{"id":592230,"date":"2023-09-22T19:15:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T16:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-las-vegas-once-a-sports-desert-became-a-super-bowl-hosting-sports-capital\/"},"modified":"2023-09-22T19:15:00","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T16:15:00","slug":"how-las-vegas-once-a-sports-desert-became-a-super-bowl-hosting-sports-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-las-vegas-once-a-sports-desert-became-a-super-bowl-hosting-sports-capital\/","title":{"rendered":"#How Las Vegas, Once a Sports Desert, Became a Super Bowl-Hosting Sports Capital"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Before the 2017 NHL season and the debut of the Golden Knights, Las Vegas had no professional sports franchises \u2014 in fact, the idea of allowing teams to play in a city where sports betting was legal seemed dicey at best.<\/p>\n

\n This year, the Knights and the WNBA\u2019s Las Vegas Aces both won championships. The Raiders are playing their fourth NFL season in Vegas after moving from Oakland, and in February, their home field, Allegiant Stadium,\u00a0will host the Super Bowl. And this fall, the Strip<\/a> will become a Formula 1 track for the biggest North American Grand Prix race to\u00a0date.<\/p>\n

\n Once a sports desert, Vegas has rebranded itself as a global sports capital, and the person who may be most responsible is Steve Hill, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors\u00a0Authority.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cVegas is a place that has always been attractive to those who want to take risks,\u201d he says, referring to decisions like closing down the Strip for three nights for the Grand Prix. \u201cNow, what you don\u2019t want to do is take on these risks and have a mediocre track record.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Opened in 2020, Allegiant Stadium \u2014 which cost $1.9 billion to build, the second most expensive arena in the world \u2014 was one such risk that paid off, allowing Vegas to prove it can sell out 62,500-person events on a regular basis. \u201cIf [Raiders owner] Mark Davis hadn\u2019t agreed to move the team to Las Vegas and invest in the stadium, we wouldn\u2019t have Formula 1,\u201d says Hill. \u201cIt brought the spotlight to Las Vegas, and people realized that we had grown up as a city.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n The potential for match-fixing was taken so seriously that it took the city 16 years to woo a pro team, even after the State Gaming Commission lifted the ban on gambling on Nevada college sports in 2001.<\/p>\n

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\"Allegiant<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>

Allegiant Stadium, the Raiders\u2019 home field, will host Super\u202fBowl\u202fLVIII on Feb. 11.<\/span><\/p>\n

Courtesy of Las Vegas Raiders<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n For this season, 50 percent of single game<\/a> tickets and secondary market purchases for Raiders games have come from outside of the state, including 25 percent from California. \u201cThe fact that so many tourists come to Las Vegas for these events or for the venues or for the excitement brings money in from out of state, and it grows the economy,\u201d\u00a0Hill says.<\/p>\n

\n Raiders president Sandra Douglass Morgan, a Vegas native, former chairwoman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board and a member of the Nevada Athletic Commission, says the fans arrive from feeder markets, driven by resort and travel packages and the spectacle they get from a Vegas game.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhen people come to a game, they want that overall experience that they can\u2019t even really get at any other NFL stadium,\u201d she says. Raiders games have become known for their halftime shows with such artists as Ice Cube, The Killers, Nelly and John Fogerty.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe are also experimenting with new technology<\/a> to change the fan experience, like getting people their food and beverage and back in their seats faster,\u201d Douglass Morgan says. \u201cWe also have new club suites that are much lower to the field. Our stadium has to stay fresh and innovative.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n According to App<\/a>lied Analysis, the economic impact of the F1 race is estimated to be nearly $1.3 billion, with organizers expecting about 105,000 attendees each day of the three-day event. The Super Bowl should dwarf both figures during the party-filled week of the NFL title game, and there are more than 1,600 private jet landings projected. Hill says Vegas will forever change the way the Super Bowl is done because of the amenities and the 150,000\u202fhotel rooms within walking distance of Allegiant Stadium.<\/p>\n

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\"Jamie<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>

