UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center Competes Against Las Vegas’ Arenas By Hosting Two Major, Contrasting Events In July, December
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
That ol’ warhorse of an arena in Las Vegas, the Thomas & Mack Center, is still chugging along thanks to two annual multi-day events that could not bring more different demographic groups to the UNLV campus.
This month, Thomas & Mack Center, along with its trusty sidekick, Cox Pavilion, are hosting the NBA Summer League for 11 days from July 7-17.
It’s a pro hoops extravaganza that brings all 30 NBA teams together to play 75 games, showcasing the league’s freshly-drafted rookies and young players.
Event organizers Warren LeGarie and Albert Hall have nurtured the Las Vegas summer league from a small annual event to a vital off-season professional basketball hub for scouts, agents, vendors and broadcast techies.
Meanwhile every December, the cowboys and horses of the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) arrive with the nation’s country lifestyle folks to take over Thomas & Mack and much of the Strip for 10 days.
While pro basketball is mostly urban, NFR is rural and brings trailers and trailers of livestock that literally hang out on the UNLV campus.
Thomas & Mack is the home of UNLV’s men’s basketball team, but these two contrasting annual events generate key revenues for a university that received $72.5 million in makeover improvements in 2015 for the arena that competes with T-Mobile Arena, MGM Grand Garden Arena and Mandala Bay’s Michelob Ultra Arena only a mile to the west on the Strip.
Want a quick snapshot about how different the NBA Summer League is from the NFR at Thomas & Mack Center? At the NFR in December when masks were still required to be worn indoors, hardly anyone attending National Finals Rodeo complied. Meanwhile, this week at NBA Summer League, there are fans and media wearing COVID-19 masks even though they’re “recommended” and not required.
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Tuesday was Day 6 for the July 7-17 Summer League, with attendance hitting 11,485.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver also gave his state-of-the-league talk, repeating his dislike for off-court drama like star players requesting trades and teams keeping players out of games for load management.
But with the league’s annual revenue hitting a record $10 billion — compared to the NHL’s $5.2 billion — Silver liked the league’s financial situation and said the NBA Summer League has had a nice impact on the local economy.
“I’m told we will have an economic impact on Las Vegas of roughly $125 million, that we will fill 70,000 hotel rooms over the course of the time we’re here and that we will sell approximately 135,000 tickets,” Silver was quoted in an NBA.com story.
Here’s Wednesday schedule:
