For Vegas pro sports, does financial investment equal emotional win? | When finding your team's pub means finally feeling at home | Media Somm: An obsessed treasure hunter finds himself
WHENEVER I MEET someone new who also grew up in Las Vegas, we inevitably begin bonding over how such and such used to be this or that. Someone says, “Remember the Showboat,” or “I miss the old Wet’n’Wild,” and the city begins to feel like a small town again. We used to be small, back when the 215 was just an airport connector, when the Aviators were the 51s, and the Thunder played at Thomas and Mack. But things are different now.
We’re not small anymore. Our population has tripled in my lifetime. There are now more than 70 public high schools in the Vegas Metro Area and 40,000 registered employers. We’ve got a Tier 1 university; we’ve hosted the Grammys and a presidential debate, and according to yelp.com, we’re home to the best coffee shop in the United States (see. p. 29 of our current issue). Other trimmings of a “big city” that we’ve amassed include three major league pro sports teams, two that are national championship contenders and one (the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces) that recently won the title. But what does it really mean for a city to have a sports team? Is it a sign of maturation and progress, or is it simply a status symbol for cities use to prop up their image?
Academics contentiously debate whether pro sports are a benefit to the cities that host them. Generally, the argument against is centered around the cost of stadiums and the hard-to-prove positive economic impact of a team’s presence on the city. Rick Paulas of The Atlantic notes that Oakland saw the Raiders and A’s net worth increase more than fourfold, and the Warriors net worth grew by “a factor of 12,” all while the city had to cut hundreds of teaching jobs and close schools it could not afford to keep open, and leave unrepaired some of the worst roads and public services in the country. On the other side, supporters point to increases in property values for residences surrounding stadiums, higher tourism revenue, and intangible benefits such as, “city morale and quality of life.” While Paulas notes that teams have been a drain on their cities, he also suggests that it’s partially because, in their eagerness to compete, the cities often enter into deals that saddle them with more cost than the team justifies. This debate was at the center of the Raiders' relocation to Las Vegas. Opponents questioned whether revenue generated from the room tax hike would actually cover the $750 million of public funds that Clark County committed to the stadium or if residents would be stuck with the bill, what guarantees could be made about jobs, and what tangible benefits locals would see from the investment.
These concerns are worth remembering today, with the possible addition of the A’s and an NBA expansion team to the city’s roster. Las Vegas may need another stadium to accommodate them. At the same time, CCSD is dealing with chronic teacher shortages and struggling to increase teacher salaries that keep pace with inflation and median rent prices. We also continue to face a skyrocketing number of houseless residents, and we lack ample shelter and services for them. Last year, the city had to draw $11.7 million from reserve funds to pay for Allegiant Stadium, because the drop in tourism meant that the room tax from hotels was insufficient to cover Clark County’s part of the debt.
I love Las Vegas. It’s my home and where I’ve always lived. I care about what happens here. It seems too soon to know for sure what will come of all of this, since this year, the rise in tourism has meant that the County hasn’t drawn on those reserve funds. In the debate about the value of pro sports teams, people tend to prioritize their concrete, fiscal impact on a community, which I understand. But that glosses over the impact of those “intangibles.” We may not know the full story of our city’s relationship with its teams yet, but we know what they’ve done for us as a community, what they’ve already meant to us in such a short time.
It’s been five years since the Golden Knights became our first pro team, and I learned how much it could lift my spirit to watch a team of people give their heart, soul, and body in pursuit of their goal — to struggle and persist — while wearing a jersey with my hometown’s name on it. That winter, 2017, was one of the hardest the cities has endured, and the Golden Knights gave us a reason to celebrate. I remember my friends and I huddling with the group next to us, cheering on the Knights at a watch party outside T-Mobile Arena in the December wind. It was healing to be gathered and happy when the Strip had felt deserted for weeks.
But there was more to it than entertainment and joy. There was pride and communion. At the time, I still couldn’t even go near Las Vegas Boulevard without immediately thinking about what had happened on October 1. Thousands of people were directly impacted by the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting, and the ripple of that trauma reached across the nation. It felt like the entire country had its eyes fixed on us, and the Knights became our representatives of strength. I can’t remember if the Knights won that game, but I do remember spilling beer on a friend’s shoes, laughing at how absurd it was that we were crowded in the desert for a hockey game, and thinking, “This is so Vegas.” We are resilient. We refuse to be defined by our losses.
