Light It Up: New Pro Soccer Team Is Named Las Vegas Lights
By ALAN SNEL
It’s official: Las Vegas’ new pro soccer team will be called, “Las Vegas Lights.”
Team owner Brett Lashbrook said he would announce the team’s name Tuesday and he literally didn’t wait a minute into Tuesday when the name was revealed on the Fremont Street Experience canopy live on Twitter and Facebook at 12:01 a.m.
A public vote decided the name as Lashbrook accepted hundreds of nominations and then whittled the list to a final six — Las Vegas Action, Club Vegas, Las Vegas Silver, Las Vegas Lights, Las Vegas FC and Viva Vegas.
Lashbrook shared the results with LVSportsBiz.com Tuesday morning. There were 10,371 votes and Las Vegas Lights edged out Las Vegas FC. Las Vegas Silver finished third, followed by Club Vegas, Viva Vegas and Las Vegas Action.
People also wanted “Las Vegas” to be the team’s city name — 65 percent over the 26 percent of “Vegas.” Nine percent didn’t care.
Forty percent wanted the team to refer to its club as “football club,” while another 32 percent preferred “soccer club.”
The Las Vegas team will play in the United Soccer League (USL), kind of a Triple A minor league soccer league. The club will play at Cashman Field, with Lashbrook’s marketing plan counting on convincing young downtown bar hoppers to take a chance on paying $20 to check out the soccer team in Cashman.
The LVSportsBiz.com takeaway: Owner Brett Lashbrook will have to appeal to non-traditional soccer fans to draw them to Cashman Field, so a mass appeal name such as the Las Vegas Lights will have more drawing power than a soccer-style name such as FC. For the record, LVSportsBiz.com picked Las Vegas Lights (and I told that to Lashbrook around 5 p.m. Monday when we bumped into each other in Summerlin.)
Contact LVSportsBiz.com founder/writer Alan Snel at asnel@LVSportsBiz.com
