A few years ago, Las Vegas was a sporting no-man’s land except for boxing matches in the casinos. Now the city wants to use sport to polish its image and attract new groups of visitors.
Away from “Sin City”: With the help of sport, Las Vegas wants to get rid of its dirty image.
Godofredo A. Vásquez / AP
A city could do a lot of good with $750 million. Building schools, for example. Or invest the funds in health care and social welfare. Las Vegas decided differently in one case.
On Monday night (12:30 a.m. CET) the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs will play for the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. The Allegiant Stadium there is brand new, it was completed in 2020. The stadium has 65,000 seats, is covered and has a huge parking lot. One side of the facade is glazed and can be opened. The playing surface can be automatically changed from natural to artificial turf. The construction cost almost 2 billion dollars – an arena of superlatives. Clark County taxpayers contributed $750 million of that.
It is common practice in the USA for the public sector to co-finance venues for major sports teams. The teams are set up as profit-oriented companies and generate billions in sales. But when a new stadium is about to be built, the teams like to knock on the city administration’s door and ask for generous subsidies. Cities often give in to wishes. They expect prestige and sales in tourism from the teams.
Las Vegas is hoping for that too. The financial crisis in 2008 and the corona pandemic in 2020 showed the city how dependent it is on gambling. In Las Vegas, sport is now a means of economic growth and attracting new customer groups – an economic stimulus measure.
The Raiders of the National Football League (NFL) have been based in Las Vegas since 2020. The team has been around for over sixty years; It was founded in Oakland, later moved to Los Angeles, from there back to Oakland and finally to Las Vegas. The Raiders were attracted by the new stadium. In Oakland they still played in the venerable but dilapidated Coliseum, which they also had to share with the Oakland Athletics baseball players. Oakland’s city government refused to renovate the stadium.
$750 million in taxpayer money went into the construction of Allegiant Stadium.
Kirby Lee / Imago
A competition has arisen for the favor of the professional teams
Sometimes a real bidding war breaks out between the cities for the favor of the professional teams. The example of the Los Angeles Rams also shows this. They were founded in Cleveland, Ohio, later played in Los Angeles, California, and then in St. Louis, Missouri until 2015. The Rams then returned to Los Angeles. There the Sofi Stadium was built for them, which was even more expensive than the arena in Las Vegas – also partially financed by the public sector.
The fact that Las Vegas has had an NFL team with a modern stadium for almost four years fits into the city’s strategy. The gambling metropolis known as “Sin City” wants to free itself from its once half-silent image with the help of sport, among other things.
For decades, Las Vegas only had one type of sporting event: boxing matches. Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson – the sport’s greats all fought in the huge arenas that are integrated into the casinos. Apart from that, the city was a sporting no-man’s land.
This was because the four major professional leagues in ice hockey (NHL), baseball (MLB), American football (NFL) and basketball (NBA) avoided Las Vegas for decades – because of gambling. The league leaders feared an unhealthy proximity to sports betting. For example, the NFL did not accept advertising money from betting providers for the Super Bowl for a long time.
The successful Golden Knights model
This attitude has become increasingly less rigid in recent years. The transformation of Las Vegas into a sports city began in 2017. The NHL sold the rights for an additional team, and Las Vegas won the race with the Golden Knights. Entrepreneur Bill Foley founded an ice hockey team in the middle of the desert and was successful. Last season, Las Vegas won the Stanley Cup, just six years after its founding. The Golden Knights are considered the most successful founding of a franchise in NHL history.
Over the past decade, Las Vegas has developed a diversified sports offering. The city is considered the center of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in mixed martial arts (MMA). These sometimes brutal cage fights attract younger viewers, unlike classic boxing matches. Last November, Formula 1 returned to Las Vegas after a 42-year absence. If Steve Hill of the Tourism Authority is to be believed, the race was a financial success. The Grand Prix generated around $100 million in additional sales tax revenue, he told American media.
Las Vegas doesn’t seem to have had enough of sports yet. Efforts have been underway for a long time to host a team from the NBA and one from the MLB. For a long time it looked like the Oakland Athletics MLB franchise would move from the Pacific to the desert. The owner of the baseball team dreams of a $1.5 billion arena right on the Strip – co-financed by taxpayers’ money, of course. The Las Vegas teachers’ association is now defending itself against this venture through legal means. He sees tax money better invested elsewhere.
From the Pacific coast to the Nevada desert
The Raiders were already based in three cities.