UNLV’s Sports Innovation Institute has signed a memorandum of understanding for a research partnership with the Enhanced Games, an Olympic-style sports competition coming to Las Vegas in May with a major twist: The athletes’ use of many performance-enhancing drugs is legal.

Let’s agree to skip the pleasantries and fast-forward through the classic buzzwords and information everyone knows. Artificial intelligence is here, and it reaches its tendrils into every area of modern life, including—of course—gambling.

According to UNLV, over 900 professional athletes — women and men ­— have participated in the study that is approaching its 15th year with Bernick as the other co-primary investigator. The partnership was most recently extended again for five years in 2021. To this day, UFC has committed over $2 million to the efforts.

There’s no better place in the country than Las Vegas to bring together high–level sports executives from around the country for a meeting of the minds, as was the case last week when the second annual SEICon came to the Bellagio offering a wide variety of programming with some of the biggest names in the sports industry.

Las Vegas is chasing its next round of professional sports milestones: an NBA team, a World Series and a year-round slate of major sporting events that could make the Strip and its environs the busiest sports corridor in America. The Sports and Entertainment Innovation Convention is a partnership between UNLV’s Sports Innovation Institute, Syracuse University’s David B. Falk College of Sport and Las Vegas-based guest experience agency Circle. The convention brings together hundreds of experts to discuss innovations in the sports and entertainment industries.

With multiple professional sports teams calling Las Vegas home, the city is quickly becoming a major sports destination. This growing industry needs a variety of jobs to support it. We look at programs training people to take on these roles and how Southern Nevada is continuing to innovate its economy.