{"id":14899,"date":"2014-10-30T12:43:28","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T20:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=14899"},"modified":"2014-10-30T12:43:28","modified_gmt":"2014-10-30T20:43:28","slug":"nhl-maybe-nba-not-so-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/nhl-maybe-nba-not-so-much\/","title":{"rendered":"NHL maybe, NBA not so much"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Preliminary talks” could mean relatively nothing but when one of the principal parties is MGM Resorts International<\/strong>, you have to take them seriously<\/a> … especially when \"NHL\"<\/a>MGM is building an arena intended for major-league sports. Still, there don’t appear to be direct negotiations with an actual team but instead “a group interested in housing an NHL<\/strong> team.” Very different. Sports Business Daily<\/em> has looked at the economics of an NHL franchise in Sin City and concluded that they don’t pan out<\/a>. Then there’s the hostility of the league itself<\/a>. Another wrinkle is that MGM partner AEG<\/strong> owns the Los Angeles Kings<\/strong>. The company would probably welcome having another market in which to show off the Kings, but how does it feel about building an arena whose primary tenant would be a rival franchise?<\/p>\n

It still seems far more plausible than the NBA<\/strong>-hosting aspirations of Jackie Robinson<\/strong> and his ‘failsino,’ $1.4 billion All-Net Arena<\/strong> on the North Strip. In lieu of hard cash, \"All_Net_Arena\"<\/a>Robinson’s cronies have a platter of platitudes like, “Build it and the NBA will come.” Compared to the $690 million Robinson plans to spend on the arena alone, MGM’s $375 million project looks like a bargain. Trading off permanent green cards for cash, Robinson hopes to raise $300 million through the controversial EB-5 visa program. Among other hurdles Robinson has to clear is actually purchasing the old Wet ‘n Wild<\/strong> site from bumbling owner Archon Corp.<\/strong>, which already \u00a0has one failed arena project on its resume.<\/p>\n

You have to wonder about the level of realism we’re dealing with here when “Robinson\u2019s financial adviser, Owen Jackson<\/strong>, said Robinson could have started building the arena years ago” when the Vegas economy was still recessionary. Uh-huh. Also, the project is an incoherent jumble of elements: a “300,000-square-foot retail and restaurant plaza, a movie theater and a high-end grocery such as Whole Foods<\/strong> or Sprouts<\/strong>,”* plus a 44-story hotel tower. It all sounds exciting on paper<\/a> but one would believe it more if the project were more coherent and the developer had a track record of buildingon this mammoth scale.<\/p>\n

(* — Trust me, unless timeshare occupants have a gluttonous appetite for health food, this isn’t a stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard<\/strong> that would support a major grocery store.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, since the whole project is premised on the mere hope that the NBA will grace Las Vegas<\/strong> with an NBA team, all deus ex machina<\/em>-like (although it’s the league most amenable to sports betting), I’ll put my money on MGM’s NHL talks, where there’s actual discussion\u00a0taking place. It may be a long shot but not the Hail Mary pass that Robinson is lobbing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Preliminary talks” could mean relatively nothing but when one of the principal parties is MGM Resorts International, you have to take them seriously … especially when MGM is building an arena intended for major-league sports. Still, there don’t appear to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[46,4,11,74,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14899"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14902,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14899\/revisions\/14902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}