VEGAS UNBOUND

                I’ve long thought that the appropriate United Nations body should declare Las Vegas a World Heritage Site, in recognition of its cultural importance. I’m not saying that its every brick should be preserved in the manner of the Taj Mahal or Machu Picchu; it’s a different sort of place deserving different treatment.  Anyway, the city’s citizens are changing the bricks almost daily, so that wouldn’t be possible.

            

                But Las Vegas stands out as a unique world shrine to hedonism, and not necessarily in a negative sense. Any trek down Las Vegas Boulevard reveals the gambling capitol’s international appeal both in the faces glimpsed and the languages overheard, and the daily fact that thousands of people from every part of the globe can mix there delightedly attests to its benign aura. Within its cocoon visitors can cast away ordinary concerns and commune with their inner selves, and if that self is saying “Let it roll!”, so be it.

                Until recently Las Vegas also has held a special place in the American sports world, a kind of domestic Switzerland where fans of every stripe could mix without rancor. Nearly everyone there—townie as well as tourist-- is from somewhere else, spreading allegiances broadly, and its neutral air was reinforced by its lack of local home teams. In a LV sports book fans of the Yankees and Red Sox, Steelers and Browns, Lakers and Warriors could chat amiably, united in the belief that when the chips are down their teams were bound to screw them.

                If you read the sports pages, though, you know that idyllic situation is in danger. Las Vegas got a National Hockey League team last year and a year or two from now will have a National Football League club. Indeed, that team—the Raiders—already has committed to the Nevada burg and is just playing out the string in its Oakland, CA, domicile, waiting for a new LV stadium to be completed for the 2019 or 2020 campaigns. That arrangement sets records for chutzpah, but that’s another issue.

                Through its summer league the National Basketball Association annually becomes a greater part of the Las Vegas fabric and nobody would be surprised if a team materializes there, and sooner rather than later. Major League Baseball, with its longer schedule and greater financial, demographic and geographical demands, presents a greater challenge, but is not out of the question.

                It’s all semi-amazing for a city that, in living memory, was a dusty desert town with nothing but a nearby military base or two to count as assets. In 1960 Las Vegas’s population was 64,000, and it had no suburbs to speak of. Now about 650,000 people live in the city proper and the population of its metropolitan area numbers about 2.2 million. It has the 28^th largest standard metro area in the U.S., bigger than that of Kansas City, Cincinnati, Cleveland and New Orleans, among other cities. It’s growing fast so it will be moving up on that ladder.

                Las Vegas has thrived on gambling and on its state’s relaxed divorce and sex laws, although, sidewalk card-snappers to the contrary notwithstanding, prostitution isn’t legal within its county limits. Air-conditioning and easy air transport also helped it grow, a lot. Civic boosters don’t like to talk about it but much of the gambling used to be crime-mob controlled, something that, I think, added to the city’s allure. And yes, there is a monument there to Ben “Bugsy” Siegel, an early gangster-casino operator. It’s on the property of the Flamingo Hotel, which he helped build.

                For a long time our major sports leagues held their noses when the subject of gambling arose, even while happily benefiting from the fan interest the practice generated. Now, with lotteries and Indian casinos everywhere, and a failed casino operator in the White House, the smell ain’t nearly so bad, and if any whiff remained it was dissipated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling that opened legal sports gambling to all 50 states. Soon, Las Vegas will look like Everytown, USA, or, rather, Everytown will look like Las Vegas. Does it matter which?

          

            Las Vegas’s ability to support a big-league franchise was underlined by the box-office success of the NHL Golden Knights, which filled 103% of its stadium capacity of about 18,000 in its first season and, even, outdrew the New York Rangers. The expansion team’s miraculous Stanley Cup-finals run surely helped, but most of those tickets were sold before the season began.

Hockey is a cold-weather niche sport, with no roots in the desert, so it stands to reason that if the Knights could pack ‘em in so could an NBA team, in a sport in which LV has a strong college history.  Full houses also seem assured for the Raiders, when they arrive; if small towns like State College, PA, and Clemson, SC, can fill big stadiums on game days, Las Vegas can, too.

Baseball requires a broader reach to prosper, and beyond its immediate environs there’s not much there there in middle-of-nowhere Las Vegas. This would be especially limiting in the matter of local TV and radio rights, a major source of baseball-team income; squeezed between Los Angeles on the east and Phoenix on the south, any LV club wouldn’t have much of an audience to offer to broadcasters.  Also, its hot desert climate would dictate a pricey indoor or retractable-roofed ballpark. Still, with its average of 100,000 visitors a day looking for evening entertainment, plus the locals, a team would have a good attendance base.

The Supreme Court ruling allowing other states to offer legal sports betting, ending Nevada’s virtual monopoly, is bound to cut into the state’s revenue from that source, making the development of other attractions necessary. More major-league sports would be one such, so look for Las Vegas to make big pushes for that. Partisan neutrality is no asset in such an effort, so bye-bye Switzerland, hello Phoenix-with-casinos, for better or worse.