Zig Ziegler, CEO and founder of the Z Athlete Factory Sports Performance and Technology Center, speaks on the positive impact his newly announced facility will have on local youth athletes and the community overall, Monday July 1, 2024.
Wednesday, July 3, 2024 | 2 a.m.
A massive, more than $1 billion athletic complex is coming to Las Vegas, further cementing the Entertainment Capital of the World as a leader on the forefront of the sports economy.
The Z Athlete Village, a sprawling campus complete with various training facilities and condotels to house athletes and their families, will be constructed by Z Athlete Factory, a sports company driven by artificial intelligence, relocating its headquarters to Las Vegas from Scottsdale, Ariz.
“Anchoring Z Athlete Village will be the track and field facility,” Zig Ziegler, Z Athlete Factory CEO and founder, told the Sun. “That’s what got us started. But really what anchors it is the athlete factory, which is a 50,000-square-foot sports performance facility. And it’s not your typical sports performance facility.”
At its onset, Z Athlete Factory as a company was “100%” focused on youth sports, Ziegler said, noting that he previously worked with professional athletes — including basketball greats such as Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Michael Jordan — before realizing that to address the root issues of someone’s performance, they couldn’t be so far into an established career.
His company began using AI to identify young athletes’ specific needs, he said.
“Because you are completely different than me,” Ziegler said. “And even though we both might play the same sport, you’re gonna need something completely different.”
At its new Las Vegas facility, Z Athlete Factory patrons will be able to take advantage of AI technology to determine what they need to do in training any given day, and a video-based technology will measure athletes’ needs or progress in real time.
The AI will be able to talk to the athlete or coaches, Ziegler added, and the Z Athlete Factory will also offer corrective rehab programs and customized training programs to improve performance and eliminate injuries.
Additionally, the facility will be home to “the world’s largest” indoor track, which will allow Las Vegas-based track and field athletes to continue the sport during summers of excessive heat, said Ziegler, who competed in track through college.
An aquatic center with the ability to seat 2,600 people has already drawn interest from the USA water polo and swimming and diving teams, Ziegler said, and a cutting-edge gymnastics facility will allow for the performance of all disciplines of gymnastics and offer seating for up to 3,600 people.
Indoor courts will also be available, and many of these amenities were the result of brainstorming sessions with local economic leaders in Las Vegas, Ziegler said.
“We asked, ‘What were some of the needs of the city that we can help to meet? What if you had a magic wand and money to build a campus like this? What would you put?’ ” he said. “And so we took their feedback, looked at it to see whether it could work financially, and we found that courts can work for us, gymnastics can work for us, and so can aquatics.”
In addition to the Z Athlete Factory, the component for which Ziegler is most excited about his company’s new headquarters is a high school athletics academy, he said, a dedicated academic facility for young athletes.
Unlike many of its peer institutions, this school will not cater to the “elite athlete,” Ziegler said. Instead, its target is the 80% of athletes who “nobody pays attention to” but are making waves nonetheless.
“They’ll get the foundational stuff,” he said. “We want to prepare them to be ready for the world — but, just as importantly, the athletic training that’s going to come along with it.”
He believes a lot of young athletes could do better with an attention to detail in their sport and ability, Ziegler said.
As an example, he pointed to up-and-coming athletes Abby Abittan and Eva Halvorson from Lake Mead Christian Academy, where Ziegler has been a consultant to the athletics department. Both made significant progress in cross country and track over the past few years.
Abbitan and Halvorson spoke with the Sun about their love for running, emphasizing how dedication to their sport has honed their capacity for leadership and other skills.
Halvorson said a state-of-the-art facility where athletes can build their balance, strength and more will only allow them to grow their skill.
People keep getting faster, and people keep getting better, and a lot of that is due to advanced technology and training facilities, said Halvorson, who recently graduated and will run track at Oregon’s George Fox University in the fall.
“Coming from two people that spent their high school career running on a dirt track, I think that does produce a lot of perseverance and endurance and drive and grit, but it is really important to have the access to real facilities and the things that you need, because you really can elevate that much higher,” Halvorson said. “You really can focus on your skills and your strength that much more when you have access to the things that you need.”
Abbitan echoed the sentiment, noting that the introduction of the Z Athlete Village to the valley will likely help a lot of young athletes create a boom for youth track in Las Vegas, specifically, leading to state records being broken and ultimately produce a lot of great athletes in Nevada.
She invoked her own experience training with Ziegler, and said that prior to meeting him, she would get discouraged having to train on a dirt track and feeling as if she wasn’t making progress.
“Eventually, when I did meet Zig and I had access to good equipment and good AI technologies that he was just starting to incorporate, it really just changed the game for me because it helped me learn about my body and just how I run,” she said. “Because every single person is different and running is definitely an art.”
Ziegler said Z Athlete Factory settled on Las Vegas as its new permanent home partly because the company can meet a need among young athletes. He cited track and field as an example again, saying that most schools in the city don’t even introduce it as an option to students until high school.
The valley was also a good fit as it becomes increasingly more sports-centric, he said.
“It was just, for us, the right alignment,” he said. “The mission seems to be the same. And the city wants to do it right, as opposed to just taking anybody and everybody — because we’ve been under the microscope with them. And we’re glad to have their support.”
The biggest and most important aspect of the campus’s business model is to fill a void and provide opportunities in terms of a venue for national or regional events that would otherwise not be able to take place in Las Vegas, where sporting events often compete with meetings and conventions, Ziegler said.
The beauty of Las Vegas is that it’s easy to get to, there’s an abundance of hotel rooms, it’s relatively affordable and so on and so forth, said Jay Schroeder, director of athletics at Lake Mead Christian Academy and a former NFL quarterback.
“So, those are all the things that make it workable,” he said. “And Vegas is a prime spot.”
Schroeder, who expressed his appreciation for Ziegler and his impact on the athletic department at Lake Mead Christian Academy, said all kinds of sports are growing in Las Vegas, as are the number of student-athletes, and facilities need to be built out to accommodate that growth.
“We’re nowhere near capacity of what Vegas can do athletically,” he said. “There’s so many really good athletes that have come out of here. … Vegas is that unknown little spot that produces really, really good athletes. And we just want to continue to make that happen.”
Z Athlete Factory, which Ziegler emphasized also offers clinics and seminars for coaches to get the best results from athletes, has narrowed the potential location of its Las Vegas campus down to two local sites, pending a decision on one.
The first phase of the construction will include the condos and the indoor track, which Ziegler said will be the only permanent indoor track-and-field arena in the southwest U.S., and is slated for completion by early 2027.
Z Athlete Village will be for everyone, according to Ziegler, who said there’s three types of athletes: the social athlete, who joins a team just to have fun or be a part of something; the average athlete — most members of the team and those who do exactly as the coach says; and then the elite athlete, who goes above and beyond.
“Everybody wants to cater to those,” Ziegler said. “I want to cater to the average athlete, because the average athlete wants it — they just don’t know how to get it. So that’s what people should be excited about.”
katieann.mccarver@gmg vegas.com/ 702-259-4059 / @_katieann13_
