Wayne Gretzky, Steve Nash Invest in Joe Tsai’s Vegas NLL Team
Two of Canada’s most famous athletes are investing alongside billionaire Joe Tsai in the National Lacrosse League’s new Las Vegas franchise.
Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky and basketball Hall of Famer Steve Nash, who currently coaches the Tsai-owned Brooklyn Nets, are both co-owners of the new indoor lacrosse team. They’ll be joined by golfer Dustin Johnson, who is Gretzky’s son-in-law.
The team, which doesn’t yet have a name, will debut next year and play its home games at MGM’s Michelob Ultra Arena, a 12,000-seat venue located inside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Mark Fine, head of marketing at the American Dream mall in New Jersey, will be its first CEO. A formal announcement of the ownership group and home venue will take place this afternoon in Las Vegas.
“Even though the team won’t start playing until late 2022, we want to involve the folks in Las Vegas from the very start as far as how we launch and grow our franchise, including in the selection of our team name,” the ownership group said in a statement. “On the business side and across our franchise generally, we will also be forward-thinking and innovative, embracing best practices in analytics and technology across everything we do—and all while staying true to the fast-paced and exciting nature of both box lacrosse and the city of Las Vegas.”
Tsai is co-founder of ecommerce giant Alibaba and chairman of BSE Global (parent of the Nets, their development team and their arena.) He reached an agreement to bring an NLL team to Las Vegas last month. Though financial terms weren’t released, Tsai told Sportico at the time that the all-in cost, including the expansion fee and operational runway, will be in line with the recent price for the Saskatchewan Rush. That club, according to people familiar with the matter, sold for more than $10 million.
The Vegas franchise is the latest lacrosse asset for Tsai, who played at Yale in the mid-1980s. He is an investor in the Premier Lacrosse League, the sport’s main outdoor circuit, and also owns the NLL franchise in San Diego.
Long considered one of the country’s fastest-growing sports, lacrosse core participation jumped 16% in the five years from 2015 to 2019, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. That growth is fueled by the spread of the sport—at its youth, high school and collegiate levels—from its elite East Coast roots to new parts of the country, particularly out West.
That’s been reflected in the composition of the NLL, which had nine teams in 2017-18 and will soon be at 15 following the recent addition of teams in San Diego, Dallas/Fort Worth and now Las Vegas. The expansion has been modeled off the quick growth of MLS, NLL commissioner Nick Sakiewicz (a former MLS team exec) wrote in a Sportico op-ed earlier this year.
The franchise is also the latest in Las Vegas’s quick transition into a pro sports city. Long considered off-limits because of its proximity to gambling, Las Vegas added an NHL team in 2017, and welcomed the NFL’s Raiders in 2020. It is also a potential site for MLS expansion and MLB relocation.
Nash, who was hired as the Nets coach in 2020, is also a minority investor in the MLS’s Vancouver Whitecaps and Spanish soccer team RCD Mallorca.
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