A sports team offers a city more than dollars, trophies, and parades. It brings with it something more substantial than a dozen resident millionaires. When he thinks of the Raiders, Coach Tico Rodriguez thinks of them as “partners with the community.” Rodriguez has been coaching in Clark County for more than 20 years. He transformed the Desert Pines football program, led them to multiple state championships, and has seen numerous students go on to play in college, of whom a few have gone pro. To him, the Raiders’ relocation is one of the best things that could have happened, especially for youth involved in football. He tells me about the $1,000 prize the Raiders award to programs that win Coach of the Week, and the 7-on-7 training scrimmages and coaching clinics they facilitate. I can hear the smile in his voice as he says that college recruitment and scholarships offered have gone from “four or five guys getting recruited (each year) to forty or fifty.” But even the coach has trouble quantifying all of the benefits. “We had Marshawn Lynch at the Canyon Springs game talking to the players,” he says. “These guys get to meet their heroes.”
When one considers that the Raiders and Aces share the same owner, makes sense that their organizations share a focus on community partnership. “When I think about how the Aces have impacted Vegas, it all starts in the front office,” Nikki Fargas, Las Vegas Aces president, says. “Mark Davis made the decision to hire Sandra Douglass Morgan and myself as president of our organizations.” Both Fargas and Douglass Morgan are the first black women appointed team presidents in their respective leagues, and Fargas believes that it is setting a powerful example for the young women across the country and particularly here in the valley.
“The community is seeing a franchise that really represents it, both in its values and practices,” Fargas says. “The league is primarily women of color, and we stand at the forefront of issues on social justice and mental health advocacy. Vegas is a perfect home for us.”
Of course, the Aces are now the first professional franchise to bring a national championship trophy to Las Vegas (Go, Aces!). While Fargas made it clear that winning has always been the goal, her pride lies less in the awards and more in the relationships the team builds in the city. “We’re really proud of the Aces Care program, when we get out into the schools,” she tells me. “When we’re in the community, or on the road, or at a luncheon with a corporate partner, we represent the best of Las Vegas and its core values.” Watching the team celebrate after their well-earned victory over the Connecticut Sun, anyone could see the joy, the preparation and labor that went into their efforts. It felt better than I could have imagined.
When I was a kid, most of my friends were fans of the Lakers and the Dodgers. I was secretly a little jealous of those from LA. It felt like they got to have a different experience, watching the home team. When your identity and the team’s converge, you become invested. You get nervous in the closing minutes of a close game. When one of your team’s players goes down, you scrunch up your face in pain.
I finally got my wish, but I am 30 now, and less concerned with our win-loss record than with the footprint these teams leave in the valley. Will they alleviate or exacerbate the seemingly inevitable growing pains that accompany Las Vegas’ rapid transformation into a big city? If I had to choose, I would rather see the city rally around public goods like education and affordable housing than have an NBA team, but the two don’t seem mutually exclusive. Whether we have five pro teams or none seems unrelated to our ability to mobilize the public and local officials around necessary initiatives. One would hope that having a “big city” image incentivizes our leaders and organizations to invest in programs and policies that address and enrich essential services. But it might not. It’s like watching a game; we’ll just have to see. I’ll be rooting for the home team.
IT'S 11:30 A.M. on a Monday, and Shenanigans — the flag-draped inner sanctum of McMullan’s Irish Pub on West Tropicana Avenue that serves as the home to the Official Liverpool Supporters Club of Las Vegas — is already buzzing.
"Big game, this,” says Henry, the Dutchman, as I grab my seat next to him at the bar some 30 minutes before what is the biggest rivalry in the English Premier League kicks off: Manchester United vs. Liverpool.
“Don’t worry,” says Ermias, the Eritrean, who’s a couple of beers in already. “We’ll win 5-0 again.”
With the room filled up, some out-of-towners are told to find space in the pub’s main area. Quinn, the Elvis impersonator who drives five and a half hours from his Utah home to watch the games at McMullan’s, rips off his clothes to reveal a full match kit (or uniform, in Yankee parlance).
Soon the singing starts, with loving odes to Big Virg and Señor Bobby, followed by “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” The latter is the Liverpool anthem of solidarity and belonging that’s sung before every home game and amplified by the tens of millions of fans the club commands around the world.
