Within the span of just a couple of years, we are going to get an NHL team, a USL team, and an NFL team. That's a ton of new sports coming to the city. And Las Vegas hasn't exactly been a sports town historically. We've had a minor league baseball and minor league hockey team (each of which have gone through name changes/ownership changes). And of course there is the UNLV football team, which hasn't exactly set any records for success either on the field or in its support. The UNLV basketball team has probably been the most well-supported team in the city, and again, aside from a few glory years, they generally land closer to "decent" than "great" on the success spectrum.
So I am probably not the only one that finds it a little odd that all of a sudden three professional teams have decided to jump into the market.
Not that I'm complaining, of course. But it does beg the question of how well the teams are going to do. Specifically, one wonders about the Lights, since they will definitely be the smallest addition, and won't have near as much hype as the Golden Knights, let alone the Raiders.
But hey, as a USL team, the Lights won't have to draw the same crowds as either of the other two new arrivals. So what will the Lights have to do to really be a success in the USL (in off-the-pitch terms)?
Well, at the lower-league level, the main thing the team has to get right is getting people in the door. Unlike in the top tier of sports, where the TV money drives the business, lower league teams rely on tickets to pay the bills. So let's see what the Lights' competitors are going to be doing on the attendance front. Here are the attendance numbers for 2017 for the USL:
| Team | Average |
| FC Cincinnati | 21,199 |
| Sacramento Republic FC | 11,575 |
| Louisville City FC | 8,654 |
| San Antonio FC | 7,207 |
| Rio Grande Valley FC | 6,989 |
| Phoenix Rising FC | 6,122 |
| Tampa Bay Rowdies | 5,888 |
| Reno 1868 FC | 5,443 |
| Ottawa Fury FC | 5,415 |
| Richmond Kickers | 4,537 |
| Saint Louis FC | 4,494 |
| OKC Energy FC | 4,257 |
| Tulsa Roughnecks | 4,037 |
| Col Springs Switchbacks FC | 3,379 |
| Charleston Battery | 3,100 |
| Bethlehem Steel FC | 3,064 |
| Pittsburgh Riverhounds | 2,592 |
| Portland Timbers 2 | 2,568 |
| Orange County SC | 2,451 |
| Harrisburg City Islanders | 2,431 |
| Real Monarchs SLC | 2,211 |
| Rochester Rhinos | 2,181 |
| Charlotte Independence | 1,600 |
| Orlando City B | 1,186 |
| LA Galaxy II | 1,174 |
| Toronto FC II | 1,148 |
| Seattle Sounders FC 2 | 1,095 |
| Swope Park Rangers | 1,050 |
| Vancouver Whitecaps FC II | 896 |
| New York Red Bulls II | 575 |
WEEKLY AVERAGE 4,284 |
There is immediately a pretty obvious pattern here - the "II" teams don't have as much attendance as the others. Which makes sense, since those teams don't have to make a go of it on their own. There value is to be a development team of the major MLS franchise, so thy are subsidized by the MLS team.
So for the standalone USL teams, the weekly average attendance is more like 5,678. The median is about 4,500 (10 teams fall below 4,500; 10 teams get attendances above 4,500).
So let's say that if we want the Lights to be at least average in the league, we want to be shooting for at least 4,500 people to show up to each game.
Is that possible in Las Vegas?
The Lights will be playing at Cashman Field, which, with a capacity of over 9,000, clearly has enough room to allow crowds that would push the Lights into the upper echelon of the league, attendance-wise. But will that many people come?
According to the internet, our resident minor league hockey team draws about 4,500 fans per game (they play in the Orleans Arena, which is a similarly sized venue to Cashman). And the current residents of Cashman field, the 51s, do a little-bit-but-not-much better, averaging around 5,000 fans per game this last season.
So, if the soccer team can at least match the hockey team in terms of historical turnout, they should be able to at least hang with the competition in the USL. If the Lights can leverage a few things in their favor - such as riding the crest of the World Cup excitement in 2018; maybe bringing some latin flavor to the team to connect with that large population in the city; tapping into the sections of Las Vegas that are already soccer-mad; keeping ticket prices low enough to attract more people, etc. - then it is conceivable that we could do even better than the hockey and baseball minor league teams.
Fingers crossed that the team is smart about building its fan base his upcoming year.
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