Since its explosive urbanization in the early 1930s, Las Vegas hasn’t exactly been considered a sporting mecca; in fact, the concept of “sport” was largely tied to the phrase “sports betting.” But now, the city is changing.

Since 2017, Las Vegas, Nevada, has landed multiple sporting franchises and added a Strip-centered Formula 1 Grand Prix to its repertoire. But why?

From Sin City to sporting mecca: A Las Vegas story

Many historians point to 1905 as the year that Las Vegas was officially  “settled.” At that time, it was little more than a stopover on the railroad route between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles — but farmers began to migrate to the area in hopes of trying their luck somewhere new.

But Vegas really received a shot in the arm in 1931, when work started on what we now call the Hoover Dam. This massive dam over the Colorado River required workers, and young men from around the United States flocked to Las Vegas in droves, hoping to make a substantial paycheck.

Crowd a bunch of young men into a quiet little village, though, and you can prepare for chaos. In order to keep the new Vegas denizens entertained, theaters and casinos began to pop up around town — and many of them were built by the American Mafia, who sensed a critical business opportunity at hand.

Nevada state legislature legalized gambling at the local level in 1931, and the city began to take off as a notorious locale for wild parties and rambunctious men.

The city flourished — both in part thanks to local business owners and the mobsters that had taken over — and the hosting of big-name musicians and high-profile fights between boxers drew ever more visitors to this transient town.

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But a handful of prize fights and a selection of racing events (many of them located quite far from the Las Vegas Strip) does not a sporting town make. Rather, it became known for its entertainment, dining options, and gambling scene.

No one really considered Las Vegas a hub for sports. Formula 1’s Caesars Palace Grand Prix in the early 1980s was a notorious flop, and American motorsport wasn’t able to salvage the track design in the wake of F1’s departure because no one cared. In 2003, the NFL even barred Las Vegas from airing an advertisement during the Super Bowl — so heavy were the associations between Vegas and gambling.

But sports betting is now a culturally accepted pastime, and Las Vegas is now a sporting hub of America. What happened?

Let’s go back to the early 1990s. Las Vegas had been in the midst of a decades-long boom period — but in 1995, freshly elected mayor Oscar Goodman began to bring structure to that growth. While there were plenty of buildings and casinos available, Goodman instead wanted to reshape the city into a place to live, not just to visit.

The 1980s provided the rough outline of the modern-day Strip, but Goodman went step further. He built up hospitals and established civic and cultural institutions — things that offered a more sophisticated experience of the city than had been available in the past.

Goodman also wanted to inject life into the seemingly nonexistent sporting scene — but the negative associations with Vegas’ gambling foundations nipped that idea in the bud.

Speaking to CBS News, Goodman recalled a conversation with David Stern, who was then the National Basketball Association (NBA) Commissioner, who outright rejected the idea of bringing an NBA franchise to the city.

“He believed that Las Vegas, or any place that had live sports betting, should not have an NBA franchise there,” Goodman recalled of Stern.

But gambling, like many vices, has entered a rehabilitation period.

The world is currently undergoing a shift in how it perceives vices. Alcohol consumption has existed for centuries, but the early 1900s saw America outright ban the sale and consumption of alcohol over primarily moral concerns. Even after Prohibition laws were repealed, many U.S. subcultures attached a stigma to the act of drinking — but in 2024, alcohol consumption is so commonplace that it’s almost impossible to imagine it was once a criminal offense.

A similar cultural shift is happening with the use of marijuana as a recreational drug; a decade ago, smoking was a taboo, and one worthy of a jail sentence in many states. Now, cannabis has been legalized in 38 states for medical use and 24 for recreational use.

Gambling overall, but sports betting in particular, is currently undergoing this shift. In 2018, the US Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law that prohibited most states from allowing sports betting, and in the aftermath, 38 states legalized the act.

Now, sports betting is everywhere. NASCAR shares live odds during race broadcasts, while gambling advertisements and sponsorships are commonplace no matter what kind of program you’re watching.

Franchise sport arrived in Las Vegas just prior to the 2018 Supreme Court ruling. The National Hockey League (NHL) approved an expansion team for Vegas, the Golden Knights, in 2017.

The first Golden Knights game took place mere days after 60 people were killed during a mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival — and that game became an opportunity for the city to reckon with the tragedy and heal in its aftermath. Culturally, that was huge.

Carolyn Goodman — Oscar Goodman’s wife, who became Las Vegas mayor in 2011 — told CBS News that the Golden Knights “became our community. They helped everybody begin the process of learning to know they had to accept that that horrific problem happened, and that forever solidified how a sports team could be involved.”

Within moments, the Golden Knights had truly embraced the city of Las Vegas — and Las Vegas embraced its NHL franchise.

The NHL broke a barrier. Now, Vegas has an NFL franchise (the Raiders) and a Women’s NBA team (the Aces). There’s talk of the A’s, currently Oakland’s Major League Baseball team, moving to Vegas in the near future, too. It hosted 2024’s Super Bowl, and introduced a Formula 1 race right down the Las Vegas Strip. The city is actively responding to the sporting interest by constructing state-of-the-art stadiums.

Vegas is perfectly poised to host big-ticket sporting events. Its long history as a conference hub and its tourism haven means there are over 150,000 available hotel rooms in the city alone, and that there’s plenty to keep a person occupied before and after the event.

American franchise sports have embraced the city, but so has the international monolith that is Formula 1. With American owners Liberty Media at the helm, the sport has expanded into drastically new markets and has even gone so far as to adopt Las Vegas as its American home base.

Las Vegas has long been ready to host big sporting events and house franchise teams; after all, it has ample experience hosting concerts, festivals, and other big entertainment offerings. The biggest thing holding American teams from embracing Las Vegas in turn is the perception around sports betting, and Vegas’ perception as a hub of sin.

Take the ‘sin’ out of Sin City, though, and what you’re left with is a thriving metropolis well equipped to play host to sports fans from around the world — and the perplexing question as to why we hadn’t embraced Las Vegas sooner.

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