There’s something quietly thrilling about watching a city that once had no professional sports teams at all become one of the most talked-about sports markets in the country. Las Vegas was, not long ago, considered an untouchable market by major leagues, largely due to its identity as a gambling hub. Today, the story looks very different, and so does the psychology driving the fans who fill those arenas.
For years, Las Vegas faced restrictions on having national sports teams due to its status as a betting hub. Recent developments, though, have elevated the city to first-string status. Las Vegas now boasts an NFL team in the Raiders, an NHL team in the Golden Knights, and a WNBA team in the Aces. The rapid transformation of that identity is part of what makes rooting for Las Vegas teams feel distinctly personal to those who live there. It’s a city that many people counted out, and that resonates deeply.
A City That Was Never Supposed to Have a Team
The idea of Las Vegas as a sports town seemed almost laughable to the traditional sports establishment just a decade ago. The Las Vegas Valley’s first major professional team, the Vegas Golden Knights, only began play in 2017 as an NHL expansion franchise. Before that, the city’s sports scene was largely limited to prize fights, UNLV athletics, and lots of golf.
Las Vegas’ sports market was limited largely to prize fights, UNLV athletics, NASCAR, and lots of golf before the Golden Knights took the city by storm. That baseline makes everything that followed feel like a genuine underdog story. The city wasn’t handed prestige. It earned it, team by team.
The “Underdog Effect” Is Real and Measurable
Psychologists call this phenomenon the underdog effect, a tendency to support an entity that is perceived as attempting to accomplish a difficult task and that is not expected to succeed against an advantaged opponent. It is one of the more reliable patterns researchers have found in human behavior, cutting across sports, politics, and commerce.
In research by psychologists Joseph Vandello and Nadav Goldschmied, participants were asked to evaluate who they would root for in an imaginary sports match between a favored team and a team with a worse record. Roughly four out of five chose the underdog. That number is striking. It suggests that supporting the long shot isn’t just an occasional sentimental habit. For most people, it’s the instinctive choice.
Why Picking the Underdog Feels Psychologically “Safe”
According to Daniel Wann, PhD, a professor of psychology at Murray State University who studies sports fandom, both picking the heavy favorite and the serious underdog are psychologically safe choices. If you pick a team that is slated to have roughly a 95 percent likelihood of winning, that’s a safe selection. So is picking the team with only a 5 percent chance to win. Should that team lose, it’s easy to say they never really had a chance.
If the underdog wins, that victory is sweeter precisely because it was unexpected. Wann describes supporting the underdog as a win-win proposition. You lose nothing emotionally if they fall short, and gain everything if they pull off the impossible. Las Vegas sports fans, new to the concept of having real teams to cheer for, have leaned into this dynamic naturally.
The Golden Knights Rewrote the Playbook for Expansion Teams
The Vegas Golden Knights skated into town in 2017 as the city’s first professional sports team. They became an instant hit and earned a passionate local fan base, proving the untapped potential of Las Vegas as a professional sports market. The VGK not only advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals in their very first season but qualified for the playoffs their first four seasons and became the league’s youngest NHL franchise to win a Stanley Cup championship in 2023.
Like countless VGK fans, many remember how the bond formed in 2017 between the community and the Golden Knights, who played their first game as an NHL expansion team less than two weeks after the October 1 shooting. That timing was never lost on anyone. The team arrived during grief, and the connection forged then was bone-deep.
Having sold out every home game at T-Mobile Arena since their inception in 2017, the Vegas Golden Knights continue to prove that hockey can thrive in a non-traditional market. The Golden Knights are averaging over 17,950 fans per game in a venue that holds 17,500, meaning they regularly operate above 102 percent capacity.
Empathy and Mirror Neurons: The Brain Science Behind It
Our identification with the underdog stems partly from our own experience of vulnerability. As humans, we face uncertainties and difficulties throughout our lives and often feel like outsiders in various scenarios. This feeling activates mirror neurons, a type of brain cell that fires both when performing and when simply observing an action.
In short, we root for the underdog because we can relate to them. We identify with their struggle, their passion, and their resolve to push forward despite being in a disadvantaged position. For newcomers to Las Vegas, many of whom moved there seeking a fresh start of their own, that emotional logic runs close to the surface.
