Sports, entertainment, and technology, how local leaders look to combine those industries in pursuit of economic diversification.

That's this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

The second ever SEICon takes place July 8th through 10th at the Bellagio.

SEI stands for Sports Entertainment Innovation, and conference organizers say its purpose is to accelerate innovation in those industries.

So what does that look like, and why do local leaders think it's a good idea?

For that we bring in Jay Vickers, Chief Operating Officer for UNLV Sports Innovation Initiative; Shani Coleman, Director of the Clark County Office of Community and Economic Development; and Quinton Singleton, Founder of Zero Labs.

Thank you all for joining us.

-Thank you.

-I want to start off with Quinton.

Can you give us an example of what innovation in sports and entertainment looks like?

(Quinton Singleton) Innovation is a big term.

We talk a lot about it from the different roles that we sit in.

When we think about innovation at Zero Labs, we're trying to look at the entire ecosystem in the valley, where we are here in Clark County, as we all call Las Vegas.

So when we look at innovation, we think of things like everything from infrastructure and the buildings that are going up, to the teams where they're deploying, to the hospitality that even takes place inside the arenas.

So it covers quite a few different areas.

Now, specifically with Zero Labs, what we try and do is we look for early stage high tech startups that we can take, bring into Las Vegas, and then drive right into our ecosystem.

-Can you give me an example of one of those?

-Well, I'll jump the gun; but I'll take Shani's point.

One example is we have people building actual physical gear for sports to revolutionize how players play, everything from shoes to training equipment.

In addition, if you think about the technology side, everything from machine learning and artificial intelligence and how we can implement that around data, for example.

-Quinton stole your thunder.

Do you want to add to that, Shani?

(Shani Coleman) That's okay.

He stole my thunder, but he never talks about some of the work that he does related to data, right?

You know, I think data is important.

We all look at from sports betting to just understanding what's happening in sports, the coaches and the team leadership, how they use data to help make decisions.

All of that's innovation.

You know, Quinton kind of touched on it with machine learning.

AI has become a big part of that.

And so I think those types of innovations we want to support, yeah.

-You want data collection here in Las Vegas.

What would that look like?

-Well, you know what, Quinton, why don't you speak a little bit to that.

I mean, you do some of that with your nVenue company.

-So data is becoming bigger and bigger across sports, and it changes the way that everyone engages with sports, whether it's through sports apps, statistics, gaming, entertainment.

And so specifically what we do in kind of like, if you will, my day-to-day company that we put together is we ingest real-time data, and there's-- it's so big.

We're not talking about like an Excel spreadsheet.

We're talking about trillions of live data points coming off of events.

We process that data with machine learning, artificial intelligence, to create real-time predictions.

I won't bore you with what we use it for, but there's that kind of innovation that's going to be driving.

And that's just one sliver of the sports innovation ecosystem that I think Vic and Shani are driving here.

-Yeah.

Jay, add on to that with an example of what you consider to be innovation in sports and entertainment.

(Jay Vickers) Well, through the Sports Innovation Institute, we look at sports research innovation a little bit differently.

And what I mean by that is we are lucky to have 14 pillars of excellence.

And those pillars of excellence represent all of our faculty members that are subject matter experts, ranging from mental health to brain health, sports performance, sports technology, daily analytics, as well as military health and first responders.

So when you look at all these different areas, this entire ecosystem is very vast.

And quite frankly, there's not a wrong answer to what is sports innovation, because sports innovation to you is going to be different to someone else.

It's all the right answer.

-What is UNLV doing in relation to mental health?

-Well, in relation to mental health, we have great subject matter experts that are definitely-- we just started our mental health institute led by Dr. Michelle Paul.

-Under the Sports Innovation?

-Well, it's actually a different department, but because our Sports Innovation Institute we serve as a truly interdisciplinary unit, we have the ability to work with all of our faculty, all of our students on campus, regardless of their college or school.

One thing we've done really well on the campus under our presidents and our current president, Chris Heavey, is there's one UNLV, and we want to ensure that everyone understands that no matter what door you come through, through our vast campus and growing campus on top of that is we're going to get you to the right spot.

