Next week, the NBA’s Board of Governors is expected to vote on exploring Seattle and Las Vegas as viable markets for new franchises. The two cities have long been considered favorites for new franchises, whether via relocation or expansion.
The appeal of Seattle as an expansion market is obvious — the NBA had a team there for 40 years that many believe should never have moved. Is Las Vegas similarly a slam dunk choice (pun intended) for an expansion team?
On one hand, the city is experiencing a professional sports boom. The NHL’s Golden Knights (an expansion team) and the WNBA’s Aces (who relocated from San Antonio) have established strong fanbases since arriving in 2017 and 2018, respectively. The NFL’s Raiders arrived from Oakland in 2020, with a new stadium near the Strip, and business is good even as the team has struggled on the field. Baseball is on the way soon, with MLB’s Athletics expected to begin play in a new stadium in the 2028 season. And while the NBA does not have a franchise in the city yet, it has a significant presence there through Summer League and the NBA Cup.
On the other hand, if the NBA does expand to Las Vegas, it will be entering an increasingly crowded sports landscape. Despite its rising population, Las Vegas remains the 40th-ranked media market in the country. Tourism, a key reason professional sports leagues have flocked there, is declining.
Given those factors, how strong is Las Vegas as a sports market? We asked these experts across The Athletic’s newsroom for their feedback:
- Mike Vorkunov, national basketball business reporter.
- Jesse Granger, who has covered the Golden Knights since their inception.
- Vic Tafur, senior writer who covered the Raiders for 15 years.
- Sabreena Merchant, WNBA staff writer who is regularly in Las Vegas covering the Aces.
- Oskar Garcia, editorial director who has covered the gambling industry in Las Vegas.
What is the NBA’s current view on Las Vegas as a market?
Vorkunov: The NBA loves Las Vegas. It has increasingly made it a bigger part of its annual calendar. Back when the league came there every July for Summer League, commissioner Adam Silver called it the NBA’s 31st team. Then, it put the NBA Cup finals there.
Now, potentially, comes this even bigger step. Vegas has everything the league looks for: glitz, a big international tourism base and a market where it can potentially sell a lot of partnerships and suites. The city is not the largest media market, but what it lacks there, it makes up for in tourism dollars and people coming in and out of the city.
How has local support been for the pro sports teams already in the market?
Granger: Being the first major professional team in Las Vegas has reaped massive benefits for the Golden Knights. Even though the region isn’t exactly a hockey hotbed, the team established itself as the clear favorite for locals. The city is shrouded with more Golden Knights’ merchandise, bumper stickers and custom license plates than any other team by a comfortable margin.
Being first was key, but the team’s instant success on the ice certainly helped build that base of die-hard fans. Since entering the NHL in 2017, Vegas has the second-most playoff wins of any team, two trips to the Stanley Cup Final and the championship in 2023. The Golden Knights have sold out all 400 home games (regular season and playoffs) in the history of T-Mobile Arena.
Tafur: It’s been a mixed bag for the Raiders due to the team’s lack of success. The home games still largely sell out, though, due to the visiting team’s fans who circle a game in Las Vegas as a destination weekend.
The other thing to consider: Since Las Vegas is a town of transplants and transients, residents who are already fans of other NFL teams haven’t had a compelling reason to switch over. Everyone agrees, though, that Allegiant Stadium is brilliant and well-located near the strip.
Raiders owner Mark Davis, meanwhile, hit the jackpot with the Las Vegas Aces.
Merchant: Once the Aces started winning, they became the second-most popular team in Las Vegas. They averaged about 10,400 fans per game last season, are well-represented in signage on the Strip and have become a celebrity destination. Usher and Floyd Mayweather are frequent courtside guests, and professional athletes regularly pass through when they’re in town.
Even though the Aces came from San Antonio, the franchise’s rebrand made the team feel unique to Las Vegas and part of the city’s identity, in contrast to the stigma the Raiders often get for being a team stolen from another market. The locals love their three-time champs. Star guard Chelsea Gray preferred Las Vegas to Los Angeles when she was a free agent in 2021 because it was a less crowded sports landscape and the Aces stood out. Four-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson is so popular that she says she can no longer go to Target without getting mobbed by fans.
It’s hard to say the team would have become this popular had it not been so successful — the attendance was in the bottom half of the league when the team first arrived in Las Vegas. But now, the Aces are the class of the WNBA, and their home fanbase treats them that way.
(Though maybe one fan went too far?)
