NHL maybe, NBA not so much

“Preliminary talks” could mean relatively nothing but when one of the principal parties is MGM Resorts International, you have to take them seriously … especially when MGM is building an arena intended for major-league sports. Still, there don’t appear to be direct negotiations with an actual team but instead “a group interested in housing an NHL team.” Very different. Sports Business Daily has looked at the economics of an NHL franchise in Sin City and concluded that they don’t pan out. Then there’s the hostility of the league itself. Another wrinkle is that MGM partner AEG owns the Los Angeles Kings. The company would probably welcome having another market in which to show off the Kings, but how does it feel about building an arena whose primary tenant would be a rival franchise?

It still seems far more plausible than the NBA-hosting aspirations of Jackie Robinson and his ‘failsino,’ $1.4 billion All-Net Arena on the North Strip. In lieu of hard cash, Robinson’s cronies have a platter of platitudes like, “Build it and the NBA will come.” Compared to the $690 million Robinson plans to spend on the arena alone, MGM’s $375 million project looks like a bargain. Trading off permanent green cards for cash, Robinson hopes to raise $300 million through the controversial EB-5 visa program. Among other hurdles Robinson has to clear is actually purchasing the old Wet ‘n Wild site from bumbling owner Archon Corp., which already  has one failed arena project on its resume.

You have to wonder about the level of realism we’re dealing with here when “Robinson’s financial adviser, Owen Jackson, said Robinson could have started building the arena years ago” when the Vegas economy was still recessionary. Uh-huh. Also, the project is an incoherent jumble of elements: a “300,000-square-foot retail and restaurant plaza, a movie theater and a high-end grocery such as Whole Foods or Sprouts,”* plus a 44-story hotel tower. It all sounds exciting on paper but one would believe it more if the project were more coherent and the developer had a track record of buildingon this mammoth scale.

(* — Trust me, unless timeshare occupants have a gluttonous appetite for health food, this isn’t a stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard that would support a major grocery store.)

Anyway, since the whole project is premised on the mere hope that the NBA will grace Las Vegas with an NBA team, all deus ex machina-like (although it’s the league most amenable to sports betting), I’ll put my money on MGM’s NHL talks, where there’s actual discussion taking place. It may be a long shot but not the Hail Mary pass that Robinson is lobbing.