Against a backdrop of buskers and busy Strip traffic, basketball fans spilled off the sidewalks to catch a glimpse of a modern-day dynasty. For the third time in four years, the Las Vegas Aces brought home the WNBA Championship, and it was time to celebrate accordingly. Signs reading “Three of a Kind” dominated the scene at Toshiba Plaza on October 17. Some hoisted brooms to honor the team’s four-game sweep against the Phoenix Mercury in the Finals. Fans brandishing replicas of A’ja Wilson’s signature tambourine and pink wig packed the parade route, their chants of “MVP! MVP!” building as the Aces’ double decker bus rolled by. One father lifted his son onto his shoulders to get a better view of the star center, his voice full of quiet reverence: “Look buddy, there’s A’ja Wilson.” All that jubilation reflects an undeniable truth: the Las Vegas Aces have found a powerful following.
Las Vegas couple Hannah and Tiffany Giardina became Aces season ticket holders in 2023 and have watched the fan base grow.
“What really hit me this year was the first game of the year, everyone was in the concourse giving each other hugs, like, ‘We haven’t seen you in six months, how are you?’” says Hannah Giardina. “You don’t see that anywhere else.”
Photo by: Rick Scuteri / AP Photo/
It’s easy to root for a championship team, but it goes deeper for the Aces and the WNBA.
“We had a lot of fans who knew about the WNBA and the history of the WNBA, but once they started winning, the stage was packed,” says Andrea Moodie, a longtime basketball fan. “Winning will help. But I think once people got to know the women, got to know the team, got to understand the ownership … it’s easy to become a fan.”
Against the backdrop of the explosion of major league professional sports in Las Vegas, the Aces have cemented themselves as the city’s most decorated team, elevating women’s sports from the sidelines to the center of the conversation. The team’s success and the visibility of its superstar centerpiece are creating a measurable shift in Las Vegas’ growing sports culture.
“They’re setting the precedent that Vegas is the place to be. They’re the team to follow. Everybody wants to be like them,” says Leandra Galloway, another Aces season ticket holder. “I’m a Lakers fan and that’s what it’s kind of reminding me of—dynasty, multiple rings. You can’t really separate this group.”
Every great dynasty needs a firm foundation. On the collegiate level, UNLV’s Lady Rebels have established a dynasty of their own under three-time Mountain West Coach of the Year Lindy La Rocque, who has led the basketball team to four consecutive Mountain West regular season championships and three conference tournament titles since joining the program in 2020. (Click here for our interview.)
A winning basketball tradition extends from the high school level, where Cheyenne and Centennial coach Karen Weitz has built a legacy with 15 state championships and more than 750 victories. The five-time Nevada Coach of the Year and member of the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame began coaching in the early ’90s, well before the WNBA’s inaugural season in 1997. The landscape looked a lot different then.
“When we started back in the mid-’90s … basketball in Vegas was terrible,” Weitz says. “Reno had won the past 20 state titles. We weren’t even respected. There was no middle school basketball here. There were no players coming out of Vegas that were D1 ballplayers. When I say nothing, it was nothing.”
High school state tournaments were never held in Southern Nevada back then. “You literally had to go to Reno all the time,” she says.
Weitz studied the dominance of the northern opposition and established a year-round training program at Centennial High School, and her team broke through for its first state title. The cycle had been broken.
“It was probably the craziest moment in my life because to do something like that hadn’t even been done in 20 years. It was pretty special,” Weitz says.
The effort and talent of many other pioneers have strengthened that foundation of girls’ and women’s sports in Las Vegas, paving the way for the arrival of the WNBA in 2018. MGM Resorts International purchased the team, then the San Antonio Stars, and moved it to the Strip to play at Mandalay Bay’s Michelob Ultra Arena. Raiders owner Mark Davis bought the Aces in 2021 and sustained their upward trajectory, hiring coach Becky Hammon in 2022.
Basketball is not the only professional women’s sport with a presence in Southern Nevada. The Vegas Thrill played its first season this year at Henderson’s Lee’s Family Forum in the upstart Major League Volleyball. The team is currently taking deposits for season tickets for the 2026 season.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, women’s sports have exploded in popularity. A spring Associated Press poll found that three in 10 U.S. adults follow women’s professional or college sports. The WNBA recently broke its single-season attendance record, with the league’s 13 teams attracting more than 2.5 million fans over 226 games, according to the New York Times.
