Why Las Vegas Today is a Bad Fit for a Pro Sports Team

There are rumors going around about Las Vegas being a possible destination for the Expos. People like to emphasize all the money, the huge growth of the city in recent years, as factors attractive to professional sports leagues.

Pro Team perfect in Vegas? Think again. I will not even mention sportsbooks. If England can manage to have Paddy Power on every other corner and maintain arguably the world's best pro soccer league, then the North American leagues have nothing to fear.

And I love Las Vegas. Once I managed to get out there it was all I expected and more. Been several times since. So I have nothing against the city.

But I just do not believe in all this talk of size and money. Yes, it has grown a lot, but it started so small. Supporting a pro team is not easy. Ask the people in San Antonio, Charlotte, Hartford. I just don't think Las Vegas is up for it yet. Not now anyway.

Las Vegas clearly has appeal for pro sports. The National Rodeo championship draws crowds, and NASCAR does incredibly well.

These are events, though. This is not a 40 or 80 home game season. And it is not necessarily locals going. So I have my doubts right now about the ability of the area to support a pro league team.

Las Vegas is the #51 television market in the country. 51! The median income for 4-person families in Nevada is 30th in the nation. Not exactly incredible wealth.

What's worse - locals in LV are used to having tons of entertainment options, and at low cost. Discounts abound for locals at everything from buffets to golf courses to strip clubs. Here's an easy example - when the Strat opened up, the Eiffel tower charged around $10 to take a ride up, the CN tower in Toronto $9, and the Seattle Space Needle $8.50. The Strat wanted $7, and locals still squawked enough that they eventually got a discount.

LV locals have plenty of options for their entertainment dollar. The Arena Football League averaged attendance of 11,397 last year. The LV Gladiators averaged 9,791. Don't blame that on the first year, either. This year, the league average is 12,366, LV is getting 10,238, and the first year Philadelphia team is averaging 17,194.

The Las Vegas 51s play in the Pacific Baseball League. Team average attendance was 4,069 compared to the league average 5,812. That's 13th out of 16 teams. Compare that to the St Paul saints, who averaged 5,929 last year in a market that also had a MLB team in first place.

Even if people want to go, the largest employers in the area are running at full tilt right in the middle of prime game time. What other cities have traffic jams at 4AM when everyone on swing shift gets off work?

So your fan base just isn't there.

But all the casinos rake it in, right? So there's plenty of corporate money.

Again, not as much as needed to support pro teams. Nevada is home to 4 Fortune 500 companies, a lot less, for example, than the 15 in Minnesota. And three of the four Nevada Fortune 500 are in gaming (Caesars, MGM Mirage, Harrah's), as are almost all the other powerful LV companies. This really ties any team there to one industry and exposes that team to a lot of risk.

And why would the casinos buy tickets anyway? To reward their customers? They build elaborate stage shows to do that, and that way their customers are away from the tables and slots for only one hour instead of three hours of game time + maybe an hour of traffic to and from the game.

Someday soon, Sin City will be ready for a major league team. Even if you do consider the Expos major league, that day isn't today.