We got to make sure that we work together to achieve whatever goal we set to, one, improve our stamp in sports entertainment and innovation, which you mentioned earlier about SEIcon.

-Okay.

You mentioned getting to the right spot.

Shani, this is your job, getting these businesses to this spot.

How are you doing that?

-Well, one of the things that we recognized early on, Commissioner Naft and Commissioner Jones both have been very instrumental in, in moving forward the idea of creating an innovation district for Clark County.

And this idea is about creating an environment where innovation, sports and otherwise, can actually thrive.

One of the things we know about innovation districts and technology is a lot of times they feed off each other, right?

One technology may help service another technology, great people coming together and thinking alike.

And so what we want to do is lay the foundation and the groundwork for that.

So the area that we looked at is actually anchored by Switch, which is a very prominent data center here in our community.

And then on the western-- -They moved from-- where did Switch move from?

Or did Switch move?

Am I confusing it with Skills?

-Oh, Skills.

Skills moved from San Francisco to the Las Vegas-- to the Clark County market for exactly this reason, because we are creating this environment where companies, like Skills and other companies, can actually grow and thrive.

And that's part of what the innovation is designed to do.

So this area, like I said, anchored by Switch on the East Side, and UNLV's Harry Reid Technology Park on the West Side and everything in between, really, there are a lot of companies already there.

Zero Labs operates out of Black Fire on Harry Reid's campus.

One of the things that Clark County did in partnership with UNLV recently is we helped to create a what we call a "dark fiber" or dedicated line that goes from Harry Reid Technology Park, but actually loops around the district.

And what it does is it feeds into a supercomputer, Cherry Creek supercomputer, that sits in Switch's campus.

And so this creates opportunity for better computing power, higher computing power, for all of these AI technologies that we want to bring in.

So we're really excited about that opportunity and all of these partnerships that are helping bring this, this ecosystem to a reality.

-That innovation district is in Southwest Las Vegas.

-Southwest, yeah, right around the 215.

So between the 215, Sunset.

Sunset on the north side, roughly Badura on the south side, Decatur and Durango.

So roughly in that area.

-And Quinton, you had told my producer in a pre-interview that you think Las Vegas can be the next Silicon Valley.

-I think so.

I believe so.

I have no doubt, actually.

-Would it be in this district?

-100%.

Actually, Skills is located right in that district, and Bluberi Gaming and quite a few others.

And so driven by our leaders in government, from the top down, we're seeing, as Jay noted, collaboration across that kind of ecosystem, which is a big driver and creating that kind of environment.

And so that when you layer on the density of different types of innovation-- and we're talking about sports, but sports is a huge ecosystem.

And that's just one component of what is being built inside the innovation district, or is one thing that could be used there.

-I'll give you-- oh, I'll let you go ahead.

-I'm just going to add on to you made a comment about Switch earlier and UNLV.

I think the things that we have to remember is, even though we want to attract these companies, what's attracting them is that we have companies that have been very successful and that were created here in our great city and our state.

So in my opinion, success builds upon success and knowing that they also have the opportunity for great workforce, which is our students.

And it's not just UNLV students; there's Nevada State, there's CSN, as well as up north with UNR.

But as you look at what we do as a state, we have a really great university at UNLV.

As an R1 institution, 31,000 students, and with the number one hospitality program in the country, as well as all of our other schools and colleges and their respective areas ranked very highly in their own rankings, we really provide a really great opportunity for our new companies to engage, find a workforce that wants to live here in Las Vegas.

-Shani, do you think that the workforce currently is capable of fulfilling all those jobs?

-Absolutely.

I think one benefit that Clark County has is that our hospitality industry and the skills that come with being in that hospitality industry are easily transferable.

So when you think about sports and entertainment and all of those things, that high level of customer service that our hospitality is trained and understand how to do easily translates into other things.

Think about innovation.

Somebody creating an app maybe that supports how someone engages with a sports team, being able to understand those soft skills and saying, okay, this is how the app should function, right, to emulate what they would-- what they would get if they were maybe using or at a place where they were getting in-person service, those skills are highly transferable, and Vegas is the only place that offers that.