That cultural shift has introduced new opportunities in sports-friendly cities like Las Vegas, where a franchise location of the Sports Bra, the nation’s first sports bar dedicated to broadcasting women’s sports, is set to open in the near future.Jenny Nguyen founded the Portland-based bar in 2022 with little more than her instinct to guide her.
“I felt like there was this women’s sports fandom that was rooted in Portland, so that’s what I was basing it on,” Nguyen says. “But as soon as the news hit that this women’s sports bar was opening, it almost felt like we’d put a pinprick in a dam, and it just exploded with support.
“We were basically flipping the status quo on what a traditional sports bar is and has been for 40 years. So, there were a lot of naysayers out there, the same folks that say nobody watches women’s sports were all up in our DMs being like, ‘It’s just a matter of time before you guys will have to show men’s sports, because nobody’s going to come.’ But for every one comment like that, there were 10,000 that were like, ‘This is the best thing ever.’”
Nguyen says she received hundreds of inquiries from entrepreneurs looking to open a Sports Bra franchise in big cities and tiny towns. For Las Vegas, she says the focus is to build a community with locals, so it makes more sense to establish the Sports Bra in a neighborhood rather than on the Strip.
For local fans like Tiffany Giardina and Leandra Galloway, it’s about time women’s sports had a designated home.
“It’s like, finally something is happening,” says Giardina. “When we won the first championship, we were flying and we were in Houston Hobby [Airport], and we had to beg our server, ‘Can you just put the Aces game on?’ It was during Texas football.”
“I think a lot of people would follow it, and not just women and young little girls, men would go as well,” Galloway says of the Sports Bra. “It’s definitely necessary. Once people see that they have something like that here in Vegas, other bars, other establishments will catch on.”
It all goes back to visibility, Nguyen says.
Las Vegas Aces players Aaliyah Nye, left, and Dana Evans celebrate a victory over the Dallas Wings at Michelob Ultra Arena at Mandalay Bay on August 17.
Photo by: Steve Marcus
“The general public can only see what they see. So, if they’re not seeing a lot of women’s sports fandoms, their idea is that there aren’t very many women’s sports fans,” she says. “Creating a space like a bar to come and hang out with friends and watch games, and having it be as visible as the Sports Bra, has over the last three years really, I think, had a huge impact on just perception of what fandom looks like.”
Visibility matters on every level, from a casual neighborhood bar to the executive leadership of a famous sports franchise.
The Las Vegas Raiders’ recruitment of Sandra Douglass Morgan, the first Black female team president in NFL history, speaks volumes about the support from the organization. Less than a mile away from the Raiders headquarters in Henderson, owner Mark Davis had a 64,000-square-foot practice facility built for the Aces, establishing a new standard for a WNBA team. And the investment has paid off—this year Forbes estimated the franchise’s worth at $310 million, a bit of a bump from the reported $2 million purchase price.
Investment has everything to do with the popularity and fandom of a team or a sport, says Nguyen, explaining that fans notice all the details, from the production value of the games to the jerseys players wear.
In Las Vegas, fans are noticing the all-in approach to marketing and supporting the Aces, and other women’s sports events, too.
“College sports here are a big thing, and they don’t just single out the men. We’re having a Women’s Hall of Fame Classic too, and it’s always advertised everywhere,” Giardina says. “I think advertising it throughout the city is a big thing, because you don’t see that [elsewhere]. Even in Orlando, we never saw an Orlando Pride [women’s soccer team] advertisement.”
The popularity boom of women’s sports also comes with some growing pains, and the WNBA’s current collective bargaining agreement negotiation looks like a crucial turning point that will lead to significant salary increases for the league’s players.
But if you ask the fans and followers, the future of women’s sports is looking bright.
“There are so many variables that have gotten us to where we are now and have been what feels like systemic blockades for decades in women’s sports,” Nguyen says. “They’re just now starting to get knocked over, and we’re just now starting to see the benefits of those things.”
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