I became one of those fans back in the late 1970s, at the start of Liverpool’s glory era. To an impressionable kid growing up in Sweden, where one English match a week was televised, the heroics of players like Kevin Keegan and Kenny Dalglish were mesmerizing. Later, I moved to the United States for college. By then, Liverpool’s dominance was fading, a development I tracked with dismay through newspaper clippings my dad mailed from Sweden (this was long before the days of the internet, let alone televised games in America).
For the past 25 years, I’ve lived on several continents and traveled the globe as a journalist, yet I’ve rarely missed a Liverpool match. I’ve watched games with herders in Mongolia; nomads in Timbuktu; at home with my sons; and with fellow strangers in countless bars around the world.
So when I moved to Las Vegas last fall, after spending the previous nine years back in Sweden, the first thing on my to-do list was to find a place where I could watch Liverpool play. By the time I moved into my house, I had already attended several games at McMullan’s.
Seeing the same faces at every match — rather than just random people wearing Liverpool red — has satisfied a need I didn’t know I had. It also helped ground me in this most fluid of cities.
Through these gatherings at McMullan’s, I’ve been dispelled of a notion I may have had of Las Vegas as a place lacking in genuineness. Trust me when I tell you, the passion here is real and the commitment serious; no one is fidgeting with their phone during the game (unless it’s to check other Premier League scores). Rather, everyone is focused on the action — and everyone is here on equal terms.
I’ve come to appreciate the early Saturday morning kickoff. With the match finished by 9 a.m., a weekend that would, in a European time zone, have a giant road block placed in its way is suddenly cleared. And if we win, that weekend is filled with worry-free bliss. The problem, of course, is that a loss can wreck that same weekend — or, if the game is played on a Monday, as in the case of this Manchester United clash, an entire week.
And that’s what happens. Right from the kickoff, United are all over us, and a hush settles in the room as they open the scoring a mere 15 minutes into it. The second half starts with Liverpool regaining command, but then United scores again.
As the ball slams into the back of the net, Steve, one of the regulars sitting in front of me, buries his face in his hands. Steve grew up outside of Manchester but became a Liverpool supporter after his dad won tickets and took his 12-year-old son to a match at Liverpool’s Anfield Stadium. To Steve — and, really, all of us in the pub — there’s nothing worse than losing to this wretched lot.
But lose we do, by a final score of 2-1 after a late consolation goal by Mohamed Salah, a.k.a. “the Egyptian King.” Slowly the faithful trickle out into the Vegas summer heat, knowing the remainder of the workweek is ruined. Saturday morning, and a chance to redeem ourselves, can’t come soon enough.
When it does, my friend Joe, who’s never watched Liverpool before, joins me in Shenanigans for breakfast. Once again the room is packed, even though we’re heavily favored to beat newly promoted Bournemouth. And we do, soundly. At halftime, we’re up 5-0; by the final whistle, order is fully restored with a 9-0 victory, tying the largest victory margin in Premier League history.
It also turns out to be a big day for the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, as it’s our ritual to donate $1 per participating spectator to the organization every time Liverpool scores a goal. Today’s final tally: $283, adding to the more than $10,000 collected in total since the program started about two years ago.
I tell Joe it’s not always gonna be like this, but I’m not sure he believes me. As I say goodbye and head out into what feels like a much more manageable Vegas heat, I see him staying back to sign up for the mailing list.
IN HONOR OF this Fifth Street’s theme, I’ll kick off Media Sommelier with a sports story — sort of. It’s actually a social psychology story disguised as an outdoor recreation story, but its origin in Outside magazine reporting is no accident. Peak baggers, trail collectors, and other hiking addicts will find it as habit-forming as the treasure hunt at its core.