Should the NBA be concerned that it would come into this market after the NHL, WNBA, NFL and (potentially) MLB?
Vorkunov: The NBA could certainly have made a larger impact if it were the first one in the market instead of the last. That is actually an ironic runout considering Silver was among the earliest proponents of legalized gambling, which is what once made the city anathema to pro sports leagues.
But the NBA, if it comes, could be the fifth professional league and team in the market. Would that competition hamper them on the commercial side locally? It’s hard to say.
Tafur: There is a growing sense of pride in Las Vegas as a new sports capital of the country, full of new stars. The Raiders haven’t been able to capitalize on that, but the NBA is a different animal, and there should be some excitement for the nightly arrival of the league’s best players, even if the new team doesn’t have any at first. It will be a good fit with all the sparkle on the Strip.
The different sports seem to do a good job of cross-promotion as well, as Mark Davis can be seen ringside at all the big boxing matches.
Las Vegas is a destination for marquee sporting events, in addition to all its other entertainment options. Have those marquee events translated into support for the local teams, or do they divert attention away from them?
Garcia: The question isn’t an either-or. Las Vegas is constantly trying to fill its calendar with entertainment offerings that run concurrently with one another to have an answer for any kind of entertainment someone might want.
One thing to remember is that, as a destination, Las Vegas has 150,000 rooms to fill and is trying to keep them as close to capacity at all times. Local teams can be part of that draw, especially for fans of visiting road teams, and casinos hope that people who buy tickets might also eat, gamble and spend a night in one of the resorts.
How significant is the recent decline in tourism for the long-term viability of Las Vegas as a sports market?
Garcia: It’s certainly significant, but it’s worth noting that Las Vegas has long had a strategy of getting people to fill rooms and, perhaps with renewed emphasis, attracting tourists who are willing to spend.
Let’s start with a discouraging metric: In 2025, visitors to Las Vegas were down 7.5 percent to 38.5 million people, according to data from the destination’s tourism authority.
The better news — for hoteliers, anyway — was that room rates ticked up in January. So did another key figure: revenue per available room, which casino-resorts use to measure how much tourists spend each night they stay. That was up 3.5 percent to $151, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, with rooms about 80 percent filled at rates averaging $200 per night.
Las Vegas is highly competitive about tourism and has 2 million residents in its county. Its incentive to get people to the city will keep it pressing for big events. Its broader size and its long fight to be accepted by the sports world given its gambling roots means it will keep attempting to spur investment and to stay attractive to leagues.
Do you think Las Vegas can support an NBA team to the degree the league needs to justify expanding there?
Granger: At its core, I believe Las Vegas is a basketball town. The foundation was laid by Jerry Tarkanian and the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, when they took college hoops by storm with four trips to the Final Four and a national championship in 1990. While the support for UNLV basketball has waned over the last decade, fans still pack the house for the NBA’s Summer League and USA Basketball exhibitions. I know the recent NBA Cup games haven’t been as well attended, but I believe having a team of its own would captivate the city.
The NBA expansion team will eventually need to be good to maintain that interest level. But considering it only takes a superstar or two to completely turn around an NBA franchise, and the city of Las Vegas will be a free-agent destination — no state income tax certainly doesn’t hurt, as the Golden Knights have discovered — I don’t think fielding a competitive team will be an issue.
Vorkunov: One would think so. While there is a lot of local competition, the seasons for those teams don’t fully overlap, except for the Golden Knights.
The arena situation could be a big question. Would the new NBA team play at T-Mobile Arena, home of the Golden Knights, or want its own home? If it’s the latter, who pays for it: private owners or the public? If the city needs to finance much of it, is there a desire, or the money, to do so after the city is already spending $1.1 billion in taxpayer money for the Raiders and Athletics?
Merchant: Las Vegas has an appetite for basketball, as evidenced by the Aces’ popularity, and the city will support a homegrown team, as the Golden Knights have learned. But both of those teams won early, and NBA expansion teams have historically taken much longer to find success. There is plenty to do in Vegas without adding NBA games to the mix (even the NBA Cup doesn’t sell that well).
Then again, the NBA isn’t trying to justify whether Vegas deserves or wants a team. The league appears to want to be in business there, and that’s reason enough.
Tafur: I have much more confidence in an NBA team succeeding than I do the Athletics baseball team, due to the NBA having fewer (and cooler) games.
But the NBA needs to take a page from the NHL’s book and set up the new team with a chance to win early —or at least get some big names — to get Las Vegas to notice and care early. The city does not have a strong attention span.