By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
The Las Vegas Golden Knights finished their season a month ago, the Las Vegas Raiders don’t arrive until 2020 and Las Vegas Motor Speedway’s second NASCAR weekend isn’t until September.
But even with those big players on the sidelines, Saturday night was a monster sports industry night in Las Vegas, which hosted NBA Summer League Day 2 at Thomas & Mack Center and Cox Pavilion, UFC 226 at T-Mobile Arena featuring a Daniel Cormier win over Stipe Miocic, a WNBA Las Vegas Aces’ win over the Connecticut Sun at Mandalay Bay Events Center and the Las Vegas Light FC soccer team defeating Saint Louis FC at Cashman Field.
UFC fight events are part of Las Vegas sports’ fabric and the NBA Summer League has been in Las Vegas for more than a decade. But the inaugural Aces and Lights are experiencing their first Sin City summers and raised the issue about whether this market can sustain these sports products over the long haul and whether so many sports events on one night could cannibalize each other’s fans because of a finite disposable income level in a market of 2.2 million residents even with so many sports tourists.
For example, the WNBA Aces crowd looked like there were about 2,000 or so fans in Mandalay Bay Events Center and an MGM Resorts International executive who oversees the Aces’ business operations acknowledged it was one of the season’s smaller crowds.
“The Lakers playing hurt our walkup,” MGM Resorts’ Lance Evans told LVSportsBiz.com during the Aces game Saturday night.
The Aces game started at 7:30 p.m., while the Los Angeles Lakers played the Philadelphia 76ers at 8:30 p.m. at the NBA Summer League two miles away at Thomas & Mack Center..
The NBA Summer League has stormed into Las Vegas with all 30 teams in the association playing 82 games from July 6-17 at the UNLV campus. Day 1 Friday drew 15,122, while Day 2 Saturday included 12,000 tickets scanned by 3 p.m. en route to sellout attendance of 17,500.
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UFC 226 was also a strong performer with sellout attendance of nearly 17,500 and a gate of nearly $5.7 million at T-Mobile Arena. Highlights included Cormier calling out Brock Lesnar after Cormier’s win with Lesnar making a cameo in the cage. And watching the fight event were Golden Knights players Marc-Andre Fleury and Deryk Engelland.
Meanwhile in downtown, the Lights scored a 1-0 win over Saint Louis FC in the United Soccer League. Attendance there was 6,651. It was the Aces’ third straight home win.
At the center of Saturday night’s sports extravaganza in Las Vegas was MGM Resorts International, which owns the WNBA Aces and a share of T-Mobile Arena (where UFC is a tenant along with the Golden Knights), while also buying the title sponsorship rights to the NBA Summer League.
So, while the summer league may have cut into the Aces’ attendance Saturday, MGM Resorts does use the NBA event as an activation tool to drive traffic to Aces games.
Evans said the summer league title sponsorship was a natural fit for MGM Resorts International because o MGM Resorts’ commitment to basketball. MGM Resorts’ first year with the summer league sponsorship was 2017.
“It’s MGM aligning with sports as a whole,” Evans said.
Evans did say the Aces’ season ticket holders made a strong appearance Saturday and he’s hoping activation at the NBA Summer League will drive fans to watch the Aces play the Los Angeles Sparks at Mandalay Bay Events Center July 15.
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