It’s been 10 years since the T-Mobile Arena officially opened its doors and helped to usher in an era of major professional sports and top-tier entertainment in Las Vegas.
On April 6, 2016, Las Vegas locals the Killers christened the $375 million facility with comedian and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, who grew up in Las Vegas, introducing the band. “There’s no one better to baptize this new venue,” Kimmel said in a prerecorded video played before the Killers took the stage that day. “Mr. Las Vegas” himself, Wayne Newton, served as the opening act.
That inaugural year saw a bevy of events including UFC 200 as well as concerts featuring Guns N’ Roses, Garth Brooks, George Strait and Billy Joel. On May 7, 2016, the arena hosted its first boxing match, with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez viciously knocking out Amir Khan in front of 16,540 fans.
“It’s been an amazing 10 years of being open, longer than that when you get down to the pre-planning stages of it,” said Dan Quinn, senior vice president of entertainment and arena venue operations for MGM Resorts International. “Anytime you have the dreams and visions of a project like this, to get to see it go from an image on a piece of paper to building it, to then actually having hosted all the events we’ve had for the 10 years, I mean, it’s just been an incredible run.”
First responders and medical personnel involved in the October 1st tragedy are backed by the Vegas Golden Knights and Arizona Coyotes for the singing of the national anthem during the Knights home opener Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017, at the T-Mobile Arena. The Knights won 5-2 to extend their winning streak to 3-0. Sam Morris/Las Vegas News Bureau
Setting the stage
Showing how T-Mobile Arena set the stage for the future of sports and entertainment in Las Vegas, each one of the aforementioned entities has performed or been part of an event at Allegiant Stadium, outside of Khan and the UFC.
“I think we’ve shown that the building is capable of handling any event,” Quinn said.
Over the last 10 years the 20,000-fan capacity arena, just steps from the Strip, has hosted almost 1,000 events, a total that accounts for 12.6 million tickets sold and over $2 billion in total ticket revenue, according to MGM Resorts. During those events, 5 million fountain sodas have been poured and around 1 million hot dogs and servings of popcorn have been served.
Golden Knights right wing Mark Stone (61) carries out the Stanley Cup during the raising of the 2023 Stanley Cup Championship banner before their NHL opening night game against the Seattle Kraken at T-Mobile Arena on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023, in Las Vegas. (L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Left_Eye_Images
Golden era
The NHL era of Las Vegas began at T-Mobile Arena on Sept. 26, 2017, in an exhibition match against the Los Angeles Kings.
The team’s next appearance at “The Fortress,” as the arena has been nicknamed, on Oct. 10, 2017, was a more meaningful one, not just because it was the franchise’s first regular season home game, but because it was just nine days after the Route 91 Harvest festival shooting on Oct. 1, 2017.
The game opened with an emotional tribute to those affected by the mass shooting and it was the start of the team’s rallying of the community in the aftermath of the tragedy. That historic first season, the Knights went all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, losing in five games to the Washington Capitals.
The Knights have played 412 games at T-Mobile Arena since their 2017 debut, with no game more memorable than on June 13, 2023, when they beat the Florida Panthers to win the Stanley Cup.
“Getting to raise the cup was an incredible experience,” Quinn said.
Golden Knights president of business operations, John Penhollow, who joined the organization last summer, had watched the Knights success at T-Mobile from afar. But in his first 10 months on the job, he has has seen that The Fortress is truly the team’s home.
“It’s amazing to see how it’s become the home for the Golden Knights,” Penhollow said. “It didn’t take long in that first year for the fans to feel the arena out, find their spots. It didn’t take long for the hockey team to sort of feel out how they’re going to play inside that arena. … You can call it home ice advantage, whatever you want to call it, but we do feel like when we’re home, we always have a chance.
“Every game’s exciting, win or lose,” Penhollow continued. “Even the games we’ve lost, they’ve been exciting for our fans and certainly the community. I would say that the first nine years, we couldn’t have asked for much more, especially when you consider it was built without the Golden Knights really there to sit at the table.”
Amanda Nunes celebrates after defeating Miesha Tate during their women’s bantamweight championship mixed martial arts bout at UFC 200, Saturday, July 9, 2016, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Combat sports hub
The UFC has called T-Mobile Arena the “Home of UFC” since 2017 when the MMA fight promotional company signed a deal with the arena. UFC recently extended that deal, and has signage in the building above the seating area to remind fans of that.
“It’s incredible that we’ve already been at T-Mobile Arena for ten years,” UFC president and CEO Dana White said in a statement. “We just signed an extension with them so we will continue to bring the biggest and best events to Las Vegas for years to come.”
