Las Vegas is shedding its "Sin City" moniker as it transforms into a major sports hub, boosting tourism and the local economy.

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.

As the data rolls in, a team of sports medicine professionals analyzes the results of an athlete’s jump—it’s the beginning of a whole different ball game. During a Las Vegas Desert Dogs practice, a team from UNLV’s Sports Performance Education Economic Development Lab, otherwise known as SPEED, set up their high-tech floor monitor for players’ leaps.

Evenplay, an AI technology company based out of Las Vegas, has created a patented golf simulator application that creates challenges for all skill levels, with the intention of improving play performance through the use of cash rewards.

Massive leaps in shoe technology have revolutionized high-performance footwear over the past five years. Yes, we’re talking about super shoes. The number of runners racing in carbon-plated shoes jumped a staggering 14 percent just from 2023 to 2024, according to data from Strava.

There’s a “boatload” of money at stake for brands and the league.

More than 500 people attended the inaugural Sports, Entertainment and Innovation Conference (SEICon) in Las Vegas this summer. The David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, in collaboration with the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) Sports Innovation Institute and the Las Vegas-based guest experience agency Circle, spent more than a year planning the event, which was held July 15-17 at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.