LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — With new pro teams and major events coming to Las Vegas each year, Sin City has quickly been reimagined into a sports city.
You didn't need to look far at Thursday morning's Preview Las Vegas event to see sports teams and sports businesses that weren't in town years ago.
The F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix and Las Vegas A's had booths set up at the Las Vegas Convention Center, while the Raiders also showed how the team is positively impacting the community.
While the F1 Grand Prix Plaza development and upcoming construction of the Athletics' new ballpark were promoted, attendees also got their first taste of Wrestlemania returning to Las Vegas.
'When you look back 10 years, to think we'd be where we're at today, you wouldn't think we'd be where we're at today," LVCVA president Steve Hill said. "Nobody would have expected that the Golden Knights would have been such a success, that we'd have Allegiant Stadium and the Raiders here and everything we're able to have. We got the A's coming now. Wrestlemania wouldn't be here today. We could say that about so many things."
With major sporting events like the F1 Grand Prix, NBA Cup, and now Wrestlemania joining long-standing local events like NFR is combining with southern Nevada's pro teams to help bolster the local economy.
"What about Formula 1 and the reach it has globally," said speaker Jeremy Aguero, principal analyst with Applied Analysis. "What about the Summer League all paving the way to have the in-season tournament? What about the fact that we hosted the Super Bowl and that was the most profitable Super Bowl in the history of the NFL?"
"Some of these events," Aguero continued. "If we think about how transformational it has been for our community, there's just value there that we continue to build on."
Wrestlemania is the new event on the block and headlined the Las Vegas Preview event named 'Preview Mania.'
Vegas hosts the Super Bowl of wrestling for the second time ever and the first time since 1993. Wrestlemania 41 will bring a week of wrestling festivities to the Strip, climaxing on April 19 and 20 at Allegiant Stadium.
LVCVA president Steve Hill sat down with Las Vegas native WWE president Nick Khan for the headlining speaker panel of this year's Preview Las Vegas.
"We sold more tickets in the first 72 hours of this event in terms of ticket revenue than in the history of WWE for any event, and that went on sale 3 months ago," Khan said. "So people are excited about it. We have 3 months left to go. So you are going to see a multi-cultural, multi-generational event take place where everybody leaves happy."
"I don't think people really understand the juggernaut that (Wrestlemania) is," Aguero said. "If you think about what that looks like and how it adds to what we're doing today and how it adds to the other events and how it adds to other things we're going to do, there's no place like Las Vegas."