UFC has held 35 events at the arena, which is about 6 miles from the MMA promoter’s headquarters. The most recent UFC event at T-Mobile Arena was on March 7 with UFC 326, headlined by Charles Oliveira’s decision win over Max Halloway in their middleweight showdown.
Floyd Mayweather, left, lands a left hook on the jaw of Conor McGregor on Saturday, Aug 26, 2017, at T-Mobile Arena, in Las Vegas. Mayweather defeated McGregor by technical knockout in the 10th round to extend his record to 50-0. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Boxing business
There have been 21 boxing events held at T-Mobile, resulting in 306,805 tickets sold, according to MGM Resorts. In the building’s first year in a one-month span two megafights were hosted at the arena, netting a small fortune.
On Aug. 26, 2017, T-Mobile Arena hosted the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor boxing match. Then on Sept. 16, 2017, the first Canelo versus Gennady Golovkin bout took place. The two bouts brought in $100 million in ticket sales combined, Quinn said.
“In a lot of buildings, that’s a great year. Crazy enough for us, that was just a month,” Quinn said.
After the Knights and T-Mobile Arena ushered in the era of major professional sports in Las Vegas in 2017, the WNBA’s Aces arrived in 2018 and the NFL’s Raiders relocated from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020.
The MLB’s Athletics are scheduled to arrive in Las Vegas in 2028 to begin play in their $2 billion ballpark, which will be located about a half mile away from T-Mobile Arena.
Basketball history
Despite not being home to an NBA franchise, T-Mobile Arena has built quite the basketball history during its first decade. There have been 111 basketball events at the arena, with 1.1 million tickets sold to those events.
Those events include one-off college basketball games, Pac-12 Conference championships, USA basketball, Aces, the Harlem Globetrotters, NBA exhibition games and NBA Cup games.
“I think maybe basketball gets a little bit overshadowed in the building — with VGK calling it home, we’re presumed to be a hockey building,” Quinn said. “We’ve been lucky enough to have Duke in the building a couple of times. Duke-Gonzaga, Duke-UNLV. We played a CBS Sports Classic with Kentucky, (North) Carolina …
“We’re lucky and spoiled that we’ve had a pretty decent portfolio of basketball, even though we don’t have the luxury of calling an NBA team home currently.”
Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James (23) rejects a shot boy Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner (33) during the first half of their NBA in-season tournament championship game at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday, Dec. 9, 2023, in Las Vegas. (L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Left_Eye_Images
NBA future?
The NBA could be next to join, as the league is officially exploring expanding to Las Vegas and T-Mobile Arena could find a new tenant, should a franchise be awarded to the city. Part of the exploration process will be nailing down the ownership group, who would be ready to pay the reported between $7 billion and $10 billion expansion fee — and determining where the expansion franchise would play their home games at.
Knights owner Bill Foley, who owns a partial stake in T-Mobile Arena, has stated that he is interested in pursuing ownership of an NBA expansion team and that he’s looking at renovating T-Mobile Arena to the tune of $300 million.
Quinn said that T-Mobile was built with both the NHL and NBA in mind and they are ready to host an NBA team should the city land one and the potential ownership group chooses to make the 10-year-old arena home. If that were the case, Quinn agreed that some upgrades would be in order.
“The big thing would be if we were lucky enough to host an NBA team, we’ve got some pretty interesting, pretty cool plans of things we could do to enhance the building,” Quinn said.
Penhollow said if an NBA team was added, they’d likely hope for similar additions to the arena that the Knights would ask for. From the potential of upgrading LED screens and ribbon boards, to enhancing the food and beverage experience and looking at adding more premium seating, Penhollow is excited to play a part in planning the future of the decade-old facility.
“It’s natural to think that … one of the big four major teams coming in, it’s going to afford all the parties you just mentioned, whether it’s Dan’s (Quinn) team, our team, the chance to have another team in the building to collaborate with, to talk about what the game experience could look like,” Penhollow said.
“It’s the same stuff that we might ask for, (would) be the same thing that an NBA team would ask for. Beautiful LEDs, beautiful lights, and have the acoustic and the sound system be top of the top. Have the culinary experience be amazing. So, it almost doesn’t matter what the sport is, we all sort of end up asking for the same things to try to put into a building to make it a great fan experience,” Penhollow added. “Really, the only difference is going to be we have the ice, they have the court. But the rest of the building, we’re going to hopefully try to program together. If we’re fortunate enough to even get an NBA team — we’re still far away from hopefully something actually happening — but we’ll see.”
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.