Las Vegas’ New WNBA Team Prepares To Deal Aces For Fans This Month

By ALAN SNEL

LVSportsBiz.com

 

As the Vegas Golden Knights worm their way into your heart — and your wallet/purse — there’s a new professional sports team getting ready to launch amid this giant hockey town shadow that has eclipsed Las Vegas.

 

Workers were assembling a spanking new center-hung Jumbotron scoreboard for the newly-renovated Mandalay Bay Events Center, while videos were being filmed of the new Las Vegas team’s players.

 

It’s not necessarily a new WNBA team, per se.

 

But it is a very new host city for the old San Antonio Stars’ women’s basketball team that now goes by name of Las Vegas Aces.

 

The Aces’ owners, MGM Resorts International, held a media day Thursday and LVSportsBiz.com sat down with Lance Evans, the MGM Resorts executive overseeing the business operations and launch of the casino-hotel company’s new sports property.

 

“Thank goodness the team is owned by this company,” Evans said.

 

He, of course, was referring to the fact that few sports ownership groups could buy a franchise, re-brand the property and then hold a team name ceremony event a mere six months before the team’s first preseason game Sunday.

 

The Aces start the regular season at Connecticut May 20 and have another away game at Washington May 22, before the team makes its home debut in Las Vegas with a game against Seattle May 27 5 p.m.

 

MGM Resorts unveiled the new Aces name and brand Dec. 11, began selling tickets Feb. 6 and are preparing to have the WNBA team play the Chinese national squad Sunday 5 p.m. at Mandalay Bay Events Center.

 

Evans has a dedicated Aces staff of 15 employees or so working on sponsor and ticket sales, PR and social media. But MGM Resorts knows all about branding and entertainment, so Evans had the branding strategy infrastructure to fall back on to launch the Aces in a market the company has demographically profiled for years. MGM Resorts, for example, just re-branded its Monte Carlo property on the Strip near T-Mobile Arena into Park MGM.

 

MGM Resorts also has deep enough pockets to invest $10 million in making over and modernizing Mandalay Bay Events Center into a pro women’s basketball entertainment hub, complete with new seats for 7,000-7,500 fans, the new scoreboard that was being installed Thursday and a new sound system.

 

LVSportsBiz.com asked Evans how many season ticket buyers have purchased season deals to watch the regular season’s 17-game home schedule. He declined to answer, except to say the team is selling more season ticket deals every day than other WNBA teams (which is to be expected when you start from zero only a few months ago).

 

By comparision, the Las Vegas Lights FC soccer team had a little more than 3,000 season ticket holders a month or so ago at 10,000-seat Cashman Field, according to Lights owner Brett Lashbrook. (The  Vegas Golden Knights have 14,000 season ticket equivalents — but that’s another first-year sports franchise on a different scale).

 

If LVSportsBiz.com had to estimate, we’d target Aces season ticket sales in the 2,000-3,000 range. MGM Resorts is a publicly traded company, so hopefully the company will release that Aces season ticket sales information in earnings reports.

 

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The Aces are shooting to make their game admissions affordable, so game tickets start at $15 each — which is what the Lights soccer game ticket sells for and is a few bucks more than a 51s game ticket. (Though, you can expect the tickets for the minor league baseball team that is receiving a new name soon to go up when the club moves to a new $150 million ballpark in Summerlin next year.)

 

The most expensive Aces ticket will be $215 each for a floor seat at a table at courtside. It’s one of the Aces’ unique seating options — tables right next to the court so that fans can hang out with friends and family on the event floor.

 

The cheapest Aces season ticket deal will be $289, which, divided by 17 home games, comes out to $17 a game.

 

“We want this to be a value-oriented product,” Evans said.

 

Fans will also have to pay for parking at Mandalay Bay, where it’s $9 from one to two hours and $12 from two to four hours. Here’s your Mandalay Bay parking info.

 

Evans declined to describe the specific in-game entertainment features. But he said he talked with Golden Knights staff from Jonny Greco, the VGK’s VP for events & entertainment, to Jake Wagner, the Golden Knights’ in-game music producer, and Evans said Aces games promise to be entertaining events.

 

“We have to put our own spin on it,” Evans said of the game entertainment features. “We’ve learned what works. We have talked with Jonny and Jake.”

 

Keep in mind that MGM Resorts also owns a share of T-Mobile Arena, so the 77,000-worker company has a good handle on the latest in arena entertainment features from video and audio to creating innovative seating options.

 

The Aces will also have an entertainment emcee, PA announcer and dance squad.

 

Most of the games will be Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

 

And one advantage the Aces have over the Lights and 51s at Cashman Field is that their games are played indoors, which will provide a cool refuge from Las Vegas’ infamous 100-degree-plus summers. The Aces play one home game in May, seven in June, four in July and five home games in August.

 

“Any indoor activity in the summer is a good thing if you have air conditioning,” Evans said. “And we have that.”

 

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