How Sports Changed the Las Vegas Economy

Las Vegas has always been synonymous with casinos, entertainment, and high-roller tourism. But over the past decade, professional sports have become a game-changer for the city’s economy.

Once the largest U.S. metro without a major league team, Las Vegas now boasts NHL hockey, NFL football, championship events, and even a Formula 1 Grand Prix.

This influx of sports has diversified revenue streams, attracted new visitors, and put Vegas on the global stage in unprecedented ways. We examine how the arrival of teams and events like Vegas Golden Knights and the Raiders has reshaped the economy of Las Vegas.

From Entertainment Capital to Sports Capital

The turning point came in 2017, when the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights became the city’s first major league franchise. In their inaugural season, the Knights not only reached the Stanley Cup Final but also ignited a wave of local pride and tourism.

Every home game at T-Mobile Arena has been filled beyond capacity, as fans – both local and visiting – pack 18,000 seats nightly. The team’s leadership consciously leveraged Las Vegas’s tourist appeal: “We’ve been able to take that destination interest in Vegas and through hockey, bring in even more people,” said team president Kerry Bubolz, noting that they’re “over capacity at every game”.

Out-of-town hockey enthusiasts flock to Vegas for games, bolstering hotels, restaurants and casinos in the process. The Golden Knights’ instant success proved that professional sports could thrive in a market once deemed too focused on gambling to support a team – and it laid the groundwork for other leagues to follow.

Building on that momentum, the NFL approved the Raiders’ relocation to Las Vegas in 2020. The Raiders – now playing in a brand-new stadium just off the Strip – further legitimized Las Vegas as a professional sports hub.

Home NFL games have become major tourism draws, often resembling weekend-long festivals. Remarkably, nearly 60% of attendees at Raiders games are visitors from outside the region.

Fans of both the Raiders and their opponents treat Vegas as a destination game – flying in, spending on hotels and entertainment, then catching the football action. This phenomenon has flipped the script: instead of Vegas tourists finding a show or a casino, many are now coming first and foremost for sports. As one local sports executive observed, “We used to be known as the gaming capital of the world…there’s no competition now, we’re the sports capital of the world.”

Stadiums and Arenas Transform the City

Major league teams wouldn’t have arrived without state-of-the-art facilities. Las Vegas had smaller arenas and venues for boxing and events, but the construction of T-Mobile Arena (2016) and Allegiant Stadium (2020) were game-changers.

T-Mobile Arena – a 20,000-seat venue on the Strip – was built in anticipation of an NHL team, and it immediately became home to the Golden Knights as well as big events like UFC fights and concerts.

Allegiant Stadium, a domed 65,000-seat stadium, opened for the Raiders in 2020 at a cost of roughly $1.9 billion. It was financed through an unprecedented public-private partnership (including a $750 million hotel tax contribution), reflecting how much the city bet on sports.

The payoff from these investments has been significant. According to a 2023 impact report, visitors drawn specifically by Allegiant Stadium events have generated over $2.29 billion for the Las Vegas economy – including $128 million in tax revenue – since the venue opened.

An estimated 1.52 million people have traveled to Las Vegas because of an event at Allegiant Stadium, with 88% of surveyed attendees saying the game or concert was the primary reason for their visit. “Allegiant Stadium has delivered way more than anticipated,” noted Steve Hill, CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), underscoring the stadium’s outsized impact on tourism and spending.

Crucially, Las Vegas now has the infrastructure to host mega-events that were once out of reach. Before Allegiant, no venue in town could host an NFL Super Bowl or NCAA Final Four. Now those events are coming: Allegiant Stadium is set to host Super Bowl LVIII in early 2024 (a first for Nevada), and the NCAA Final Four is on the calendar for 2028.

Major concert tours that previously skipped Vegas for lack of a large stadium are now making stops – for instance, Taylor Swift’s record-breaking tour added Vegas dates, pumping millions into the local economy.

In short, the new arenas and stadiums not only brought sports teams, but also unlocked a flood of new visitors and events, integrating sports firmly into the city’s entertainment portfolio.

Formula 1 and Global Spotlight on Las Vegas

Las Vegas’s sports evolution isn’t limited to team games – it’s also about hosting the world’s biggest sporting spectacles. The latest coup is the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix, a high-octane street race that debuted in November 2023.

For three nights, the Grand Prix turned the Strip into a shimmering race circuit, with F1 cars blazing past resort landmarks in front of global TV audiences. The mere announcement of the event created enormous buzz. Liberty Media (F1’s owner) and local stakeholders invested heavily – building a permanent paddock facility just off Las Vegas Boulevard and repaving streets – confident that the returns would follow.

