The city of Las Vegas has been denied a large professional sports franchise for decades because gambling could be disrupted and is looking to add its third team in the past five years.
Tourism officials are thrilled with the gossip – and it’s just gossip right now – that the Oakland Athletics might move to Sin City, as might their neighbor, the Oakland Raiders soccer team, in 2020.
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According to a great story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Dave Kaval, president of Oakland Athletics, visited Las Vegas in May and participated in a playoff hockey game with the Golden Knights, the city’s first major professional sports franchise to become National Hockey’s 2017 League has joined.
Previously, Las Vegas was better known for hosting major professional fights and later NASCAR races of the Ultimate Fighting Championship events.
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“We believe live sporting events are a draw for our visitors,” said Lori Nelson-Kraft, senior vice president of communications and public affairs for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the LVRJ. “We have seen an increase in visitor numbers in the destination with annual events such as the National Finals Rodeo, UFC events and NASCAR, but we also see the opportunity to generate more visitor numbers with our professional sports teams.”
Baseball is a different bird, however.
Las Vegas only hosts 41 home hockey games a year in the state-of-the-art T-Mobile Arena. The Raiders play eight home games a year at the Allegiant Stadium.
Baseball teams, however, play 81 home games on a schedule that is heavily aligned with the division’s rivals. So while a potential Las Vegs Athletics franchise would see traditional opponents like the Houston Astros or the Los Angeles Angels or the Seattle Mariners two or three times a year for a three or four game series, it would see big draws like the New York Yankees and the Mets, the Boston Red Sox, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Chicago Cubs only give once a year – and some not at all, depending on the schedule.
On the other hand, as the article suggests, there’s a lot to be said to attract visitors who want to make playing a ball game part of their Vegas experience.
The Vegas Golden Knights proved this theory with the T-Mobile Arena, which hosts thousands of Canadians each year who want to see their Edmonton Oilers, Toronto Maple Leafs, or Montreal Canadiens.
Jeremy Aguero, who oversees the economy of southern Nevada with Applied Analysis in Las Vegas, said he hadn’t seen any studies showing the percentage of fans at Golden Knights games were from the city. However, he believes that between 15 and 20 percent of T-Mobile’s 18,000 seats will be occupied by outsiders.
Additionally, of the 55,000 personal seat licenses sold for Allegiant Stadium to watch the Raiders, 22,000 went to people outside of Las Vegas, including 7,000 from Oakland.
