LVSportsBiz.com’s Top Trends for the 2020s

By ALAN SNEL

LVSportsBiz.com

 

Las Vegas is a red-hot sports market with the Raiders stadium near the Strip set to come on line in July 2020, a new 10,000-seat ballpark opening in spring 2019 in Summerlin and T-Mobile Arena proving to be one of the country’s most attractive and versatile venues in the U.S.

 

Las Vegas is growing up as a major league sports town because the new sports venues are luring not only hard-core sports fans but also casual fans and people who don’t know sports and want to be seen where the cool kids play.

 

LVSportsBiz.com has identified these 11 trends for the 2020s in Las Vegas:

 

^     The NCAA once considered Las Vegas a gambling boogeyman of a city but it will hold several college basketball Final Fours and national football championship games at the Raiders stadium.

 

^      The Raiders stadium will host the NFL’s first marijuana lounge.

 

^      eSports will continue to grow and Las Vegas will supplant Los Angeles as the video game playing hub of North America.

 

^     Even with more states approving laws to regulate sports, sports betting will flourish in Las Vegas thanks to a bigger emphasis on in-game wagering.

 

^      NBA will arrive in 2023 and MGM Resorts International will prime the pump for pro hoops hosting an NBA All-Star game and staging in-season NBA-related events during the next five years.

 

^      Amateur sports will flourish with, college sports having their championship events and Olympic hopefuls participating in qualifier events.

 

^      All those niche sports will continue to come to Las Vegas, like rugby and curling to darts and ping pong.

 

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^     UNLV’s football team will have its only winning record of the decade in 2028.

 

^     The Rio will still be around and it will not be demolished to make room for a baseball stadium.

 

^      More artificial sports spectacle events will come to Las Vegas in the tradition of Evil Knievel, McGregor-Mayweather and Phil-Tiger like a Michael Jordan vs Kobe Bryant mega one-on-one match.

 

^      The Vegas Golden Knights will have a roller-coaster existence in the standings, but their games will continue to be the place to be in Las Vegas. Kind of like Cubs games at Wrigley — a party no matter whether the home team wins or loses.

 

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