Who Are The Las Vegas Lights, And Why Should We Be Paying Attention To Everything They Do?
“Bright light city gonna set my soul, gonna set my soul on fire. Got whole of money that’s ready to burn, so get those stakes up higher.” The opening lines from perhaps the most iconic song or piece of media related to a city in the world. For many years, the city of Las Vegas has been synonymous with gambling, nightlife and being one of the major ‘resort cities’ in the United States, if not the entire world. But what has always been missing from the bright lights of the Las Vegas has been sporting teams that people can get behind.
Unlike cities like New York and Los Angeles, Vegas hasn’t exactly been blessed with sporting teams or anything of the sport. New York and Los Angeles have two MLS teams, two NFL teams, two MLB teams and two NBA teams, whereas Vegas only has the Golden Knights in the NHL as their only professional outfit. Despite both Miami Marlins owner Jefferey Loria and Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban saying that Las Vegas would be a potential ‘gold mine’ for a sports team, it doesn’t seem to fill many other owners with the same confidence.
That being said, if you take a look behind the huge hotels and casinos you will find one minor league outfit that is making quite a big impression on the soccer globe with how they’ve promoted themselves, despite only being founded in August 2017. They may only be semi-professional, but this club is making people stand up and take notice of what they’re doing.
The Las Vegas Lights has become quite a name on social media in the past few months or so as they prepared for their inaugural United Soccer League campaign. The USL is essentially the second tier of soccer in America but obviously without the promotion and relegation side of things. The name of the club was chose online from a list of five including such names as Las Vegas Silver, Club Vegas, Las Vegas Action, Las Vegas FC and Viva Vegas, obviously referencing the iconic Elvis Presley song.
In fact, the plan had been to bring an MLS franchise to Vegas and while that had been the plan for many years, it didn’t work out the way it did for other franchises. The stigma of Vegas being a ‘betting town’ has been a reason as to why it’s taken so long for professional sports teams to locate their, but now seems to be a change, with the Lights one of those at the forefront.
If you go onto the Lights website, you will see the first question on the FAQ’s is “Why do you think Las Vegas is an ideal market for a pro soccer team?”and to be quite honest it’s a rather reasonable question. It’s a town of entertainment, how can anyone have a true connection to a sports team there? Look at the Golden Knights, it can happen if it’s done properly.
They way this club has started to make a name for itself is quite unique with a rather recognisable logo, extraordinary kits that grabbed the attention of many when they were unveiled and (perhaps my favourite part) their squad photo, which featured two llamas called Dottie and Dolly, a giant four-leaf-clover in front of the Neon Museum in Vegas. Oh, and the whole first team squad and staff are there too…
The point of it is it shows more of a different side to a soccer side. I’ve often spoken about how sports franchises in America have more freedom and more creativity with how they present themselves on social media and this is the perfect example. It’s a new team that needs to make a splash and have gone above and beyond to showcase themselves. Soccer is meant to be fun, and Las Vegas are showing that you can engage fans by simply having fun.
But it’s not all about how they look off the field. Yes, they may have a cool kit, cool logo and have llamas, but it’s all pointless if they can’t make it count on the pitch, right? Let’s take a look at the actual footballing side of the Las Vegas Lights.
At the time of writing, Vegas have only played two games in the Western side of the United Soccer League, but are still unbeaten with a win and a draw against Fresno and Reno. In fact, their win against Fresno was their inaugural game and an exciting 3–2 victory where they raced into a 3–0 lead before hanging on at the very end for the three points.
It’s important for clubs in their first game to excite fans and capture their imagination, and if you weren’t excited by this game then I’m afraid this sport isn’t for you. They followed up that win with a 1–1 draw at their home — Cashman Field — in front of 9,000+ fans, almost filling it out to capacity. I’d give it a few more games and results to really evaluate how the fans are reacting to the new team, but from any bit of video or photos i’ve seen, the fans really do look keen for the Lights.
But what I find most interesting is how the club works in a coaching aspect. At the young age of 30, Isidro Sanchez has moved on from being assistant manager of the old Chivas USA in MLS (now effectively LAFC) to become the head man at another club is admirable, whilst Technical Director Chelis has previous experience coaching in MLS with Chivas USA and became the first man ever to be Technical Director at clubs in the 1st and 2nd divisions of both US and Mexican soccer.
But whilst you can’t really judge the future of the club based on only marketing, social media and advertising (that goes to you too, LAFC) you can admire their efforts and respect what it is they are trying to do, despite being a second division team. Being in the second tier hasn’t stopped Vegas being a hot topic on people’s lips online, and many more people will slowly become familiar with how this club operates.
I mean, when you sign Freddy Adu up you’re basically signing up half of Soccer Twitter! All joking aside, it would be nice to see Adu finally settle down at a club where he can just play and flourish. But the story of Vegas signing Adu shows that maybe they know how to grab peoples attentions via a new player as opposed to just a funny squad photo or a smiley face under the home shirt.
What Las Vegas is doing isn’t too far from “organic” but it isn’t exactly the textbook definition either, and that isn’t a bad thing. Rather than shoehorn their way into MLS via lots of money provided by investors, consortiums and soccer mad celebrities, they’ve started in the second division to build a solid core fan base before (maybe) making the jump to MLS and becoming an expansion team. Who wouldn’t a weekend away in Vegas for your team?
But it’s important to remember what is going on in Vegas with regards to the soccer team. It’s new, it’s exciting and it’s refreshing to see clubs have fun with their fans and the interaction is great to see. Vegas may not be the benchmark for a top soccer franchise, but it is showing us that you don’t have to be a top name to have fun and just enjoy the sport.
It isn’t just them either, a lot of other USL and NASL clubs are having fun, but it all just seems to work perfectly under the lights at Cashman Field for the Las Vegas Lights.
