Forget About NBA, MLS Or MLB, Next Pro Sports League To Have Team In Las Vegas Could Be National Lacrosse League
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
This time, it’s the National Lacrosse League that’s eyeing Las Vegas to host a new team.
The 13-team league that plays in arenas across the U.S. and Canada — with six teams owned by National Hockey League owners — would love to have its 15th or 16th team in Las Vegas by 2022 or 2023, National Lacrosse League Commissioner Nick Sakiewicz told LVSportsBiz.com at an NLL business summit at Mandalay Bay hotel-casino Wednesday.
“Las Vegas would marry up nicely with our sport. We’re like a rock concert combined with sports,” Sakiewicz said during a break. “That’s Vegas. It’s sensory overload.”
It also sounds like a Vegas Golden Knights game at T-Mobile Arena, which is why Sakiewicz has already spoken with Golden Knights majority owner Bill Foley and team President Kerry Bubolz about the Knights starting a team in the lacrosse league (Interestingly enough, Sakiewicz said Foley told him that he played lacrosse at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where Foley graduated in 1967.)
But those talks were two years ago, and the Golden Knights are not considered a contender to own an NLL team at this time, Sakiewicz said. “The timing was not right,” he said.
But the NLL commissioner, on the job since Jan. 2016, has no shortage of prospective owners for a Las Vegas pro lacrosse team. Sakiewicz said he has been talking with no less than five different ownership groups interested in starting a National Lacrosse League franchise in Las Vegas. Some of the five groups are local, while others are outside the market, he said.
“Music plays during our games, including some live music. It’s an electrifying atmosphere. That’s Vegas,” Sakiewicz said. “Our product matches the personality of this city.”
The 34-year-old National Lacrosse League has 13 teams looking to expand to 16. One team is being lined up for a big-time market in the western U.S. and the league is looking at adding two more teams to expand in the west, Sakiewicz said. A new pro lacrosse team costs in the $10 million range — twice the amount of the last team that was added to the NLL. “We’d love to see Vegas be one of the our next two teams,” he noted.
Five NHL team owners have six teams in the National Lacrosse League. And that makes sense because the economies of scale work well for the NHL owners to make money with their lacrosse teams because the lax clubs also use the same NHL arenas for their games. The NHL owners that own National Lacrosse League teams have their NLL clubs in Buffalo, Philadelphia, Colorado, Calgary, Vancouver and in Rochester, NY (western New York state is a hotbed for lacrosse.) Pegula Sports & Entertainment, which owns the NFL Buffalo Bills and NHL Buffalo Sabres, also owns the NLL Buffalo Bandits and Rochester Knighthawks.
Two NBA team owners also own NLL teams. Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai owns the NLL San Diego Seals, while Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, which owns the NBA Denver Nuggets and NHL Colorado Avalanche, owns the NLL Colorado Mammoth.
The professional lacrosse circuit has three divisions: The East with Philadelphia Wings joined by New England Black Wolves, Georgia Swarm and New York Riptide; the North with Buffalo and Rochester joined by Toronto Rock and Halifax Thunderbirds; and the West with Vancouver Warriors, Calgary Roughnecks, Colorado Mammoth, Saskatchewan Rush and San Diego Seals. The Colorado and San Diego teams are playing a one-off game at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas Saturday at 7 p.m.
Attendance varies from team to team. The league is averaging just more than 8,700 paid attendance per game, a little more than five percent over last year. It’s the third highest attended arena league behind the NBA and the NHL. The average ticket price in the National Lacrosse League is just over $25 — which is about what it costs for a WNBA Las Vegas Aces game and slightly more than UNLV basketball, Las Vegas Aviators and Las Vegas Lights games.
The NLL games have mass appeal because 73 percent of the fans attending NLL games have never played lacrosse, Sakiewicz said.
The game has the look and feel of an NHL contest. It’s five on five, with a goalie padded up with enough protective equipment that he looks like the Michelin Man. The indoor lacrosse games are also played in an arena with boards, just like hockey. But the arena lacrosse games have more scoring than hockey, with an NLL game accounting for 25-30 goals or so.
The National Lacrosse League already has official business ties to Las Vegas. Las Vegas-based MGM Resorts International is the official gaming and marketing partner of the NLL. Sakiewicz hopes MGM Resorts could have a betting platform ready for the National Lacrosse League playoffs in April. MGM Resorts is also the official gaming partner of the NBA, MLS, MLB and the NFL Raiders.
Sakiewicz said he is not allowed to discuss the prospective ownership groups looking at starting an NLL team in Las Vegas.
But LVSportsBiz.com figures that MGM Resorts is likely in the mix because the hotel/casino/entertainment company is heavy into sports, already owns the WNBA Las Vegas Aces and works hard at finding sports programming for its T-Mobile Arena, MGM Grand Garden Arena and Mandalay Bay Events Center.
LVSportsBiz.com figures Mandalay Bay Events Center, which received a $10 million rehab and renovation job, would be a potential home for a professional lacrosse team. It would be an ideal size to house the crowds attending NLL games.
A former pro soccer goaltender and co-founder of Major League Soccer’s 16th expansion franchise, the Philadelphia Union, Sakiewicz said the growth of the National Lacrosse League reminds him of the development of Major League Soccer. He has worked on two MLS stadium projects and was a former founding executive of MLS.
And he argued the sport’s timing is good for the league. Sakiewicz said many parents are choosing lacrosse over football for safety reasons. And Sakiewicz noted 15 percent of the NLL players are indigenous and the sport bills itself as North America’s oldest organized sport.
On the professional soccer front in Las Vegas, a group of investors is negotiating with the city of Las Vegas about a potential downtown soccer stadium as part of a redevelopment plan around the Cashman Center area. The problem for Las Vegas is MLS has already named Charlotte as its 32nd franchise.
MGM Resorts would love to have an NBA team be a tenant at T-Mobile Arena, but that’s likely at least three to five years away. And until someone in the private sector wants to build a $1 billion private baseball park with a roof, I don’t see Major League Baseball coming to Las Vegas any time soon. (Private sports stadiums don’t pencil out for profits — that’s why pro teams seek public money to help build stadiums; re: Las Vegas Raiders.)
So, Sakiewicz hopes Las Vegas could be a lacrosse town one day. There is no shortage of arenas that could host NLL games in Las Vegas.
“For many years there were many questions about Las Vegas and whether it was sustainable to have a team here because people thought Las Vegas was about transients and gamblers,” he said. “But the Golden Knights have proven Vegas is a large community hungry for sports.”
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