Las Vegas Strip quickly becoming ‘Boulevard of Champions’
For the third time in about a year’s time, a professional sports team will parade down Las Vegas Boulevard to celebrate a championship win.
Making up two of those three are the Aces, who are scheduled to celebrate their back-to-back WNBA Finals wins. The other is, of course, the Golden Knights, who paraded down the Strip in June in celebration of winning the Stanley Cup in their sixth year of existence.
Although Las Vegas is in its infancy as a pro sports city, it is becoming a highly successful one on the back of the Knights and the Aces.
Monday will see the latest championship party on the Strip with the Aces to take a short trip from Tropicana Avenue, heading north down the southbound lanes of Las Vegas Boulevard, ending up at Toshiba Plaza outside of T-Mobile Arena. There the team will celebrate with fans, who can begin to enter the plaza starting at 3 p.m. The celebration is expected to last two hours and conclude around 7:30 p.m., the team announced last week.
The parade is about how long the Aces’ Strip parade route was last year. That went from near Caesars Palace, ending up at a stage constructed on Las Vegas Boulevard, near the Fountains of Bellagio.
Officials originally only planned to shut down the southbound lanes of the Strip for last year’s celebration, but fans showed up in force, causing both sides of the boulevard to be shuttered.
The Knights’ parade route this summer was a bit longer than both of the Aces’ celebrations. Knights players and staff took a route starting at Caesars, ending up at Toshiba Plaza. The team then took turns addressing the 20,000 fans located outside at the plaza, which the Aces will look to replicate Monday.
The Knights’ parade was viewed by an estimated 200,000 fans.
Residents and tourists alike usually aren’t too fond of anything affecting traffic on the Las Vegas Strip, but the one thing that most can tolerate is a championship parade. The thought was once only a dream, but has become a regular reality for Southern Nevada fans.
To the select few who might be disgruntled about the jovial occurrence, get used to it. Both the Knights and Aces are poised to make more championship runs in the near future.
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.
