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Originally Posted by KootenayFlamesFan
Any athlete in any sport can bet on his own sport anywhere on the planet now. You don't need to be in Vegas to bet on sports.
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Visibility is a big issue here. How bad does it look having pictures and stories plastered everywhere of your players being in Vegas? Think of NHL teams recently. The Oilers wunderkids were just photographed partying in a Vegas club and it lead to questions and a mini-controvery. And then there is this little gem.
Imagine if that picture was taken in a casino, and more importantly, in a Sportsbook? What do you think is going to happen when you have a team located in the gambling center of North America and these young men, mostly uneducated and with type A personalities, have gobs of disposable income available to them and casinos five minutes away? You have to place an awful lot of trust in your players, which is pretty misguided.
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A natural flow for road trips for decades has been Vancouver/Calgary/Edmonton.
If that is natural, so would a Vegas/Anaheim/LA trip.
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Really? What natural travel corridors exist that make them even a natural geographic rival? What natural rivalries exist between Las Vegas and Anaheim or Los Angeles? There's never been other sports teams in Vegas, outside of minor league baseball. UNLV doesn't play in the same conference as most of the California teams. You might be able to leverage the conference play between San Jose State and UNLV, but that would be a stretch as the schools have very different athletic focuses and rarely compete against each other for births to big events that would foster that rivalry. Portland and Seattle? Plenty of natural rivalries.
I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this. I've laid out all the reasons why this is a bad idea and why is has failure written all over it. I've yet to see a good argument stated as to why this would work. I think it is a massive mistake to think that a city known for gambling and whores is going to bring anything positive to the image of the sport or the league. All sports leagues are selling an image as part of their product, and I think this is the wrong image to sell. The economics are bad, the idea of a relying on a transient fan base is bad, the location is bad, and the lack of ties to the game are bad. I guess if they have trouble drawing in fans they can always have card slappers out on the strip trying to drum up some business.
