By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Ouch, Las Vegas.
The so-called “sports capital of the world’ was ranked 26th as the best sports city in the U.S., according to a WalletHub study.
“In search of the best sports cities from the fans’ perspective, WalletHub compared 399 cities across more than 50 key metrics related to the five largest sports in the U.S.: football, baseball, basketball, soccer and hockey,” the WalletHub release stated.
Las Vegas has a loud contingent of tourism officials, sports bros, local media and event promoters hyping this market as the “sports capital of the world.”
But even the Vegas Golden Knights are not selling out every game anymore and UNLV basketball games are drawing only several thousand people to Thomas & Mack Center.
What Las Vegas has are hype men like LVCVA tourism head Steve Hill and his friend, pro-sports and LVCVA consultant Jeremy Aguero, who promote Las Vegas as a destination for big sports events like the college football national championship game in 2027, the college basketball Final Four in 2028 and the NFL Super Bowl in 2029.
The A’s are building a new stadium on the Strip that’s supposed to open in 2028 and the NBA has talked about expanding to the Las Vegas market.
Something to consider: sports in this Las Vegas market are seen as money makers for the local hotel-casino industry and locals have not bought into all sports like F1, a car race that local residents say causes too much disruptions and small business losses in the Strip corridor.
Sports are seen as tourism. But as the WalletHub study shows, focusing on tourists over locals do not necessarily make for a great sports city.
PSA
*
