
Although I believe the Raiders would have been better suited for relocation to LA, where they already have an enormous fanbase, relocating a team that already has a widespread fanbase to a location that many wouldn’t mind traveling to could strengthen the team’s brand, while also drawing in fans of away teams who want to make a whole weekend of seeing their team play in Vegas. I could also see tourists spending the earlier part of a night at T-Mobile Arena (located right on the Strip) watching the Knights or the NBA team before making their way into the casinos. Maybe the tourism aspect is actually a big draw for these leagues coming to Vegas, and the local fanbase size wasn’t as important because they figured they could get enough local fans in whatever city they put a team in.
Maybe it’s the gambling. With the leagues (and the country as a whole) becoming more accepting, and even embracing, sports gambling, why not put teams in the gambling capital of the world to capitalize on this? My question here is with the growth of sportsbook apps that allow me to bet on whatever games I want while I sit on my toilet, would having teams in Vegas really bring that many more eyes and revenue from that front? I genuinely don’t know.
I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the Vegas Golden Knights. Coming off their first Stanley Cup in only their sixth season, they have become Vegas’s team and have received immense support from a fanbase that has proven strong in their early years. We are yet to see what that fanbase looks like when the team inevitably experiences some down years, as every team does, but for now, they look solid. I loved the move by the NHL to put a team in Vegas. As the smallest of the big 4 leagues, I thought it was a great idea to put a team in a market that had no other major teams and have all the eyes of the market on them. It was also smart to make it an expansion team rather than a relocation, making the team really feel like it belonged to Vegas. Those factors along with the early success have made the move a massive triumph. Perhaps the other leagues saw this and figured they’d try to get in on the action.
Las Vegas has become the hottest new market in sports, and leagues cannot wait to put a team there. There are certainly upsides to having teams in Vegas, but I don’t really understand why it’s all happening so fast there. Maybe it’s just a consequence of the growth of professional sports in general and the leagues see a new market to explore. I don’t know. I look at places like Nashville and Charlotte and see no reason why they couldn’t support a baseball team just as well as Las Vegas could, or why Vancouver shouldn’t get another shot at a basketball team with the Western Canadian market wide open. It just seems like Vegas is the priority right now. I’m not upset about it, though. It’ll be interesting to see how the sports grow there.
We’ll see if these leagues can do what so many have tried to do before them: win big in Vegas.