-Absolutely.

-But then are those going to be high paid jobs?

-Well, you know what?

I think there's opportunity there.

I think there's opportunity for workforce in a number of capacities.

Just like any company, you have people who provide valuable services at all levels.

And so what we know is that tech jobs on the tech side are generally higher, higher wage jobs than what we see traditionally in our hospitality industries.

-Yeah, I just wanted to point out something that I think part of our story we maybe don't tell enough is that Las Vegas, this valley, is a city of entrepreneurs.

-Yes.

-Our entire history, if you go back 100 years, is an evolution that continues every decade or so, probably less, where we build something different.

We're all part of it.

You're literally an entrepreneur sitting inside Clark County, in UNLV, and so we're all building constantly.

Why is that important?

I don't think we tell that story enough.

When we talk about the innovation district and what's taking place there, why do these companies want to come here?

We have an existing environment that makes it a place where you can grow companies, people, workforce that's fairly unrestricted and supported across the state.

-You're talking about regulations?

-Regulations, taxes.

I mean, if you're a new business and you want to relocate from another state to here, getting a hold of someone inside of UNLV or the county or the city is literally a phone call away, or the state, right?

And everyone chips in.

It's this great culture that we have here.

So I think that's a story that we could tell and tell better.

And in terms of the impact, and you asked about workforce development and job creation and salaries, there's a couple white papers out there--one from the Lindsey Institute, one from Zero Labs--where we talked about just within, for example, the innovation district and building out this ecosystem of entrepreneurs, this next generation that's coming, that will have enough economic impact that we'll see something similar to what we're seeing with the new sports teams coming to town.

And this innovation district will reach into all of Las Vegas: sports, hospitality, everything.

-So there needs to be patience involved as well?

-Yes.

I mean, these things don't happen overnight.

Just like our great city, you know, evolved, it didn't happen overnight.

And so this next evolution that we're talking about, it'll take a little bit of time.

But I think the more important thing is that we recognize that we're at that point and we're taking steps.

Our community leaders are taking steps to maximize and take advantage of the opportunities.

-I want to talk about a former community leader, Tina Quigley, former president of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance.

I listened to an interview that I did with her last year.

She talked about trying to pursue a high tech company from California to Southern Nevada.

Thought that she was super close, but this company ended up going to Texas, where they got 20 acres of free land and superior tax abatements.

How do you compete with that?

-You know, we get this question a lot, you know, because as a state, we don't provide a lot of financial incentives.

But one of the things we do at Clark County for some of the larger projects is we have a concierge service, and that concierge service is designed to help people move quickly through the regulatory process.

And what we figure is, is that if we can save you time, we can save you money.

And the level of customer service, again, that people get time and time again, we get complimented on our ability to support companies and hold their hand and walk them through.

So I think providing a high level of customer service to those companies, understanding their needs and being able to speak to those needs, are far more beneficial than being able to give them tax dollars and tax breaks.

-Jay, let's talk about the conference.

This is the second year of the conference.

You don't say S-E-I-Con, you say-- -C-Con.

-SEICon, okay.

But it is an acronym.

-There's a lot of acronyms out there.

I'm not a fan of acronyms, but, no, we use this one because there's too many words.

-It's being held at the Bellagio.

-Yes.

-Got big sponsors.

What is your goal with this?

-Well, one is we wanted to--the initial goal--and I can go back to probably May 28 of 2021.

I had a very good conversation with one of our key stakeholders in our community, which is Lawrence Epstein of UFC.

And we talked about, how do we plant a flag in our community and our city that we are not just going to be the next global sports and entertainment capital, but we also are the intellectual capital of sports entertainment.

All the things you've seen in the last 10 years as relates to this sports entertainment ecosystem is unprecedented.

There's a lot of great communities and cities in the country that have done well.

You could talk about New York, LA, those blue-blood cities when it comes to sports, but what we've been able to accomplish because of those collaborations that you mentioned earlier is probably unprecedented.

