Heavy Betting

By David Hill

Professional sports franchises were wary of Las Vegas for a long time, but now they’re setting aside their scruples. David Hill tells the story of how Sin City bet on the big leagues.

IN THE PRE-DAWN HOURS one Monday morning following the 2007 NBA All-Star Game, a fight broke out at Minxx Gentleman’s Club & Lounge on Wynn Road in Las Vegas. A patron had been throwing cash all over the club from a garbage bag full of bills. A brawl ensued, and the man with the bag of money was tossed from the club by two men, a bouncer and club manager Tommy Urbanski. Outside of the club, shots rang out. Hit four times, Urbanski survived but was paralyzed from the waist down.

A fight in a Vegas strip club isn’t usually front-page news, but the man with the bag was the NFL player Adam “Pacman” Jones—and the alleged shooter, accused of doing the bidding of Jones, was eventually sentenced to up to ten years in prison. The shooting at Minxx was the culmination of a weekend of chaos across the city; the Las Vegas Sun reported that “403 people were arrested from Thursday to Monday night, more than half in relation to prostitution.”

It was meant to be something of an experiment: the first time the All-Star Game had ever been held in a city that didn’t have an NBA franchise. To many, the weekend was seen as an audition for Las Vegas, where the mayor, Oscar Goodman, had made no secret of how eager he was to woo a professional sports franchise to the growing city. Goodman worked hard to develop personal relationships with many of the commissioners of the major sports leagues. His dogged pursuit of the NBA’s David Stern led to Stern telling Goodman that Vegas would only have an NBA team “over my dead body.” (“That can be arranged,” Goodman jokingly replied.) But Goodman didn’t give up, and the All-Star Game was his first breakthrough.

“If the weekend had been an audition, Las Vegas wasn’t going to book the part.”

Las Vegas had long coveted pro sports, but no league wanted to be associated with Sin City, or at least with one sin in particular: gambling on sports. Prior to the 2007 All-Star Game, all attempts to bring a team to Vegas had come up short. That event signaled a thawing of the icy attitudes held by the sports-industrial complex toward the city. But by the time the sun came up on Monday morning, Mayor Goodman was receiving calls from casino owners and league officials. If the weekend had been an audition, Las Vegas wasn’t going to book the part.

It was a setback for Goodman, a former mob lawyer who famously played himself in the movie Casino. By 1999, the year he was elected, the city had undergone a stunning makeover. Las Vegas had long had a reputation as a seedy place, visited largely by gambling junketeers and men looking to cheat on their wives. The 1990s saw a dramatic shift in the focus of the casino business from gambling toward conventions and family tourism. Palaces of swank and excess were replaced by pirate ships, roller coasters, and medieval castles. Instead of blackjack and free booze, fine dining and world class entertainment became the draw. By the time Goodman was elected mayor, Las Vegas had eclipsed Chicago as the top convention destination in America, less than half of casino revenue came from gambling, and the city was experiencing a construction boom of mega resorts that employed tens of thousands, with at least five thousand people moving to Las Vegas every month.

Goodman was elected on a platform that highlighted three major policy goals: develop a cultural centerpiece for the city, upgrade the community’s medical facilities, and land a major-league sports franchise. He pulled off the first two, adding a number of museums and performing arts centers during his tenure, as well as playing a role in establishing the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

But big-league sports? That proved more challenging.

Continue reading “Heavy Betting,” an essay by David Hill, on our site.

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