By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
The new sports facilities in the Las Vegas area just keep on coming.
This time, it’s Clark County, which is building a $16 million baseball complex with four full-sized 90-foot baseball diamonds on 25 acres next to Mountains Edge Regional Park.
The new baseball center will be called Desert Diamonds Baseball Complex and will include one NCAA-level baseball field that can host college baseball games. High school teams can use the baseball complex for local, regional and state playoff games.
The county staged a groundbreaking Wednesday for the fourplex, less than a week after the Triple A Las Vegas 51s broke ground on a $150 million 10,000-seat ballpark in Summerlin.
Las Vegas has always been a home for baseball, with past National League MVPs Bryce Harper and Kris Bryant coming from the Vegas area.
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The first of four college basketball tournaments has started in Las Vegas this week with the West Coast Conference and its perennial powers of Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s visiting the Orleans Arena. It’s the 10th year of the West Coast schools visiting Las Vegas for their conference tourney.
The WAC, Mountain West and Pac-12 conferences are staging their tournaments in Las Vegas after the West Coast Conference men’s and women’s teams leave Sin City next week.
Michael Mack of Las Vegas Events, the LVCVA’s events arm, broke down the public payments to the tourneys. Las Vegas Events has partnerships with West Coast, Mountain West and Pac-12. LVE does not have a partnership with the WAC.
The Las Vegas Events contracts with West Coast, MW and Pac-12 conferences all extend through 2019 and the LVE payments are $300,000 annually for West Coast Conference, $500,000 per year for Mountain West, and $500,000 annually for Pac-12. Mack said that according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), the WCC, MW and Pac-12 tourneys had a direct combined economic impact of $23.1 million in 2017.
LVSportsBiz.com chatted Thursday afternoon with West Coast Conference interim Commissioner Connie Hurlbut, who served as the WAC deputy commissioner from 2009-17 before stepping into her West Coast interim commish role at the start of last year’s WCC tournament at The Orleans.
“It’s a nice little college basketball community,” Hurlbut said of this time of year in Las Vegas when four conferences come to Sin City to stage their tournaments.
“It’s a springboard into March Madness,” she said. (The first four days of March Madness are a roundball extravaganza for Las Vegas sports books as thousands of college basketball fans from around the nation spill into Sin City to party and gamble at the start of the national college basketball tourney.)
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The West Coast Conference will be in the last year of its contract with Las Vegas Events in 2019, but LVSportsBiz.com expects the WCC to continue its tourney relationship with Las Vegas when the contract ends. The Orleans Arena is a comfortable and logistically-convenient venue and fans from all the WCC universities enjoy coming to Las Vegas to watch their schools vie for March Madness spots in the men’s and women’s national college basketball tournaments.
“Las Vegas meets the needs of our institutions and our fans. We’re happy with Las Vegas,” Hurlbut said. The WCC is in the process of picking candidates for its full-time commissioner job, and Hurlbut noted with a smile that she “still might be interested” in the full-time post.
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Las Vegas’ old and new sports properties are in action this weekend.
The expansion Golden Knights play Friday night (they don’t seem so new anymore), while established Las Vegas sports properties UFC and Las Vegas Motor Speedway stage major events with UFC 222 at T-Mobile Arena Saturday and the Speedway hosting a NASCAR tripleheader Friday to Sunday. And don’t forget, the USA Sevens Rugby is here, too, this weekend at Sam Boyd Stadium.
Even South Point is hosting a big event — the bull riders are back in action in Las Vegas Saturday when the Tuff Hedeman Bull Riding Tour (THBRT) hits the South Point and Equestrian Center.
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