And not only have we won championships in WNBA, we won the Stanley Cup, we break records in entertainment at our entertainment venues, we talked about fan engagement experience, all these things are because of what or how our city is built.

We believe in hospitality, we believe in a white glove service, believe in that concierge service that you talked about-- -And is that the intellectual capital you're talking about?

-I think it's all intellectual capital.

You have to make a decision to do that, and we have made a conscious decision to be the very best at everything that we do.

And that's whether it's at the LVCVA, whether it's at our university.

When we launched the first fully paid internship program in Super Bowl history, we told our students, you have to be the very best and you're going to learn from the very best in doing so.

And it was outstanding.

-Tell us more about that particular internship.

-I smile about that internship because it was one of those things that people said couldn't happen.

You know, I had a conversation with Mark Badain.

We sat on a panel, I want to say a few months ago, and I told the story how we were able to have the initial funding from the Super Bowl Host Committee and was like, That's not going to be enough to pay for 40 students.

So we figured out that we want to pay the students well.

We paid them $25 an hour.

We also paid for three tuition, three tuition credits, if it was approved, internship for credit, but we needed funds for that.

That's over $350,000.

How will we get $350,000?

And I said, Listen, let's just make this work really well and look at the diverse nature of our community as well as our student base, and let's see if the NFL Foundation will match that 100,000.

Then let me go find a community partner that would do the same thing.

NFL Foundation is not known to match those type of dollars for that type of program.

They instantly matched it.

Then I went out to United Way of Southern Nevada, and they also matched it.

-Why do you think they matched it?

-One, they believed in our students.

Number two, they believed in the program, first and foremost, and the impact it would have.

We were trying to change to, I think Shani mentioned it earlier about the skill sets in hospitality.

But there's skill sets in all the students.

How's the things that our students do in graphic design transfer over to working in sports?

Why?

Because all these sports teams need a graphic designer.

They need marketers.

They need people.

They need people behind the camera.

They need all these different skill sets, and our students were saying, I don't think I want to work in sports.

I'm not a coach, I'm not a trainer, I'm not an athlete, so why is there a space for me?

And once they were able to see that there's a space for them, it opened up their eyes to so many other opportunities.

We saw entrepreneurial spirit.

We saw the ability to say, look, I don't watch football or watch hockey, but, man, I love the environment.

So that's my next job.

-What are some other jobs that come to mind when you think about sports entertainment and innovation that we haven't mentioned?

-I would say a big one, I think obvious, is food purveyors, caterers, right?

I mean, most-- -How so?

-Well, think about it.

Whenever you go to a game, you're eating, right?

And one of the things that like the WNBA does--right--is, you know, they have small businesses that are able to provide their food services in the arenas.

And so this creates opportunity.

Those small businesses are hiring people to help.

They're buying food from other places.

It helps, so it all works in the ecosystem.

But I think the easy one out there is food purveyor.

But even just think about from the Uber drivers, right?

It's like, who wants to go to an arena and pay to park and go through all the traffic, when maybe I can just jump in an Uber and get dropped off and have a good time and don't worry about it?

-And UNLV has come out with the Southern Nevada Sports Economy Data Dashboard, and that's shown some impressive stats about how sports has driven the economy here.

One that stood out to me, sports instruction businesses have grown by 80% since 2014.

What are sports instruction businesses?

-I think there's a lot of engagement from locals who maybe now are looking at sports and saying, I want to learn how to do that.

I want to understand how to do that.

Especially at the youth age.

Vegas has always been a place where you see a lot of soccer teams, youth soccer and different things.

But just think about that.

Before the Knights came along, there was no youth hockey, and now there are tons of youth hockey.

I was born and raised in Las Vegas.

Hockey was not a sport that we learned in school, but now in--now in Clark County School District, they have hockey programs where kids can learn how to play hockey.

And so all of these things take on an opportunity for instruction outside of the school, outside of the professional setting for just average local people.

Right now, the WNBA, the Las Vegas Aces, have their what they're calling a fantasy academy for adults who want to be trained and learn how to play basketball with the famous Becky Hammon as a coach.

Like, how awesome is that?

I played basketball in high school.

