Las Vegas’ Exploding Sports and Stadium Scene Means Teams Face Logistical Business Challenges

By ALAN SNEL

LVSportsBiz.com

 

When you’re the secondary tenant in your sports stadium, it means the business staff behind the team has to be nimble, roll with the punches and be ready to move boxes and laptops during a weekend and hit the ground running on the following Monday.

 

Consider the downtown Las Vegas-based Lights FC soccer team, which was based in an old church on 3rd Street from Sept. 2017-May 2018, but had to move out after The D hotel-casino owner Derek Stevens bought the former church across the street from his Downtown Las Vegas Events Center.

 

The team’s 22 staffers then moved to Zappos’ shared workspace at the online retailer’s downtown headquarters at 400 Stewart Ave from June-Dec. 2018, working in the interim space at the Lights’ number one sponsor.

 

Then, the Lights’ sales, business and ticketing staffers moved again in December — this time, into a third home in the former Las Vegas 51s’ sales offices at Cashman Field.

 

Here at downtown Cashman, the Lights will move up a notch to being the stadium’s primary tenant when the former 51s/newly-rebranded Aviators officially start playing at their new $150 million baseball park in Downtown Summerlin in the western suburbs in April. (The Aviators’ owner, Howard Hughes Corporation, has still not given notice to Cashman Field’s landlord, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, that it is leaving. The LVCVA has said the tourism agency loses millions of dollars by managing the Cashman complex, but Howard Hughes Corp. has not given written notice of leaving.)

 

Aviators president Don Logan and the Triple A ballclub’s general manager, Chuck Johnson, are still based in offices at Cashman. The Aviators do have sales staff at the minor league team’s retail store in Downtown Summerlin. (The Aviators sales staff’s old space at Cashman is being used by the Lights’ staff.)

 

Logan joked that his office is his car somewhere on Route 95 between Cashman Field and the Summerlin.

 

Welcome to the expanding sports industry in Las Vegas, where the proliferation of teams and their new sports venues under construction poses a logistical challenge to run the businesses behind the teams.

 

Consider the Oakland Raiders, which have staff spread across two states — in California where the NFL team is possibly looking at playing its 2019 season at the San Francisco Giants’ downtown Oracle Park and in Southern Nevada, where the team is building a $1.8 billion stadium project near the Strip to open in 2020, launching a $75 million headquarters project in Henderson and running a sales center in the Town Center retail shopping area.

 

While the Raiders were training at the Napa Valley training complex in California last summer, the NFL team commanded a robust ticket sales crew that sold personal seat license and season ticket deals in Las Vegas. The Raiders have not announced where they will play in 2019, but social media reports indicate the team is trying to play at the San Francisco Giants’ downtown ballpark for the next NFL season. The Raiders did not want to move to Las Vegas until it was time to inaugurate their new publicly-subsidized 65,000-seat, domed stadium that could host a Super Bowl in 2025 at the earliest.

 

Even the Vegas Golden Knights began their business operations at owner Bill Foley’s Fidelity National Financial offices in a business center near the TPC Summerlin golf course in Summerlin before VGK business staffers moved to the team headquarters at City National Arena in September 2017.

 

Lights owner Brett Lashbrook said his 22 staffers are crammed into six rooms at Cashman like “sardines,” but he’s appreciative his staff is at the venue where the United Soccer League team plays its games. Besides, the Lights business staff can host visitors in Cashman’s roomy club level and have staff meetings in the locker room where there is also more space.

 

“We knew until we had Cashman Field, we would have to bounce around,” Lashbrook said. “In 2018 and 2019, if you have a cell phone and computers, it will be OK.”

 

In fact, the Lights’ biggest sponsor, Zappos, even painted the Cashman locker room in the soccer team’s colors because the Aviators ballclub is scheduled to play its next game at the new ballyard in Summerlin. A Zappos worker, an in-house company painter, did the locker room paint jobs, and the former baseball lounge has been converted into a soccer lounge.

 

 

 

The Lights’ partial move-in at the old baseball stadium means the soccer club has taken over the former 51s team store because the Aviators have their own team shop at Downtown Summerlin, which is owned by Aviators owner Howard Hughes Corporation. Here’s a look at the Lights store at Cashman, which hosted a Lights preseason game Saturday when the USL Lights beat the Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC, 5-1.

 

 

Even the former 51s manager office has been converted into Lights space, housing the soccer team’s director of operations, Justin Roper.

 

The launch of a professional sports franchise is akin to running a startup, which requires the Lights “to roll with the punches. That first year, we knew we’d have to be nimble,” Lashbrook said.

 

He then shook his cell phone and quipped, “Everything you need is right here.”

 

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