Las Vegas has a well-established reputation for gambling and sports betting. However, what you may have missed is that the Las Vegas Strip has transitioned into a global entertainment and retail destination. The tipping point occurred in 1999 when, for the first time, non-gaming revenue exceeded gaming revenue. Since then gaming revenue has continued to drop as a percentage of total revenue. This transition has included welcoming professional sports teams into the valley.
The wild success of the Vegas Golden Knights hockey club (an NHL expansion team) undoubtedly had an influence on the recent decision to move the NFL’s Oakland Raiders franchise to Las Vegas and has led people to speculate that more professional sports teams will find their way into this community.
Having professional sport teams in your city shapes the community’s identity and serves as a symbol of success and prosperity. However, building professional sports arenas involves major financial commitments as well as potential long-term economic opportunities. In order to secure the Raiders’ move, Governor Sandoval signed two bills in 2016 that approved $750 million of taxpayer funding to help finance the $1.9 billion, 71,835-seat stadium. Recently there have been robust debates around the benefits and costs of using taxpayer money or tax breaks to attract teams and fund sports arenas. The Seattle City Council, for example, recently rejected a proposal to build a new stadium to attract an NBA team to their city. The image here shows the construction underway on the Raiders’ stadium that is scheduled to be complete in July of 2020.
Each NFL team currently plays a total of 16 regular season games over a 17-week period. Only eight of those games are played on the team’s home field. That is why most stadiums are designed to serve more than one purpose. The Las Vegas stadium will also be the home of the UNLV Rebels football team. Interestingly this will require two interchangeable fields. UNLV likes to play on artificial turf while the Raiders prefer a grass field. So the artificial turf will be placed directly on the stadium’s concrete floor, and a “tray” holding the grass field is being designed so that it can roll in and out of the stadium without disrupting the turf underneath it. It is estimated that the stadium will host more than 20 other events each year, such as music concerts, Monster Jam, ultimate fighting, perhaps a Super Bowl, and could eventually be home to a Major League Soccer team.
Every major project in Las Vegas is expected to incorporate at least one thing that has never been done before. In this case the torch at one end of the stadium’s mezzanine stands more than 80 feet tall and when complete will be the largest 3D-printed object in the world. As Las Vegas doubles down on professional sports teams it will be interesting to see how these teams will transform this fast-growing, fun-loving, ever-changing metropolis.