More than a decade after premiering a hit residency on the Strip, Boyz II Men are back with four shows at the Chelsea at the Cosmopolitan.
MGM Resorts has purchased the WNBA’s San Antonio Stars and will move the franchise to Las Vegas, the Review-Journal has learned.
The revelation ends days of speculation about who was behind the purchase, which was first reported by The Associated Press on Thursday.
“Las Vegas is the entertainment capital of the world,” WNBA president Lisa Borders said Tuesday morning. “We are a friends and family entertainment option. The WNBA is a women’s professional basketball league, but we are in the entertainment business. There is tremendous synergy between who we are and what the Las Vegas market offers, particularly in the hands of the MGM team. This is a match made in heaven between the MGM and the WNBA.”
The move, which has been in the works for several months, already has been approved by the WNBA and NBA Board of Governors.
MGM Resorts has already made a splash in the league by hiring former NBA star and New York Liberty head coach Bill Laimbeer as the Las Vegas team’s head coach and president of basketball operations.
The WNBA franchise will play its home games at Mandalay Bay Events Center, with the 2018 season expected to begin in May.
Lilian Tomovich, Chief Experience & Marketing Officer for MGM Resorts,said the venue was a better fit than MGM’s other options in the same vicinity, the Grand Garden Arena and T-Mobile Arena.
“Mandalay Bay is a smaller, more intimate arena with about 12,000 seats,” Tomovich said, adding the configuration has not yet been been finalized. “We feel it’s the absolute right size arena for the fans to have that intimate experience to come watch basketball.”
Tomovich believes it is a great time for the company to enter a hot sports market like Las Vegas and basektball made sense for MGM Resorts.
“We’re very optimistic about the success of this franchise,” she said. “Obviously MGM Resorts has always been focused on entertainment, both sports and live entertainment. We’ve had a very long, successful relationship with the NBA, starting with the summer league and of course, preseason exhibition games. Bringing a WNBA team here to Las Vegas just seemed like a natural evolution for us.”
It’s possible the casino giant’s purchase of a WNBA franchise could serve as a trial balloon for a possible future NBA team in Las Vegas.
MGM CEO Jim Murren told the Review-Journal in an October 2016 interview that he was actively pursuing an NBA team he could move to Las Vegas to join the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights as anchor tenants at T-Mobile Arena.
“We certainly value and cherish our longstanding relationship with the NBA,” Tomovich said. “We look forward to other opportunities down the road, but there’s nothing at the moment to discuss.”
The WNBA’s entrance in the market is the latest in a wave of professional sports announcements in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas won’t be getting a marquee WNBA franchise, though there are positive signs for the future.
The Stars have finished with the league’s worst record in each of the last three seasons, including an 8-26 mark this year. The last playoff appearance came in 2014 and the franchise hasn’t posted a winning record since the 2012 season.
Kelsey Plum was selected by San Antonio with the No. 1 pick in the 2017 draft and averaged 8.5 points per game in her first season with the Stars. The franchise has the best odds at securing the top pick in the 2018 draft in the draft lottery, which was postponed last month and has yet to be rescheduled.
San Antonio’s best season was 2008 when it was swept in the WNBA Finals. It was one of the league’s original franchises in 1997 when it was founded as the Utah Starzz.
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