It was a tale of two sports in Las Vegas last week.
When the Maloof brothers and Bill Foley set their goal of selling 10,000 season ticket deposits for a potential NHL team in Vegas, even the biggest optimists didn’t expect that goal to be half-way reached after a day and a half. Foley said, “All the seats in the sections are selling really well. They’re pretty even distributed.” He continued, “We’re off to a good start. We hope to see the Las Vegas community rally around this great cause and continue to buy deposits.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman attended the ticket deposit launch, and told a packed room inside the MGM Grand he endorses the ticket campaign, and feels it’s a great way to gauge fan interest in Las Vegas. However, Bettman, in classic Las Vegas form, is holding the cards close to his vest, and not saying one way or another what the final verdict will be.
“We’re not in the expansion process and I need to keep making that clear,” Bettman said. Foley is well aware of this stance, and said “We have the arena and we have strong ownership. Now it’s our job to convince the NHL that Las Vegas is ready for hockey.”
Foley, a billionaire businessman from Florida, has joined forces with the Maloof brothers, who from 1998-2013 owned the Sacrament Kings of the NBA, so capital and the knowledge of running a successful pro sports team are there. Bettman added he was not worried about placing a team in a city where sports wagering is legal.
Meanwhile, Las Vegas soccer fans were given the expected news last week, Major League Soccer has officially passed on a bid for an expansion team in Las Vegas for the 2017 or 2018 season. The bid will now either go to Sacramento or Minneapolis.
In a letter from MLS Commissioner Don Garber to Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, he wrote, “Given the timing of our expansion rollout and the uncertainty as to when we might be able to move forward in Las Vegas, we are no longer considering Las Vegas as an expansion market until after 2018.”
With so much uncertainty surrounding the potential $200 stadium downtown, of which $56.5 million was to be funded by taxpayers’ dollars, the announcement was no surprise. Las Vegas, without the stadium controversy, was already a bit of a dark horse among the three cities. After announcing the rejection, Goodman said, “I would continue to support major league sports, in particular, soccer. I will keep fighting, as long as I breathe.”
Councilman Stavros Anthony, who decided to run against Goodman based on the publicly funded stadium, in regards to the letter, said, “It didn’t surprise me.” Anthony also said he will run for mayor as long as Goodman continues asking for public money to fund sports venues.
Councilman Bob Beers, who successfully sued his own city for the proposal of a question on the June election ballot, said the issue will still be on the ballot in June, and voters themselves will be asked if they want to spend public money on a stadium downtown.
Beers’ petition for the proposal fell short of the 8,000 required signatures, and only gathered 6,966. However, District Judge Jerry Wiese sided with the stadium opponents, and ruled the city miscalculated that only 2,000 signatures were required. “It’s done, let’s move on,” Goodman said recently.
On Wednesday, the council will vote on a master development agreement, which spans 77 pages, and outlines responsibilities and obligations for both developers and the city in regards to the stadium’s construction and operations. The agreement would have the stadium owned by Findlay Sports and Entertainment and Baltimore-based Cordish Cos. The land, valued between $38 million and $48 million, would be owned by the city, and would see them lease it out to developers at $1 per year over 99 years to the developers.
