Las Vegas' history has been marked by a constant evolution of hotels, casinos, theaters, and restaurants. However, the city's landscape has only recently begun to include major professional sports teams.
The Golden Knights of the National Hockey League first began playing here in 2017. The Women's National Basketball Association's Aces opened his 2018 with the National Football League's Raiders arriving from Oakland in 2020. Last year, Major League Baseball's Athletics was given the green light to move from the same Oakland location to Las Vegas, and the National Basketball Association is expected to add a team within the next few years.
Las Vegas' transformation into a professional sports town reflects not only the league's interest in the city and general support for sports betting, but also the power of tourism, the region's primary economic driver. No other major U.S. city is so reliant on a single industry, and a broad coalition led by top resort operators favors construction of a new stadium with the belief that out-of-town tourists will follow. This contributed to the acquisition of major subsidies.
Those efforts will be on display Sunday when Allegiant Stadium, the home of the Raiders and built in part with public funds, hosts Super Bowl III between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers.
“Our role here, and what Las Vegas offers, is a platform for people with great ideas to come together and make it happen,” said Tom, chairman of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau and director of the team's attraction. said Steve Hill, who is most responsible for this. To the city. “We are a destination trying to say yes.”
However, not everyone adopts that strategy. In Las Vegas, the decision to set aside public money for a private team has increased scrutiny of state funding for critical social services, especially education in the nation's fifth-largest public school district, which has about 300,000 students. Ta.
This week, a group of Nevada teachers sued the state and Gov. Joe Lombardo, challenging the constitutionality of a law passed last year to provide financial support for the Athletics to build a stadium. Lombardo's office did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
“It's really the haves and the have-nots,” said Cristina Giannigliani, one of the plaintiffs. In 2016, he was the only member of the seven-member Clark County Commission to vote against funding Allegiant Stadium. “If they really wanted to diversify the economy, would sports add that element? Yes. But they didn't need the public's tax dollars to do that.”
However, the fight against the region's economic engine is tough. Lawmakers have been trying to diversify the economy for years, but Las Vegas remains obsessed with tourism. Approximately 41 million people visited in 2023.
Economists almost universally say that publicly funded stadiums don't pay for themselves. Hill acknowledges the skepticism, but argues that Las Vegas is different because most of the subsidies come from hotel taxes paid by people outside the city.
“A lot of places are building stadiums for community development reasons, God bless them, but it's not really about economics,” Hill said in an office filled with memorabilia from groundbreaking and ribbon-cutting ceremonies. It's not about profit.” “But here, so many people come to Las Vegas for the events that take place at the stadium.”
Mr. Hill has spent the past decade leading efforts to diversify the boom-and-bust-prone economy. He came to Las Vegas in 1987 to run a cement company, arriving at the beginning of an unprecedented era of construction and then a chamber of commerce and industry dedicated to fostering the city's tremendous growth. I started working in groups. He also raised money for Brian Sandoval, who was elected governor in 2010 and appointed Hill to head the economic development agency.
After moving Apple, Tesla and other companies to northern Nevada, Hill tried to expand a convention center and build a stadium in 2015 to attract a soccer team to Las Vegas and help boost tourism in southern Nevada. I was given a mission. He got county and state power brokers to give him $750 million to help the Raiders build Allegiant Stadium. Since 2018, he has served as the head of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, where he helped attract a Formula 1 race and secured support for $380 million in public funding for the stadium the Athletics want to build. (The Golden Knights did not use public funds to build the arena.)
One of Mr. Hill's skills is balancing powerful business interests in Las Vegas, particularly resort and casino operators and the Culinary Workers Union.
“Steve was critical because of his background,” said Bill Hornbuckle, CEO of MGM Resorts International. “He knew all the right casts of characters.”
Hill controls both the tournament and stadium authorities, leading to criticism that he wields so much power that he can force deals that favor the business community at the expense of residents.
“There just aren't the checks and balances that I would like to see when it comes to public policy and Steve Hill and his organization,” said Michael Schaus, a columnist for the Nevada Independent. “The people who were cheerleading this football stadium are the same people who were actually involved in making it happen.”
Mr. Hill denied the criticism and said he refrains from responding to funding requests when there is a potential conflict of interest. By Hill's calculations, the grant money spent on Allegiant Stadium was well spent. About half of the fans attending games, concerts and other events at the stadium came from outside Las Vegas, nearly double the 27% originally expected. Most of them paid hotel taxes, ate out, rented cars and gambled at casinos, he said.
But J.C. Bradberry, an economist at Georgia's Kennesaw State University, said the money spent on the stadium would otherwise be spent elsewhere in the city, and that most of the profits from the stadium would be spent at the stadium. He said that he often joins teams that borrow money. Some travelers avoid Las Vegas because it hosts football games and other big events, and hotel prices often go up.
“People interpret cause and effect the other way,” Bradbury says. “People say they're a big league city because they have a team. No, they used to be a big city, and that's why the teams went there.”
Then there's the question of what else counties and states can do with the money they collect from various taxes. For years, the region's schools and other social services, funded by sales and property taxes, have not kept up with the growth of the tourism industry. Nevada ranks near the bottom of the nation in class size and per-pupil spending, child care spending and environmental quality, and near the top in gambling and drug addiction.
Vicki Kreidel, a plaintiff in the A's funding lawsuit, teaches reading at Romy G. Heard Elementary School, a 20-minute drive from the Strip. This elementary school is a public magnet school where 100% of the students are economically disadvantaged. Although her students primarily learned a language other than English first, their reading levels are below grade level and require small group intervention.
Still, Kreidel said reading centers like the one at her school exist in relatively few elementary schools in the Clark County School District. Teachers say they lack resources to support students and facilities are aging and in need of repairs, while a district spokesperson blames a lack of funding from the state. The district added that there are more than 1,300 teacher vacancies.
Arian Pritchard, a ninth-grade biology teacher at Bonanza High School, said the average class size was 36 students because of the district's teacher shortage. She and other members of her department had to use the prep period to teach additional sections to avoid growing class sizes. Additional tuition fees will be paid and you will then complete preparatory studies on your own time.
Mr. Kreidel, president of the local chapter of a statewide teachers union, testified last year before Nevada's biennial legislative session in support of increased funding for public schools. The state Commission on School Funding's 2023 report showed the state spent about $4,000 less per student than recommended levels. The Nevada Department of Education welcomed the passage of the state's largest education budget in May, but the budget did not address the per-pupil deficit.
Weeks later, the day before he vetoed a bill that would have universally provided free breakfast and lunch to students, Lombardo signed a bill that would put $380 million in public funds toward Athletics Stadium. . Kreidel called the decision “a knife in his stomach.”
She said she vowed never to set foot in Allegiant Stadium. Latasha Olsen, another elementary school teacher in the district, tries to avoid even driving by.
“It makes me angry every time,” Olsen said. “I haven't been to the stadium. I don't want to go to the stadium. No.”
She added: “It just shows that we don't care. We don't care about the teachers. We don't care about the students. We care about tourism. I am.”
