The Thomas & Mack Center opened on the campus of UNLV in 1983 with the performance equivalent of a supernova—an extravaganza featuring Diana Ross, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin—which immediately established its place atop the city’s spots for live entertainment.

But after decades of relevance, today’s crowded Vegas venue space has dimmed Thomas & Mack’s star power into near obscurity; the arena has mostly conceded its pursuit of marquee events to an increasingly one-upping field of competitors in Sin City’s gentrifying sports and entertainment market.

The latest, sparkliest Vegas jewel is due to be unveiled this week: the $2.6 billion, 18,600-seat, 360-feet tall Sphere at The Venetian Resort, a futuristic entertainment and music venue built by the owners of Madison Square Garden. The Sphere’s arrival, set to be rung in by a U2 concert, comes nearly eight years after the debut of T-Mobile Arena, home of the NHL’s Golden Knights, which lassoed the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) away from Thomas & Mack in 2016 as well as claiming its status as the place to host big-crowd fights.

“Once T-Mobile was built, it really created separation where [boxing promoters] had to have events there,” said Daren Libonati, who served as executive director of Thomas & Mack and its sister arena, Cox Pavilion, from 2000 to 2010. “MGM was pushing them there, and they still have their Grand Garden Arena. Nobody else in the marketplace was aggressively doing fights. It was the beginning of the end.”

In the years following its construction, the Runnin’ Rebels’ home arena enjoyed not only Jerry Tarkanian’s high-flying and NCAA-conflicted men’s basketball teams of the 1990s, but also a regular cast of showbiz luminaires (Bono brought the house down in 1987 and 2001) and singularly climactic moments in the world of pro sports.

Indeed, less than eight months after Thomas & Mack was opened, it played host to NBA history: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar breaking Wilt Chamberlain’s all-time scoring record in a regular season game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Utah Jazz. In 1992, the 18,776-seat arena (19,522 for boxing) was site of the fastest prize fight sellout in history, when Julio Cesar Chavez defended his WBC welterweight title against Hector Camacho.

Seven years later, Thomas & Mack set the record for the highest-grossing single event in Nevada, when Evander Holyfield gave Lennox Lewis a rematch eight months after the heavyweights ended in a draw at Madison Square Garden.

“We were fighting to get every event we could,” Libonati said. “We loved being able to take it from someone else and show that we were a real venue.”

Now in its 40th season, that is no longer the case. Gone are the Thomas & Mack glory days of hosting at least six major concerts every month and getting first dibs on much of everything else. Instead, UNLV has been forced to aim lower.

“They’re not equipped to do the [previous] chasing and booking strategies,” Libonati said. “They don’t have to waste a lot of time chasing [acts] in a horrible music market where competition is crazy.”

With top music promoters such as Live Nation Entertainment and AEG constantly vying for bigger and bigger guarantees, the premium gigs typically go where they can not only maximize returns, but also leverage the best marketing deals with local hotels.

“We just need to hang in there and try to steal a show here and there,” Mike Newcomb, UNLV’s senior associate athletic director for facilities and events, said. “We take what we can get.”

In the face of stiff corporate competition, UNLV’s athletic department has “become niche,” Newcomb said, noting its recent line-up of urban and hip-hop music shows that “maybe some other places didn’t want to do.”

These days, Thomas & Mack’s prized holdings largely come down to the NBA Summer League and National Finals Rodeo, both of which are contracted through 2025, and the Mountain West Conference men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, which is committed through next March. The latter event could be particularly susceptible to a wandering eye given the recent developments of conference realignment and the abiding concerns of an unfair home-court advantage by UNLV’s conference rivals—which could soon include Pac-12 holdovers Washington State and Oregon State.

“The city of Las Vegas and the Thomas & Mack Center have been outstanding locations for the Mountain West basketball championships,” MWC commissioner Gloria Nevarez said. “The league is considering all options for the future site and location of the MW basketball championships. Las Vegas and the T&M will be at the top of the consideration list for 2025 and beyond.”

However, even this public vote of confidence offers only small comfort.

With the mainstreaming of sports betting and a growing appetite for Las Vegas to play host to tentpole events, the local landscape has consolidated around The Strip. This growth is spurred by the fact that two major pro franchises already are settled there—the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders and the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights—with more potentially coming by the end of the decade. The Oakland A’s are planning to build a $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat baseball stadium near The Strip.

Thomas & Mack, which sits adjacent to Harry Reid International Airport, about 2 ½ miles removed from the bright lights of Las Vegas Blvd., has increasingly been forced to think outside the box to replace tenants who have since gravitated to neon-greener pastures. PBR, which performed at Thomas & Mack from 1999 to 2016, was a million-dollar net event for the center according to Newcomb, but UNLV simply couldn’t compete with T-Mobile’s bells, whistles and corporate connections. 

Endeavor (NYSE: EDR), which owns that rodeo competition, has a strong relationship with MGM, a PBR spokesperson told Sportico; MGM holds a 42.5% stake in T-Mobile Arena.

“They’re just answering the phone and managing the calendar [at T-Mobile Arena] because everybody wants to be down there,” Newcomb said. “We must make deals that make sense for the university and try to book as much as we can that will generate revenue.”