Fairness, Justice, and the Human Need to Level the Playing Field
We believe the world ought to be a just place, but it often isn’t. When we see the history of two competing teams, we notice that the top dog has had far more victories. We unknowingly introduce a parameter of fairness into our judgment, concluding that things must have been unfair for the underdog. This is especially true if they appear to be putting in just as much effort. We support underdogs in an attempt to rectify that imbalance, at least in our minds.
Researcher Joseph Vandello believes the deeper explanation is that rooting for the underdog is a way of confronting and trying to rectify inequality. That framing fits Las Vegas remarkably well. The city spent decades being told it wasn’t good enough for big-league sports. Now its fans carry that collective memory into every game.
Identity Fusion: When the Team Becomes Part of You
Studies have found that ultra-fans, particularly those involved in organized supporter groups, often exhibit behaviors consistent with identity fusion, engaging in collective rituals, chants, and acts of group defense. These behaviors suggest that fandom is not merely a cognitive category but an embodied, emotional experience that connects fans both to their teams and to each other.
Research on stadium environments has shown that fans who regularly attend live games report stronger relational bonds with fellow spectators, indicating that the physical and social context of fandom can reinforce both relational and collective identity. For Las Vegas, where residents came from everywhere and didn’t always feel a shared civic identity, the arrival of professional sports gave the community something to unify around.
The Aces and Raiders: Different Stories, Same Underdog Spirit
The Las Vegas Aces won the 2022 WNBA Championship, becoming the first local professional team in the city to win a championship, and then went on to win the 2023 Championship as well. Excitement was so high for the 2024 season that the team accomplished a WNBA first by selling out all season tickets.
The Aces became the first team to win back-to-back WNBA championships since 2001 and 2002. They then won the 2025 WNBA Championship, securing their third title in four years. The Raiders’ story has been harder, more imperfect, but in some ways more classically underdog. For the 2025 NFL season, nine Raiders games drew roughly 498,000 fans in total, with an average of 63 percent of those fans coming from outside Southern Nevada. That tells you something about the peculiar nature of Las Vegas fandom: tourists arrive already carrying allegiances, and locals are still building theirs.
The Stadium Atmosphere and the Science of Home-Field Energy
Research over the decades, largely from social psychology, has examined whether crowds actually matter on the field in terms of performance, beyond just impacting the pocketbooks of team owners and leagues. The answer, consistently, is yes. Crowd energy has measurable effects on player behavior, referee decisions, and overall game outcomes.
In 2025, events at Allegiant Stadium drew 1.7 million fans, up from 1.4 million in 2024. That consistent growth, even during a period of broader visitation slowdowns in Las Vegas, reflects the genuine rootedness of sports fandom in the valley. People aren’t just attending as part of a general Vegas trip. Many are going specifically for the game.
Loyalty That Outlasts Losing Seasons
Unrealistic optimism drives fan loyalty despite repeated failures, fostering a community built around shared experiences. That pattern shows up persistently across sports cultures globally, and Las Vegas is no exception. The Raiders have struggled to win consistently since moving to Nevada, yet the fanbase has held.
There is a growing affinity for underdog support, particularly since the early 2000s when the Red Sox broke their championship drought in 2004. This shift emphasizes the romanticized struggle fans embrace alongside their teams despite historical losses. Las Vegas fans, many of them relatively new to having a home team to follow, are already learning that lesson.
What Las Vegas Tells Us About the Future of Sports Fandom
Underdog stories go beyond sports. They remind us that potential is often underestimated and that success is about more than just talent, involving mindset, preparation, and belief. Las Vegas, as a city and a sports market, embodies that idea almost too neatly.
The Golden Knights have proven that hockey can thrive in the desert, and their success has paved the way for other professional sports teams to consider Las Vegas as a viable market. For fans, it’s more than just hockey. It’s a symbol of the city’s growing identity as a major league town. With an MLB franchise on the way and NBA speculation continuing to circulate, the arc only extends further.
What drives Las Vegas sports fans ultimately isn’t so different from what drives anyone who has ever cheered for the team nobody believed in. It’s the feeling that the struggle itself is meaningful, and that winning against long odds says something true about who you are. Las Vegas built a whole city on that idea. Now its sports scene is living it out, game by game.