Jamie Foxx in an ad for BETMGM. Building a sports empire in a city with legal gambling was a fraught proposition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Courtesy of BetMGM<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n With its reputation for excess, the city will be under pressure to deliver an extravagant event, particularly when it comes to the half-time show, which will be overseen by Jay-Z\u2019s Roc Nation \u2014 as it has been for the past three years. \u201cWith the city\u2019s incredible energy and atmosphere, we know Vegas will provide a phenomenal stage for the culmination of the 104th NFL season,\u201d says NFL executive vp club business Peter O\u2019Reilly.<\/p>\n

\n Beyond the Super Bowl, having professional sports teams in Las Vegas has changed the way people watch the game and how they bet on it both in Las Vegas and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\n Casino owner Derek Stevens took a big gamble when he opened Downtown Las Vegas\u2019 Circa Hotel & Casino in 2020. Not only does it have the world\u2019s largest sportsbook, but it also features a year-round pool aqua-theater where guests watch games from their rooms, from a cabana or from the water. His financial advisors told him not to mention plans for Stadium Swim when they were raising funding for Circa because the idea seemed too crazy. While Vegas has been known as a place for sports betting, the big dollars associated with the live-viewing component was largely unrecognized until recently.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe were counseled to not even bring it up because no one would really understand or even want to hear about it,\u201d he says. \u201cA pool as an amenity to a hotel room,\u201d he says. \u201cHowever, we looked at it differently. Hotel rooms are the amenity to Stadium Swim.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n He banked on selling a viewing experience that people could only get in Vegas\u2014games are one of the only things that people still have to \u2014 and want to \u2014 watch live in a world dominated by on-demand content. \u201cNo one ever says, \u2018I\u2019m going to record the Super Bowl and watch it on Tuesday,’\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n

\n Stadium Swim has been consistently sold out since opening and its popularity drives business to his online sports-betting platform Circa Sports, which launched in Nevada in 2018. It allows bettors to wager anywhere in Nevada, Colorado and Iowa \u2014 Illinois and Kentucky are next up.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cI felt having a substantial brick-and-mortar book was important, because it lets customers know there\u2019s some physical assets behind a sportsbook brand,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n Now he revels in the fact that the city will swell on Sundays with football fans, whether or not they are going to Allegiant to see the game.<\/p>\n

\n \u00a0\u201cWhatever team you\u2019re a fan of, whenever they play on the road in Las Vegas it has a bigger economic impact than it would be in other cities \u2014 additional flights are even scheduled by airlines,\u201d Stevens says.<\/p>\n

\n In its sixth year of\u00a0 regulated operations outside of Nevada, sports betting has generated more than $20 billion of revenue from almost $250 billion in total wagers.<\/p>\n

\n Vegas\u2019 sports shopping spree is far from over. In June, state lawmakers approved a $380\u202fmillion financial package that could bring the Oakland A\u2019s to town with a $1.5\u202fbillion, 30,000-seat retractable-roof ballpark where the Tropicana now resides. Bally\u2019s Corporation, who owns the land, say they would build a new resort to accompany it. Playing in the smallest MLB stadium would allow management to capitalize on \u201cpremium experiences\u201d in line with what Las Vegas audiences want.<\/p>\n

\n Irving Azoff and Tim Leiweke\u2019s Oak View Group is raising the stakes even higher with a proposed $10 billion sustainable sports complex, 20,000-person arena and 2,000-room resort on south Las Vegas Boulevard in a bid to attract an NBA team. It would be the most expensive development ever built in Vegas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n Mesfin Fekadu contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n This story first appeared in the Sept. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before the 2017 NHL season and the debut of the Golden Knights, Las Vegas had no professional sports franchises \u2014 in fact, the idea of allowing teams to play in a city where sports betting was legal seemed dicey at best. This year, the Knights and the WNBA\u2019s Las Vegas Aces both won championships. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":592236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/27fea_vegas-sports-main-H-2023.jpg?w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[126439,74764,869,80958],"class_list":["post-592230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-formula-one","tag-las-vegas","tag-nfl","tag-super-bowl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}