PRPG:
Viva Las Vegas Hockey!

5 Times Las Vegas Almost Got a Professional Sports Team

June 14, 2016

The NHL has announced that it will expand with a team in Las Vegas, which will begin play in 2017. It’s the first time one of the “big 4” team sports leagues will set up shop in Sin City…but it’s not for a lack of trying.
Viva Las Vegas Hockey!

Las Vegas Jazz

Less than five years after moving from New Orleans, the Utah Jazz of the NBA played 11 “home” games at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas during the 1983-84 season. It was a stunt: to both inject interest into the team (which was failing financially due to poor performance and playing in what was at the time the NBA’s smallest city) and to gauge how well the team would do if it were to move to Las Vegas. Ultimately the Jazz stayed in Utah.

Las Vegas Expos

Facing bankruptcy in 2004, the Montreal Expos were absorbed by Major League Baseball. The league sought out new cities for the team to relocate, and according to commissioner Bud Selig, Las Vegas was at the top of the list. Ultimately, MLB went with Washington, D.C., because that city was willing to do what Las Vegas wouldn’t: build the team a stadium with public funding.

Las Vegas Marlins

Also in 2004, executives of baseball’s Florida Marlins met in Las Vegas with Mayor Oscar Goodman. It was little more than a bluff to get the team’s home base of Miami to build the team a new stadium. (Their new, publicly funded ballpark opened in Miami in 2012.)

Las Vegas SuperSonics

When the city of Seattle wouldn’t expand Key Arena in 2006, where it played its home games, Seattle SuperSonics owner Howard Schultz put the team on the market. He entertained offers from ownership groups in St. Louis, Kansas City, Anaheim, and Las Vegas before deciding on another city that also had no professional sports team: Oklahoma City.

Las Vegas Kings

In 2007, it looked certain that the Sacramento Kings would relocate to Las Vegas. Voters there had rejected public funding of a new arena, prompting the owners to consider their options. And those owners, the Maloof family, owned a resort in Las Vegas. After six years of hemming and hawing, the club was sold to a group that kept the team in Sacramento.