I would have loved to have been able to--I can't do it now, but I would have loved to have been able to go to something like that and participate and hang out with professional athletes and professional level coaches like that.

-And Quinton, I want to get back to the data jobs.

I think when I hear data, I think, oh, gosh, AI.

And then are there going to be jobs available in this, or will AI take those jobs?

-I don't know, we hear that a lot in this construct of, What is AI?

I read something this morning that said by 2020, 80% of all jobs will be replaced by AI.

I don't think that's necessarily the case.

I think we're in the early stages of it.

We're in the early stages of adoption.

The adoption is going very fast.

If you ask me now what could I predict is going to be the replacement rate of jobs versus AI, I wouldn't be able to tell you with any form of certainty.

But what I can tell you for sure is the next five years of all of our journeys together on this planet is going to be revolutionary.

It's going to be embedded into everything we do all the time.

So if you had to ask me like, In two years what's it going to look like?

No idea, but it's definitely gonna be part of it.

There's still, at the end of the day, there's still someone behind the AI building this.

It's not this magical thing.

It's still coded somewhere in some software.

So you're gonna find whether it's Switch or whether it's other data centers opening up, like GCP is here, you're gonna find that there's still gonna be, if we're going back to the economy, there's still gonna be this growth outside of or around sports in terms of what is going to be taking place.

I'm pretty excited about the next five years in the valley.

-Yeah, me too.

-And I think the jobs are different, right?

I don't think we're saying, you know, jobs will be replaced.

I think it's more of people will just have different jobs related to AI, you know?

Like Quinton said, the code doesn't write itself.

Somebody's got to write that code.

Somebody's got to test that code.

And so maybe their function is slightly different than what they're used to, but they still have a job.

-Okay.

I want to go back to this innovation district and how you are going to get companies to come here.

Are you offering anything special, different in order to relocate?

-Yeah.

I think one of the things that is not available in any place in Nevada and not most western states is the data line that we put in.

That's really important.

Having access to a supercomputer, most companies, especially in the startup phase, do not have access to those types of resources.

And so laying that groundwork and offering that as an opportunity and an amenity we think will be a big draw.

We're having some conversations about other pilot programs we can put together to try to test or create an environment where certain companies can test certain types of technology and AI.

So we're having those conversations.

So we're looking at different programs that we think will be beneficial to the ecosystem.

-When do you anticipate that being open?

-Well, the innovation district is there.

Things are happening right now.

So it's not, it's not an opening.

Maybe about two years ago, the Clark County Board approved a feasibility study.

We are right now in the early phases of implementation of that feasibility study and some of those things.

We're having conversations about real estate.

We're having conversations about branding and marketing.

And so I think as we continue to move along, you'll start to see more things come out.

One of the things we're going to be very focused on is the branding and place making, making sure people understand that this is an innovation district and what that means for this community.

-And the last thing about the conference, Jay, one of your goals is deal making, having all these players.

There are big names coming.

Do you want to mention a few of them who are going to be speaking?

-Well, there's several people speaking.

We have the CEO of the New York Post.

USA Today Sports just did an article this morning on SEICcon, as they're one of our partners, our presenting sponsor off of SEICon.

There's several people speaking.

Like Shani Coleman is speaking, Quinton Singleton is speaking.

And so a lot of our local stakeholders.

Steve Hill is doing opening remarks.

I'm just really excited to have the opportunity to bring this stage in place.

The whole purpose is to bring people together.

Let's educate you.

Let's give you the opportunity to collaborate with other like-minded folks and, although, meet people that you may not think are in that ecosystem.

And what we've learned with that combination of education and collaboration, that's what equals deal making.

So I think you're gonna see something for everyone there.

That was the whole purpose of SEICon was to make it be an omnichannel conference where whether you're in marketing, whether you're in data analytics, it doesn't matter what part of the ecosystem, there's something for you there.

-Wishing you much success with SEICon, or SEICon.

Thank you all for joining us.

-Thank you.

-And thank you for watching.

For information on any of the programs discussed today, go to vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek, and I'll see you next week on Nevada Week.

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