By LVCVA estimates, the inaugural race was projected to attract around 300,000 visitors and generate nearly $1.3 billion in total economic impact over its weekend.

While independent economists have debated the exact figures, there’s no question the Grand Prix became Vegas’s largest annual event by economic scale, surpassing even the city’s huge music festivals and boxing matches.

It also put Las Vegas in an international spotlight unlike any other. The iconic imagery of F1 cars speeding past the Bellagio fountains and neon lights was “free marketing” for the city on a global stage, as experts noted. In essence, the F1 race doubled as a worldwide advertisement for Las Vegas, showcasing it as a modern sports-entertainment capital beyond its casinos.

Las Vegas’s ability to host events of this caliber is drawing further global sports attention. The city will soon host its first Super Bowl in February 2024, an event anticipated to bring in another $600 million in economic impact.

International spectacles like these feed a virtuous cycle: they reinforce Las Vegas’s brand as a place that can successfully stage anything, which in turn attracts more events.

The Formula 1 success and the coming Super Bowl have prompted local tourism officials to create specialized sports marketing positions (including a new “chief sports officer”) to capitalize on the momentum. After F1 and the NFL’s championship, what’s next?

Potentially a Major League Baseball team – Las Vegas has a binding agreement in place to lure the Oakland Athletics, with plans for a $1.5 billion, 35,000-seat ballpark on the Strip in the works.

In just a few years, Las Vegas has gone from no big-league presence to a city competing for every marquee sporting event and franchise.

The global attention brought by these events has intangible benefits as well. Every time a Vegas sporting event is broadcast – whether it’s an NHL Stanley Cup Final, an NFL playoff, or a Grand Prix race – the city’s skyline and attractions are beamed into millions of homes worldwide.

This amplifies Las Vegas’s appeal beyond gambling, enticing viewers who might never have considered a trip. As one analyst put it, Las Vegas’s Formula One race provides “free media” and global marketing reach for the destination’s broader tourism engine. In other words, sports have become a powerful vehicle for selling Vegas to the world.

Sports Tourism Boom

Beyond prestige, the surge in sports has had a measurable impact on visitor numbers and spending. Las Vegas has always drawn huge crowds (over 38–40 million visitors annually in recent years), but sports are contributing a growing share of that total.

Sports tourism is on the rise, with roughly 6% of all visitors now attending a sporting event during their trip as of 2023 – a proportion slightly above pre-pandemic levels. Fans traveling specifically for games, tournaments or fights represent incremental tourists who might not have come otherwise.

These visitors fill hotel rooms (often at premium rates on big game weekends), dine out, attend shows, and of course try their luck in casinos, amplifying overall tourist spending.

According to UNLV researchers, sporting events in Las Vegas generated about $1.845 billion in direct economic output from out-of-town visitors in fiscal year 2022 alone. That figure includes spending on lodging, dining, entertainment and more by people who came expressly for sports events. And the number is expected to grow as Vegas hosts more events each year.

Crucially, sports are helping smooth out the seasonality in Vegas’s tourism cycle. Traditionally, the city could see slower periods in the heat of summer or between major convention seasons.

Now, the annual sports calendar is packed with events that draw travelers year-round – from spring NASCAR races to mid-summer UFC fight cards to winter college bowl games. “Sports create events and we’ve become an event city. They bring a demographic that spends money and stays for incremental days,” explains Oliver Lovat, a local gaming industry consultant, about the strategy.

By attracting fans in what might otherwise be off-peak times, sports help keep hotels and restaurants busy even in traditionally quiet months.

For example, March has become huge for Vegas not just due to March Madness betting, but because the city now hosts part of the NCAA basketball tournament, plus a major construction trade show and NASCAR – a combination that boosted March 2023 visitor numbers well above the previous year. In essence, sports have given Las Vegas new content to market to visitors 12 months a year.

Some key figures underscore sports tourism’s growing impact:

• $1.845 billion: Direct annual spending by out-of-town visitors attending sporting events (FY2022).
• 1.52 million: Number of people who have visited Las Vegas primarily because of events at Allegiant Stadium since its 2020 opening.
• 6%: Proportion of Las Vegas tourists who attend a live sporting event during their visit (2023), up from pre-2020 levels.
• 39: Significant sports events or tournaments hosted annually in Las Vegas as of 2024, a slate expected to expand further.

