Las Vegas Could Be Getting Yet Another Major Sports Franchise

Another sports team could be headed to Sin City.

After getting an NFL team, and a brand new stadium on the strip that just hosted the Super Bowl, along with an NHL team that just won the Stanley Cup and came with its own new arena, Las Vegas’ credentials as a sports town won’t stop growing.

Vegas is in the process of welcoming the relocating Oakland Athletics baseball team to the city starting in 2028, giving the city three professional, major sports teams in a city that didn’t have any as recently as 2017. And things aren’t stopping there.

Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, hinted on Thursday during an interview with ESPN that Las Vegas is a target for a future NBA team sometime soon. Silver told ESPN host Pat McAfee that “Vegas is definitely on our list,” when talking about inevitable future expansion for the NBA. 

The city is already host to a WNBA team, but scoring its own NBA franchise would mark the completion of a project that started with the NHL’s Golden Knights in 2017 and has expanded to all four of North America’s major sports leagues.

It would also mark a remarkable achievement and transformation of a city that, while a relatively small media market, has long been one of the most popular travel and tourism destinations in North America.  The two industries feed off each other, as the city’s hotels, resorts, restaurants, and attractions benefit from fans coming into Las Vegas for games, and the teams fill arenas, stadiums, and ballparks with both locals and tourists.

According to a study by UNLV, 6% of all visitors to Vegas have attended a sporting event, and 3% of all visitors are there specifically to attend a sporting event. Among all visitors, the average spend on sporting events in Las Vegas doubled from 2019 to 2022, a trend that is only expected to increase as more teams are added to the city.

Those traveling specifically to attend sporting events also tend to spend more, another good sign for the city. According to the U.S. Travel Association, sports travelers spend 3.9 nights with a party size of 3.2 people, more than the average leisure traveler.