Starr Vegas Development has entered the Las Vegas NBA expansion competition with a suggested resort district costing $10 billion and including a casino, a sportsbook, and two sports stadiums.

The projected arena will be located 1.7 miles south of the Welcome to Las Vegas monument on 63 acres at the southwest corner of West Starr Avenue and South Las Vegas Boulevard.

Weeks after the Board of Governors of the NBA voted unanimously to officially examine growth bids for Seattle and Las Vegas, the project was disclosed on Monday.

The door was opened for ownership groups to submit arena proposals and long-term development plans with this action.

In their offer, Chuck Haifley, CEO of Starr Vegas Development, portrayed the project as a tailor-made home for the city's upcoming big franchise.

“We are building world‑class facilities for soccer, basketball, concerts, combat sports and more — the future home of professional sports in Las Vegas,” he said in the project’s announcement.

The $10 billion buildout has already attracted $6 billion in funding, according to the development team.

Larry Canarelli and K. Roohani, who are well-known Southern Nevada land brokers, as well as Lou Weisbach, who is also working on a competing stadium idea for the Chicago Bears, are among the partners in the company.

Hoop Dreams

The plans include a 25,000-seat indoor concert and basketball arena designed specifically for NBA and WNBA use, as well as a 50,000-seat covered soccer and concert stadium with a retractable roof and sightlines facing the Strip.

A casino, sportsbook, and the Big Vision Tower, a rooftop dome venue for up to 1,000 guests with complete broadcast integration, would also be included. It would bear the name of Haifley's decades-long production, broadcast, and equipment rental business.

There would be a cultural district around the locations that included the Las Vegas Combat Sports Hall of Fame, the Don King boxing museum, Broadway-style plays, comedy theaters, and a unique ticketing system called Starr Tickets.

Haifley claims the master plan, which includes residential towers, retail, office space, and hotels, is designed to reduce congestion on the Strip by establishing a new southern hub for sports and entertainment.

The organization is currently seeking conversations with current Las Vegas franchises in need of better facilities and ownership groups for the MLS and NBA.

Haifley sees the timing as perfect, citing the anticipated Brightline West high-speed rail station and the long-term potential for an auxiliary airport as driving factors in transforming the southern valley into the city's upcoming major development corridor.

Court that is busy

However, Starr Vegas faces a cutthroat market. Here are the five additional NBA arena proposals in various phases of planning. We've put them in order of how likely we believe they are to win the finals:

1. MGM Resorts International and AEG want to improve Las Vegas' current facility so that it may host basketball games in addition to Vegas Golden Knights hockey games. Eleven American stadiums now manage to host both NBA and NHL teams, even though scheduling may be difficult because the seasons of both leagues overlap for 175-180 days out of the year.

2. Rio: In 2024, the Oak View Group, a prominent international sports-and-entertainment development firm co-founded by Tim Leiweke, the former president of AEG, and Irving Azoff, a music super manager and previous Ticketmaster CEO, abandoned its plans to construct a $10 billion arena four miles south of the Strip. Instead, the group refocused its attention on the parking lot located behind the off-Strip Rio.

3 & 4: City of Las Vegas: Mayor Shelley Berkley put forth two more sites for an NBA arena at the beginning of the month: the World Market Center's north parking lot, which Blackstone Inc., the real estate asset manager of the Cosmopolitan, owns, and a parking lot across from City Hall, which the Plaza owns.

5. Resorts World: Last month, George Assad, a member of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, urged Resorts World president Carlos Castro to construct an NBA stadium on empty property at Resorts World.

6. Between the Sahara and Fontainebleau, a group of real estate experts from Las Vegas suggested a 752-foot, 2,605-unit hotel and condominium complex that would have an 18,000-seat arena and a 6,000-seat theater. The All Net Arena plan never took off, thus this is the same property that was neglected for almost ten years.