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Super Bowl 58: San Francisco 49ers v Kansas City Chiefs |
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Venue: Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas Date: Sunday 11 February Start: 23:30 GMT (15:30 PST) |
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BBC coverage: Listen to commentary on BBC Radio 5 Live and follow live text on the BBC Sport website and app |
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“Ten years ago, I would not have seen myself sitting here for a Super Bowl. You really have become Sports Town USA.”
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was not the only one who did not envisage Las Vegas becoming the new frontier of American sports.
For decades, the idea of bringing major league teams to Sin City seemed taboo. In 2003, the NFL even decided that a television commercial for Vegas – tagline ‘what happens here, stays here’ – was too unsavoury to run during the Super Bowl coverage.
But the biggest game in American sport will be held on the Strip for the first time this Sunday and aptly, it took a big bet from a high roller to spark the city’s latest transformation.
An ice hockey team, based in the desert, was always a long shot. Vegas then suffered a seismic tragedy just days before the new team’s first game.
But the community and the players rallied together to defy the odds and show that team sport can survive and even thrive, in Vegas.
Sport first came to Vegas in the 1950s, with boxing identified as another form of entertainment to supplement gambling and lure more punters into its casinos.
A string of world championship boxing matches helped Vegas become the fight capital of the world in the 1960s, with the image later enhanced by WWE and UFC contests coming to town.
Vegas has played host to annual golf and tennis competitions, along with various motorsport events, but team sports struggled to get established.
Several minor league American football teams tried and failed. With names like the Cowboys and the Outlaws, they harked back to when mobsters transformed Las Vegas from a frontier town into a glitz-and-gambling oasis.
But playing at unsuitable venues miles from the Strip, all had poor attendances and lasted no more than a handful of years before folding or relocating.
Although the major leagues held occasional exhibition…