The voiceover for a recently released Las Vegas tourism advertisement implores sports fans to come to the city for the bookends that surround a sporting event, not just the event itself.
“You come for the epic pregame and three days of postgame,” the man says. “The game is just the beginning.”
The ad, which has received national TV, radio and online airplay in recent weeks, is part of an effort by Las Vegas tourism officials to capitalize on the city’s growing reputation as a global sports landing spot.
Anyone who doubted as much was all but silenced last month when it was revealed that Las Vegas will host the 2024 Super Bowl at Allegiant Stadium, its fancy $2 billion off-Strip football and entertainment palace.
Tourism officials would like nothing more than to inflate the idea that Las Vegas is a place where sports fans can plan a trip around a big event, whether that’s an NFL game, a college basketball tournament or the NHL’s upcoming All-Star Weekend in February.
“Unlike other destinations, when fans come to a game in Las Vegas, the experience isn’t just about the game itself—it’s the world-class entertainment, dining, clubs and lounges, attractions and adventure that provide days of excitement,” said Fletch Brunelle, vice president of marketing for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
In the past five years, the town has added three major pro sports franchises—the NFL’s Raiders, pro hockey’s Golden Knights and the WNBA’s Aces—which means fans of visiting teams have flocked here in droves to see games.
Sports tourism is so popular that it’s also attracted other leagues to explore coming here, with the Oakland A’s of Major League Baseball and an expansion Major League Soccer franchise aggressively being pursued.
As the branding for the new LVCVA ads reads, Las Vegas can now be thought of as “the greatest arena on Earth.”
“There’s a vision shared by the sport leaders of this city that Las Vegas will be the global center for sport and entertainment,” said Nancy Lough, a UNLV professor and coordinator of the sports management program at the school. “We already have that crown of being the entertainment capital of the world, but it’s quite literally being expanded. It’s difficult for other cities to compete with what Las Vegas has to offer.”
In 2019, the last non-pandemic year for which data is available, about 8% of the 42 million visitors to Las Vegas attended a sporting event, according to the LVCVA.
That was before any impact was seen from the addition of fans in the stands at Las Vegas Raiders games at Allegiant Stadium in 2021 (games were played in 2020, but fans weren’t allowed inside the stadium because of coronavirus health and safety protocols).
“The progress that’s been made over the past decade is pretty amazing,” said Ike Lawrence Epstein, chief operating officer for Vegas-based Ultimate Fighting Championship and a Las Vegas Stadium Authority board member. “Las Vegas is a city of around 2.3 million people, but it certainly punches above its weight because of the stream of tourists who come here. The media also loves to cover events that happen in Las Vegas, which just adds to it.”
Unlike leagues such as the NFL and NHL, which have been established brands for many decades, the UFC grew essentially from almost nothing 30 years ago into a powerhouse that broadcasts its pay-per-view fight specials in over 160 countries.
Many of those major fight cards take place in Las Vegas, and they tend to bring in a lot of money. Fittingly, the UFC was prominent in the sports tourism advertisement.
In 2019, local research firm Applied Analysis concluded that UFC 229 at T-Mobile Arena, which featured international superstar fighter Conor McGregor, had an economic impact of over $86 million for the Las Vegas metro area. It’s expected that the Super Bowl will dwarf that figure.
According to a report commissioned by the Super Bowl Host Committee for Super Bowl LIV in Miami in 2020, the game and associated events had an economic impact of nearly $572 million to the South Florida region.
At Raiders home games in 2021, dates with the Philadelphia Eagles, Chicago Bears and Denver Broncos, among others, drew tens of thousands of visiting fans to Allegiant Stadium.
That’s not to mention that about half of Raiders season ticket holders have California addresses. Officials with baseball’s Oakland A’s no doubt envision the possibility of droves of visiting baseball fans coming to town for a three- or four-game series.
“Whether it’s Major League Baseball or the MLS, everybody now views Las Vegas as a place where they can grow their business,” Lough said. “The question of whether a city can sustain multiple teams vying for discretionary dollars is always a legitimate one, but the thing that sets us apart so distinctly is that we have 42 million coming here every year.”
Changes to sports betting laws in recent years have made Las Vegas much less radioactive for those concerned about how pro sports would function in a gambling town, Lough said.
A Las Vegas native who has watched the city grow to become a major U.S. market, Epstein said he still marvels at how far it has come as a sports hub.
“Growing up, I would have never thought that an NFL franchise would be based in Las Vegas,” Epstein said. “If you look at the history, boxing, the UFC and UNLV basketball all helped kind of put Las Vegas on the map. Those three helped to break down some of the barriers that existed for sports in Las Vegas. The NHL and the Golden Knights coming here was also a key moment because there were a lot of doubters.”
Today, it’s common to find close to 18,000 hockey fans pack T-Mobile Arena for Golden Knights games.
“I don’t think the Raiders come to Las Vegas if the NHL and Mr. (Bill) Foley didn’t take that leap,” Epstein said. “At UFC, we’re proud of what we’ve done to help grow the Las Vegas destination for sports. I really believe that Las Vegas, in the next half a decade or so, will become the unequivocal sports capital of the world.”