Thomas & Mack has been able to hold on to National Finals Rodeo, the world championship event put on by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, which has taken place at the center each year since it relocated from Oklahoma City to Las Vegas in 1985.

“It is a part of our history, and there certainly is a legacy there,” the PRCA’s CEO Tom Clause said, “but we are always mindful of new opportunities.”

One sticking point for Thomas & Mack is its seating, which shrinks to around 17,000 once the building has been modified to accommodate the exhibition. The rodeo Finals, which have sold out for the last 34 years straight, has a demand that exceeds that capacity.

Then again, because of the unique nature of the rodeo, Thomas & Mack’s off-Strip location has proven to have an enduring advantage: There’s plenty of surrounding space. During the competition, for example, UNLV converts a nearby soccer field to a makeshift stockyard, allowing all the animals to remain on-site throughout the competition.

By comparison, Clause said, T-Mobile Arena, while “a beautiful facility,” would present a challenge when it comes to transporting large trucks with livestock in and out. 

The NBA hosted its All-Star Game at Thomas & Mack in 2007 and has conducted summer league exhibitions there every year since 2004. Once an offseason afterthought, that summer tournament has become one of the city’s most visible events, with dozens of games taking place both at Thomas & Mack and the adjacent Cox Pavilion. This year, more than 170,000 people attended the games over 11 days, according to UNLV.

“That’s home for us,” said Albert Hall, founder of California-based VSL Properties, which operates the tournament on behalf of the NBA. “They’ve been there for us from the beginning. Does it have the bells and whistles of the new arenas? No. But it’s home to us. We love it.”

According to its lease agreement with VSL Properties, UNLV receives a fixed fee of $175,000 for two-week rental of Thomas & Mack and Cox Pavilion, in addition to receiving a $5 cut for every single-session ticket and $12 for every season-ticket package sold to the games. UNLV also gets comped for event merchandising and programs ($25,000), catering ($5,000), and for renting other athletic facilities, on an hourly basis, for the teams to practice in between their games.

The current contract with the NBA is set to expire in 2025, but a league official said it has no plans to change venues. This upcoming NBA season will feature the first in-season tournament, with the semifinal and final games slated to be played in December at T-Mobile Arena. 

The Mountain West Conference, meanwhile, has hosted its men’s and women’s basketball tournament at Thomas & Mack since 2000, aside from a brief interruption when the games were played in Denver from 2004 to 2006. The MWC’s current contract, which is set to expire after this college basketball season, pays UNLV a $160,000 fixed rental fee in addition to $9 per single-game ticket sold. (Additionally, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority pays the Mountain West $300,000 each year to come to town, irrespective of the venue.)

After a three-year agreement between the league and Thomas & Mack concluded last year, the parties extended the deal for another season. While the league seems intent on maintaining its Vegas residency, there’s an open question as to whether it would look to relocate elsewhere in the city.

“Hopefully we can provide a better deal [after 2024],” Newcomb said, though his optimism is measured. “If it comes down to marketing dollars or sponsors though, we’re in trouble. So you have to rely on those relationships.”

The Pac-12 played its conference tourney at the 30-year-old MGM Grand Garden Arena from 2013-2016, before relocating to T-Mobile Arena beginning in 2017. The 15,020-seat Grand Garden Arena, in the MGM Grand hotel, has been a mainstay for boxing matches and professional wrestling over the years. However, as an aging venue, it doesn’t have what are now considered critical features, such as a center-hung scoreboard.

One intriguing alternative to Thomas & Mack, according to a source familiar with the MWC’s thinking, is Mandalay Bay’s 12,000-seat Michelob Ultra Arena (formerly Mandalay Bay Events Center), the home of the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces and site of the Pac-12 women’s basketball tournament. Given the MWC tourney average game attendance figures have tended to top out in the four-figures, the Michelob Ultra Arena is arguably a more tailored fit.

A spokesperson for Mandalay Bay did not respond to a request for comment.

Eight years ago, Thomas & Mack underwent a $72 million renovation that included essential improvements along with features like an observation deck with a panorama of The Strip. More recently, Newcomb said, the athletic department has been considering a new capital campaign that would further modernize the building, potentially with the addition of a court-side club and more premium hospitality offerings. 

Yet there’s only faint hope that Thomas & Mack will ever return to its former stature. After moonlighting for most of its life in the pros, the center has become mostly just a college basketball arena with its financial future resting on the success of its cornerstone tenant. That’s also proved a challenge.

In 1986, UNLV men’s basketball program had the sixth-highest attendance in the nation with an average of 16,123 fans per game–and sustained its place in the top-25 nationally through 2014. Over the last decade, however, those figures have plummeted, with the program averaging just over 5,300 fans per game.

It’s a far cry from when Newcomb was a UNLV student in the early 1990s, and spent many a night sleeping on the sidewalk near Thomas & Mack’s ticket office for a chance to score seats to a game.

Now in his 27th year working for the school, Newcomb yields to the long-standing concession so many once sought-after Las Vegas establishments have been forced to reckon with: “Times have changed.”