I was born in Nevada and, like many other BaRs (born and raised), I spent my formative years rooting for a team that represented another state. I’m a football fan and didn’t grow up with a local football team I could support. And, it wasn’t too long ago that professional sports in Nevada exclusively consisted of how we could combine the industry with gambling. Sports betting is a big business for casinos and, for most of my life, sports fans here had to watch any major league sporting events on TV.
Through the years, in both northern and southern Nevada, locals have had some great teams we could support. Our minor league baseball teams, for example, are fantastic. The Aviators in Las Vegas can boast the longest running franchise in professional sports in Nevada, having become a team in 1983. And, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has long seen the appeal of locating in business-friendly Nevada. The UFC put Nevada on the map for more than gambling.
However, locals, not to mention tourists, had nowhere to go if we wanted to watch a professional football game in person, sit court side for a professional basketball game or try to catch a foul ball at a major-league baseball game. That’s a pretty glaring oversight for somewhere that bills itself as the “Entertainment Capital of the World”.
Enter William “Bill” Foley, a businessman and philanthropist who, throughout his professional lifetime, has proven that when he sees an opportunity, he seizes it. Foley founded Fidelity National Financial in 1984.
Then, in 1996, he founded his wine empire, Foley Family Wines. Famously, in 2017, Foley announced he would be starting a hockey team in the desert, the Vegas Golden Knights. Like many other locals, I met his announcement with a little bit of skepticism and a whole lot of hope.
The launch of the Golden Knights paved the way for sports in Nevada. Before that, there were fits and starts, hopes and dreams and a whole lot of talk. As one example, former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman has been one of the most vocal supporters of bringing professional sports to Nevada. He has long seen the value of sports in Las Vegas. Early in my career, when Goodman was still mayor, I had the opportunity to interview him. We got through the entire interview, which was about commercial development, not sports, and, as we were wrapping up I asked him, “Mayor, one more question – when am I going to be able to root for a home football team?” He chuckled and said he was working on it and doing his very best.
Despite his, and so many others’, efforts, intentions and outright pleas, professional sports in Nevada still had a long way to go to even get to a starting line. I believe the first season of the Vegas Golden Knights to be that official starting line of sports in Nevada. Other events may have been in the works but the Knights took the first leap. After that domino fell, so too did F1 Racing, the National Football League’s (NFL) Las Vegas Raiders and the Las Vegas Aces’ professional basketball team. And, on the horizon, is professional baseball with a team that may become known as the Las Vegas A’s as the city takes yet another team from Oakland.
The Knights and these franchises launched, not only a new and thriving sports industry, but also all of the services and economic boom that goes along with that industry. A few short years after the Raider’s landing at their new Allegiant Stadium, affectionately referred to as “the Death Star” by the Raider’s own Mark Davis, Las Vegas played host to the biggest event in football, the Superbowl. The region has created one of the coolest F1 race tracks in the world and Nevada’s potential is virtually limitless in regard to what we can do with sports.
And, for BaRs like me, Nevada’s sports era is the fruition of a long-held dream. It’s the beginning of a whole new world for the Silver State.