It’s the Apple podcast Missed Fortune that kicked off in August and tells the story of a real-life hidden treasure, stashed somewhere in the Western U.S. wilderness by eccentric, wealthy art collector Forrest Fenn in 2010. This story has been told numerous times over the years (do not Google it if you’re trying to avoid spoilers!), but for this treatment, writer, producer, and host Peter Frick-Wright zeroes in on a certain treasure hunter, Darrell Seyler. Over nine episodes (so far), Frick-Wright peels back the layers of Seyler’s obsession with the literal chest of gold and jewels, and mines it for its full figurative value, from the simple, obvious cost of obsession to the more complicated problems of intergenerational trauma and white supremacy — and including some surprising digressions in between (such as Frick-Wright’s own struggle with failure). Listeners should be aware that this podcast includes triggers having to do with various forms of abuse, addiction, and the resulting trauma. At the same time, Frick-Wright deserves credit for centering the narratives of those harmed and healed, and for striving to avoid the extractive reporting to which so many reporters from privileged backgrounds fall victim. He spends countless hours with Seyler on the actual treasure hunt, as well as with his family and friends, to tell a story that’s nuanced, thought-provoking, and as enticing as a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. – Heidi Kyser
THE GREAT BRITISH Bake Off. “GBBS,” as it’s called. Sounds pretty standard, right? In case you’re not one of the 4 million viewers tuning in, it's a Netflix show featuring a batch of talented bakers competing for 10 weeks to see whose fancy fondants, curds, and puddings can survive elimination to the end. Each week has a certain theme, and, as part of the international food series, last week was all about Mexican eats. And, as Andy Heriaud said on Twitter, "Mexican week really is THAT bad." The challenge for the bakers was steak tacos. But the even bigger challenge seemed to be getting everyone, bakers and judges, to pronounce the names of Mexican dishes and ingredients correctly. Hearing “tack-oh”, "pi-koh de-gal-low" and "glocky-molo,” Twitter users flocked for the public shaming. But the offensive and cringe-worthy moments do not stop there. While moderating the linguistic butchering, the program’s hosts somehow managed to air as many racist jokes and stereotypes as their limited airtime allowed. In one send-up on the thread, Twitter user Scare-ald and Maude posted a parody video showing two “hosts,” in which one asks, “Is Mexico a real place?” and the other answers, “I think so. I think it’s like Xanadu.” “Or Oz,” the first concludes. Having never watched this show, and taking in Twitter's mockery of it, I can safely say I would've immediately turned it off the second I saw the poncho-wearing hosts, finally understanding why the U.K. deserved to lose the war with America. But the Twitter thread, that deserves a good hate-read. – Lourdes Trimidal
EMMY AWARD-WINNING mockumentary Abbott Elementary playfully captures the very real struggles of passionate elementary school teachers trying to make the most with what they’ve got, which in a poorly managed, underfunded public school district, is not much. (Sound familiar?) Regardless, scrappy second-grade teacher Janine Teagues, played by creator and executive producer Quinta Brunson, is determined make a positive impact on her students’ lives, with the help of the few remaining teachers. Conditions at Abbott Elementary are rough, to say the least, and most teachers don’t even last two years. Principal Ava Coleman films TikToks in her office instead of handling the school’s flickering overhead lights and dwindling supplies, bullies Janine for her optimistic, go-getter attitude, and uses emergency school funds for a sign of her face to hang at the building’s entrance. While the tone-deaf narcissism elicits laughs, there’s an element of what’s lacking — actual leadership in education — that feels less fictional in this day of crippling teacher shortages, fueled by exhaustion and lack of pay and resources. As I watch, I’m rooting for Janine’s grit, commitment to her students, and other struggling educators alike, hoping that something can be implemented so that they don’t have to carry the burden of making change happen all on their own. – Jana Marquez
I HELLA LOVE Halloween! Like, if I could be a month, October would be it. I live for the décor, the changing of the temperature, the pumpkin spice everything, and all the fall-scented candles that Bath and Body Works puts out each year. In honor of this obsession, I convinced my loving boyfriend to take a stab (pun intended) at 31 straight nights of movie-watching dedicated to all things spooky and thrilling. And all things Halloween-inspired. Our list contains cult classics like Halloween (duh!), where Michael Meyers stalks and harasses a young girl (sound familiar?); The Descent, where a group of friends decide to explore a deserted cave in the Appalachian Mountains, get lost, and embark on some scary-as-hell crawly monsters (nope!); and Misery, in which a psycho-obsessed fan, literally takes over her favorite author’s life after an accident. We’re eight movies in at this point and have many more left to watch. But I can’t wait. There’s something about turning off all the lights, lighting some candles, and freaking yourself out with the one you love that just screams fun! – Kim Trevi ño
EDITOR’S NOTE: We wish a fond farewell to Kim Treviño, who, for the last six years, has provided cheerful and essential support to Desert Companion as our circulation, events, and subscriptions whisperer. Thanks, Kim and happy trails, wherever they lead you!
Photos and art: Sports illustration by Alyssa Noji; soccer club by Stefan Lovgren
Subscribe to Fifth Street and get news, profiles, commentary, and humor in your inbox every week.