Las Vegas bets it can be a place for pro sports
LAS VEGAS — Few tumbleweed towns engender more mythology than this one. Las Vegas has a way of brightening the bleak desert landscape with its colorful images of Sin City and Glitter Gulch.
Now the neon playground of 2.2 million people is ready to add this to its self-image: BigLeague Sports Mecca.
With NFL owners poised to vote on relocation Monday, Las Vegas is on the cusp of getting the Raiders after already securing the NHL’s first expansion team since 2000.
“You’re talking about the
birth and legitimacy of a city,” Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said. “This was a tiny tiny little nothing. To have any thought that one day it would grow into any kind of world-class stature, whew. And now, we’re here. We’re really here.”
With the advent of legalized gambling in much of the country, professional sports leagues no longer consider Las Vegas taboo due to game-fixing concerns. It has led civic leaders to aggressively lobby for sports franchises with the belief that they will unify a transient populous whose common thread is eking out a living in a watering hole on the Old Spanish Trail that got its name — “the Meadows” — because of greenbelts that dot the desert valley floor.
The enthusiasm sweeping the city has enticed Raiders owner Mark Davis to dismiss the East Bay’s devoted supporters for an unproven market hungry for identity. NFL owners also seem willing to trade in Oakland, the country’s sixth-largest market and a city on the rise, for the 40th media market of Vegas.
“This is the next biggest thing since Hoover Dam,” said Stanley Washington, who organized a rally Friday in downtown to show owners how much Las Vegas wants the team. “We’ve been stuck with the gaming and entertainment piece, but this right here is going to be a game changer for Nevada.”
Such eagerness led the Silver State to pledge $750 million through a new hotel tax to help build fancy new digs for the Raiders, who have shown little interest in an East Bay plan to build a 55,000-seat stadium on the current Coliseum site for a cost of $1.3 billion.
The public’s contribution passed the Nevada legislature based on projections that a football stadium would bring 451,000 new visitors to Las Vegas while adding $620 million in economic impact. The calculations rely on the stadium playing host to 46 events, including 10 NFL games, six UNLV football games and a variety of concerts, sports and other shows.
It has led to questions about whether the formula of relying on out-of-town tourists to attend events actually works. The financial studies counted 22,500 tourists for the 10 Raiders games and 15,000 out-oftowners for other stadium events staying on average 3.2 nights to arrive at the $620 million figure.
“The numbers reflect a whole sequence of optimistic assumptions,” Stanford sports economist Roger Noll said. “The probability that it could happen isn’t zero, but it is pretty close to zero. What they are expressing are financial outcomes that have never happened anywhere else.”
But local officials say big casinos will lease suites and purchase season tickets for favored customers to help fill the seats. Las Vegas, after all, attracts about 43 million visitors annually.
“This opportunity doesn’t come around very often,” Clark County Commission chairman Steve Sisolak said. “I don’t think it will come again quickly if it doesn’t come to fruition this time.”
However, Sisolak worries that the financial projections are inflated because few events can sell out big stadiums anymore. The UNLV football team can barely fill half of 30,000-seat Sam Boyd Stadium now.
The Raiders said they have secured a $650 million construction loan from Bank of America and will add an additional $500 million mostly through the sales of personal seat licenses to help pay for the $1.9 billion stadium that could be located next to the Strip. They have said little about how they would pay a relocation fee that could be between $325 million to $375 million, according to Sports Illustrated. The Rams paid $550 million and the Chargers $650 million for the right to move to Los Angeles.
Another concern is infrastructure costs associated with a stadium built alongside Interstate 15. Nevada Department of Transportation officials estimate it will cost $900 million for improvements. Civic leaders say roadwork won’t cost taxpayers extra because Interstate 15 needed upgrades with or without the stadium. But Noll, the Stanford economist, estimates that the government will spend between $100 million and $200 million specifically for a stadium.
Parking at the Raiders’ favored locale is another issue. The 63-acre parcel is hemmed-in from all sides and even Sisolak isn’t clear about where fans would park.
Still, all signs point to NFL owners agreeing on the move, meaning the Raiders would debut in a 65,000seat, domed-roof stadium for the 2020 season. NFL owners seem enamored of having the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. They also could make southern Nevada the permanent home of the annual Pro Bowl, which has been moved from Hawaii to Orlando.
“We want this,” said Brad Hess, who moved to Las Vegas from San Jose in 2002. “I recognize the potential they might fail. But we want the brand out there. We want Vegas on top of everyone’s mind.”
Las Vegas residents are used to having boxing matches, NASCAR racing, rodeo and professional golf — events that don’t unite communities. Christina Jones, who has performed in Cirque du Soleil’s “O” at the Bellagio Resort for eight years, wants a team she can call her own. The Olympic synchronized swimmer used to love following all the Bay Area teams while growing up in Fremont.
“In the past, Las Vegas has been about tourism,” Jones said. “People were always concerned about what are we doing for visitors. But what about the people that live here? We need something to do and someone to cheer for.”
Not every resident is applauding the potential move. Jim Nagourney, 75, has become one of the leading critics because of concerns over public costs and the message it sends the community.
“We’re 50th in education,” he said of national rankings. “I know they say they can’t use the stadium money for that but what signal are they sending? When the time is right for football to be here the NFL will pay to be here.”
The former city manager of Long Beach, New York, and Nassau County executive, points out that the Disney Corp. couldn’t make a tourist-sports team synergy work when owning the Angels baseball club that plays a couple miles from the Magic Kingdom. The Angels’ attendance dropped during the seven years Disney was in charge from 1996-2002.
None of the criticism has derailed the optimism about becoming an NFL city. Supporters say Las Vegas is different because it will draw a strong contingent of fans from Los Angeles, where the Raiders played from 1982-94.
“People in L.A. now drive to Vegas to watch games on TV and bet on them,” said Hess, the San Jose transplant who works for AWG Destination Management Services. “If they’re going to drive here to watch it on TV, people are going to go to those games.”
Javier Anaya, who has opened two Pinches Tacos restaurants in Las Vegas, recalled how hurt he was when the Raiders left his hometown of Los Angeles in the mid-1990s.
“But I don’t care if they go to the moon, I don’t care if they go to New York,” said the man who attends three games a year in Oakland. “As long as they are the Raiders and Silver and Black, I don’t care where they go play, I’ll still follow them.”
It’s the attitude southern Nevada officials are banking on to make this experiment work.
“If people keep moving to Las Vegas and people keep coming to Las Vegas everything will be fine,” said Michael Green, a Nevada-Las Vegas history professor. “If Lehman Brothers collapses again, or heaven help us, we have 9/11 revisited, all bets are off.”
“The numbers reflect a whole sequence of optimistic assumptions. The probability that it could happen isn’t zero, but it is pretty close to zero.” — Roger Noll, Stanford sports economist