For now, T-Mobile looks like college hoops hub

By Mike Grimala (contact)

Friday, Dec. 16, 2016 | 2 a.m.

T-Mobile Arena will be primarily known as the home of the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights, the first major-league pro sports franchise in Las Vegas. The brand-new barn was built with hockey in mind, and hockey will be the main draw. But could it also help make the city a hub for college basketball?

It may already be happening. Last weekend, a sellout crowd packed T-Mobile for a UNLV-Duke game that featured one of the best teams in the country thrashing the local squad by nearly 50 points. This Saturday, another sellout (or close to it) is expected to file through the doors for the CBS Sports Classic, an afternoon double-header that will match up four of the nation’s most historic basketball programs.

Ohio State and No. 2 UCLA will tip off at noon, and No. 6 Kentucky will take on No. 7 North Carolina in the second game at 2:45 p.m. If all goes according to plan, after this weekend T-Mobile Arena will have played host to three sold-out college basketball games before the first puck has been dropped for the Golden Knights.

According to T-Mobile General Manager Dan Quinn, college basketball and the CBS Sports Classic in particular has been a priority since the planning stages of the arena’s construction.

“It’s been in the works since [2014],” Quinn said. “Right about the time we were getting ready to break ground, there was talk about this event and bringing it to Las Vegas. These are the types of events we want to chase.”

The CBS Sports Classic is in its third year, with the same four teams meeting annually. The inaugural event was held at the United Center in Chicago in 2014, then at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in 2015. It will move to another city in 2017, but the enthusiasm shown for T-Mobile’s college hoops events so far could lead to the arena courting other showcases in the coming years.

“I hope people understand how important this event is for Las Vegas,” said D.J. Allen, the president of sports marketing company Xs & Os of Success and a veteran promoter in the Las Vegas market. “People around the nation are watching. Promoters who put on these college basketball events are eyeing this. It’s the first made-for-TV double-header here that doesn’t involve UNLV, and those types of events don’t always draw. Now if you’ve got two standalone games in a double-header close to selling out an 18,000-seat arena, that’s not common in college basketball. Promoters are going to look at their events and say, ‘Can we get this in Las Vegas?’”

The schedule would seem to line up for T-Mobile to pursue big-time college basketball events on a regular basis. Teams are willing to travel for big nonconference matchups in the pre-Christmas, pre-finals weeks of December, and that has traditionally been a slow time for tourism in Las Vegas. T-Mobile is owned in part by MGM Resorts, so drawing more out-of-towners during that time of year would be beneficial on multiple levels.

Open dates won’t be as plentiful once the Golden Knights begin playing 40-plus home games per year, but Quinn said the arena is still hoping to work college basketball into the rotation.

“With hockey, it’s a challenging schedule,” Quinn said. “But if we can find dates and marquee college basketball teams that want to play in this venue, obviously we’d love to have them. If Pac-12 teams want to play on a neutral court here, that would be perfect. For UNLV, we’d love to be the Rebels’ home away from home during National Finals Rodeo week. Or if UNLV can get a marquee opponent that doesn’t want to play in the Thomas & Mack, we’d be happy to host a neutral court game like that.”

Less than 1,000 tickets remain available for the CBS Sports Classic. The arena will also host the Pac-12 conference tournament in March. If college hoops continues to be as lucrative for T-Mobile as the first two events, it only makes sense to keep going back to the well.

“One reason for building this venue was attracting more of these events to Las Vegas,” Quinn said. “It can help drive traffic to our properties, but also to the city overall. Other events may not have considered Las Vegas in the past, but now that we’ve got T-Mobile Arena, there’s no excuse for events not to come to Las Vegas.”

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