CEO Craig Billings Emphasizes High-Value Visitation Benefits as League Explores Expansion
Wynn Resorts has voiced strong support for a potential NBA franchise coming to Las Vegas as part of the league’s upcoming expansion plans. Speaking during the company’s second-quarter earnings call, CEO Craig Billings stated that bringing a professional basketball team to the city would be highly beneficial to Wynn’s business, driving premium visitation akin to the economic impact generated by the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders.
Capitalizing on Las Vegas’ Sports Transformation
Over the past ten years, Las Vegas has successfully broadened its horizons beyond traditional boxing and MMA events, welcoming professional sports leagues including the NFL, NHL, MLB, WNBA, and PWHL, alongside an annual Formula 1 grand prix. Teams like the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces have already demonstrated immense local success, securing three championships over a four-year span.
Addressing investors regarding how an NBA team would impact Wynn, Wynn CEO Craig Billings Billings compared the game-count dynamics of different sports leagues:
“If you think about the various sports teams that are resident in Vegas, you can think about leagues that tend to have a very, very high game count… Those leagues tend to be more of locals teams. Then you can think about leagues, most notably the NFL, that have a very, very limited game count, and those games tend to occur on or around weekends. It is the latter category, the Raiders in particular, that are most beneficial, in my humble opinion, to the town because they drive visitation, and in particular to us, because they tend to drive premium visitation for a subset of the customers that go to those games.”
Although the NBA sits somewhere in between due to its regular-season schedule length, Billings confirmed that Wynn would love to see a franchise in the city and remain supportive of whoever ultimately owns the team. He added that Wynn expects to capture the premium tier of visitors affiliated with the league and opposing teams, mirroring their successful relationship with the Raiders.
Anticipated Expansion Timeline
The push for an NBA team in Las Vegas aligns with ongoing league discussions. ESPN reported in March that the NBA’s Board of Governors moved to evaluate expansion bids for Las Vegas and Seattle, with each team anticipated to fetch between $7 billion and $10 billion. Given that the city has successfully hosted the NBA Summer League on the University of Nevada campus since 2004, industry observers view the arrival of a permanent franchise as a matter of time rather than possibility.
