In 2011 at the old City Hall (now occupied by Zappos), then-Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman was holding court with reporters (including me), laying out a grand vision.
A Las Vegas company had worked to assemble limited-term property rights from several small businesses in what’s now known as the Arts District. The intent was to tear them all down, making way for $10.5 billion in development. There would be casinos, hotels, restaurants, retail. And something Vegas hadn’t yet seen: an arena or stadium to hold a major league-level professional sports team.
In Goodman’s view, professional sports made sense here, not just for the dollars it could bring to the city, county, and state, but for something less tangible.
“I really want to have an arena complex in this community, because I think it will galvanize the people,” he told us. “I think we’ll be able to identify with the teams that are there. It will give us a sense of being something better than we are today.”
That would be no small feat in a city and county seen by many outsiders and locals alike as a place with no discernible identity. Vegas was past the age when waitressing or parking cars enabled someone to buy a house and raise a family. During the Great Recession, people saw neighbors walk away from million-dollar homes, shirking mortgage payments and leaving the city because their house had lost so much value.
Generations before might have felt a sense of community here, but not anymore. Could sports change that? Was it even a goal of the teams that wanted to be here? Or was their motivation purely monetary?
One of proponents’ selling points to get $750 million in Clark County funding for the Raiders stadium construction was that it would draw fans from other teams to Vegas — to see their teams, yes, but also because Vegas is a fun place to visit. So, if local fans didn’t show up, other teams’ fans would fill the seats. The Vegas Golden Knights didn’t ask for public money to bring an NHL expansion team here. But could that formula work for them, too?
Numbers from the Las Vegas Visitors & Convention Authority tell part of the story. Visitors who attended sporting events here grew 50 percent from 2018 to 2023, from 4 percent of all visitors to 6 percent. That represents growth of about 1.7 million people in 2018 to 2.5 million in 2023.
So, professional sports does appear to attract tourists. But does it do what Oscar Goodman said it would, all those years ago. Does it build community?
Lance Johns, an attorney and owner of The Atomic and other Las Vegas businesses, bought season tickets for the Vegas Golden Knights’ first season. The first game came just days after the mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, October 1, 2017. That night, Johns felt an intense togetherness.
“That first game, it was wild. It was moving, I gotta tell ya,” Johns says.
It felt so good that by the time the Raiders played their first game at Allegiant Stadium, Johns had secured four season tickets. It wasn’t cheap: $100,000 for the personal seat license for four seats; then $9,000 or $10,000 each year for season tickets. According to census data, Las Vegas’ median household income is $73,784. One season ticket would take 12-13 percent of that household’s yearly budget.
In October, the Raiders were a few days away from playing the Kansas City Chiefs. Johns wasn’t going, trying to sell his tickets instead. He remembered what it had been like two weeks earlier when the Pittsburgh Steelers came to town.
“It was 60 percent Steelers fans,” he says.
For the team and Clark County taxpayers, that’s good, considering the stadium won’t be paid off for another 26 years, and we need the revenue. But it’s not great for building community around the Raiders.
Is this how it is everywhere?
Orlando has a lot in common with Las Vegas — a Disney World/tourism-based economy that draws 74 million visitors a year, almost twice as many as Las Vegas. They also have an NBA team, the Magic, which has been there since the late 1980s.
Jason Beede, Magic beat-reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, has seen a tale of two fan bases. To him, it’s all about the team’s record and community outreach. When the Magic wasn’t winning, the seats would be 20 percent empty, Beede says. Last year, they made the playoffs, and they had high attendance rates.
“That’s what drives people out,” Beede says. “If the product isn’t good, regardless of the team, let alone the NBA, fans won’t come. (If they win), you’ll have a fan base that grows, but it takes time.”
Disney doesn’t own the team, but they’re a big part of the marketing. So, they’ll have contests during the game that can result in team season tickets, day passes to Disney World, and more. Beede said the team’s dedication to Orlando, though, is mostly seen through community outreach.
“They do a great job making sure they’re involved in the community — serving the homeless meals, food drives,” he says. “They have the Orlando Magic Youth Foundation. They just held a reading event for 3,000 fourth graders. And the players take pride in the events that they put on, whether it’s youth basketball camp (or) meet-and-greets … After the storms that came through, the team donated $600,000 to the community.”
Another thing may help determine that local loyalty: cost. Johns is a successful businessman. That doesn’t come without keeping an eye on prices. According to him, tickets for the Golden Knights got to be too expensive, so after three years, he stopped getting them. As for the Raiders, he paid that $100,000 personal seat license fee, so it’s hard to give them up.
“I’ll buy a ticket here and there (for Knights games), but a lot of my friends are now saying, ‘You know what, it’s too much.’ Too much for tickets, too many games. Then you have the traffic and getting to the game on the Strip. It’s miserable. It’s $25 to park. If I go out to dinner before on the Strip, it’s another $250 or $300. A drink or two at the game. I’m down $400 or $500.”
One professional league where the local team is winning, tickets are still affordable, and there’s a tremendous sense of community, according to local season ticket-holders, is the WNBA. Las Vegas Aces fans say that at games, they feel like they’re part of something bigger, and something distinctly Las Vegan.
After Trent Brown’s sister gave him tickets for a game in 2018, the Aces’ first year in Vegas after a move from San Antonio, he was hooked. Since then, Brown has held season tickets. And it’s well within his budget: The first few years, he paid $10 a ticket (and it includes parking). The team won consecutive championships in 2022 and 2023, but the price is still only around $20 per ticket.
More importantly, Brown and his husband have made friends of fellow fans in their section.
“It’s definitely a community, and we met some great people who are also season ticket holders,” he says. “We do social things now. We’ll meet before games and have lunch or dinner, or go out for ice cream after the game … So, it’s that kind of atmosphere there.”
All this, and the public didn’t have to fund a multi-billion-dollar stadium to house the team. The Aces play at Mandalay Bay’s Michelob Ultra Arena. They’re everything Oscar Goodman promised all those years ago.
Could the same happen in other leagues with higher costs? Can they be community builders in Las Vegas, or are they just cash cows for corporate venue operators, who have to rely on visitors to fill seats locals can’t afford?
“I don’t know,” Johns says, thinking about his Knights and Raiders tickets. “Maybe it’s a little bit of both.”
