Shaquille O’Neal can see an NBA team one day suiting up in Las Vegas and thinks Sin City residents would be quick to embrace such a move.
Appearing at an Azure Luxury Pool celebrity-filled event, O’Neal recently told reporters “from a Vegas partygoer standpoint, it’s another great thing to do in Vegas. There’s a lot of people here, so I think it would be safe to say that 40 percent of the Vegas residents would come, 30 percent of the fans would come, and marketing dollars and marketing tickets would go to the other 30 percent to fill up the arena.”
He later added “so if you do get a team, you’re going to have to get three or four marketing experts so people can say, ‘There’s a day party with Shaq today, but they’re playing the Lakers, so I’m going to the game.’ ”
In O’Neal’s mind, the only drawback seems getting people to let go of old habits and be willing to seek new adventures.
“From the NBA business side, you don’t want to support gambling on sports” he said. “That’s what most people are afraid of. It happens in Vegas because it’s legal in Vegas, but we don’t want people doing that so much.
“The other thing on the NBA side is this is such a touristy town,” he added. “All the Vegas people don’t live on the Strip; they live out. So once you have three or four marquee names who can support an arena, who can get people to not want to gamble, not do day parties, not go here and go to the game I think would be beneficial to any owner who owns a team.”
© 2023 Sportsworldnews.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