And these are just direct impacts. There’s also a halo effect: even visitors who don’t travel specifically for sports may choose to add a game or event to their itinerary now that options abound.

A convention attendee might extend their stay to catch a Golden Knights game; a leisure traveler might time their trip during Formula 1 week to experience the city’s buzz.

All of this translates into higher occupancy and spending for the city. In 2022, Las Vegas saw a record ~$45 billion in visitor spending overall – a jump attributed not just to pent-up post-pandemic demand, but also to visitors spending more per trip on the expanded menu of entertainment, which now prominently features sports.

Casino executives have noticed that fans drawn by high-profile sports tend to be “higher-value” customers – willing to spend on upscale dining, nightlife, and return visits. This aligns with the broader strategy of Vegas “upping the tier” of offerings: world-class sports events complement the luxury hotels and fine dining, attracting big spenders who fuel the local economy.

A New Economic Playbook

Perhaps the most profound change is how sports have diversified a once one-dimensional economy. For decades, Las Vegas’s fortunes rose and fell with gambling and hospitality – an industry that, while lucrative, left the city vulnerable to downturns and competition.

As casinos proliferated nationwide, gambling alone was no longer a unique selling point – “you can gamble in almost any state now,” as Lovat notes. The embrace of professional sports was a strategic pivot to broaden the economic base. “The vision of Las Vegas is to get people to come here for things other than to gamble,” Lovat says, and by that measure, sports have been a great success.

They’ve turned Las Vegas into a multidimensional destination – one where a tourist might come for a football game or auto race first, and only secondarily hit the casino floor.

The numbers reflect this growing diversification. Roughly one in four Las Vegas workers, and nearly 30% of the city’s GDP, is tied to recreation and entertainment services (which includes tourism, conventions, and now sports). Sports have become deeply interlinked with these sectors.

The presence of major league teams has spurred new jobs and businesses: for instance, the proliferation of youth sports programs and training facilities. The city’s first NHL team led to the construction of community ice rinks and a boom in hockey clinics; in fact, sports coaching and instruction businesses grew by 151% in Las Vegas in recent years, a sign of entrepreneurial activity riding the sports wave.

The sports economy white paper by UNLV forecasts a 12.4% growth in employment in sports and related industries by 2030 – nearly 3,000 new permanent jobs ranging from event management to sports medicine – thanks to the expanding sports scene.

These are jobs that simply did not exist in Las Vegas a decade ago, from professional team front-office roles to stadium operations and media production for events.

Every new team and event also has a construction and real estate footprint: the $2 billion Allegiant Stadium project was a boon for local contractors and suppliers, and future projects like the proposed MLB ballpark (or a mooted NBA arena) promise similar boosts.

Just as importantly, sports have altered Las Vegas’s image and resiliency. The city is now marketed not just as an adult playground, but as a legitimate “Sports and Entertainment Capital of the World” – a tagline increasingly used by the LVCVA.

This branding helps attract a broader demographic of visitors, including families (for example, coming to an NBA Summer League or NCAA tournament game) and international tourists drawn by events like F1. It also means that during economic rough patches or lulls in one sector, the city isn’t relying solely on gambling revenue.

For instance, if convention bookings dip, a surge in sports tourism or a major boxing match can help fill the gap. Sports, in effect, give Las Vegas another revenue stream and marketing angle to keep the economy humming.

Casino resorts have embraced this: many have partnered with teams (MGM Resorts co-owns T-Mobile Arena and sponsors events; Caesars, Wynn and others were instrumental in landing F1) , seeing sports as complementary to their core business.

As Caesars Entertainment’s CEO Tom Reeg noted, the arrival of franchises like the Raiders and (potentially) the A’s, plus events like the Grand Prix, help bring in those “higher-value customers” that keep the market hitting new peaks.

In a city built on big bets, the bet on sports appears to be paying off. Las Vegas today is more economically diverse, more resilient, and busier than ever, thanks in large part to its emergence as a sports mecca.

The change is visible on any given night: arena marquees and stadium jumbotrons light up the desert sky, sports fans flood the Strip alongside conventioneers and thrill-seekers, and the local community rallies behind its home teams. The economic impact is measured in the billions – but beyond the dollars, sports have given Las Vegas a new source of identity and pride.

It’s a playbook other tourism-dependent cities are surely studying: by investing in teams and events, Las Vegas didn’t just diversify its economy, it transformed its brand. And in doing so, it proved that even in a city famed for gambling, sometimes the smartest move is to double down on something new – in this case, sports.