By Devin Taylor

West Virginia has no professional sports team. But if they did, would the state of West Virginia enjoy it? Or would it take away from their beloved WVU football team.

West Virginia has no professional sports team in the state. West Virginia had minor league baseball teams for a while but as of December 2020 they officially have no more. Although West Virginia has no professional sports team, their heart and soul is their WVU sports, and they treat it as such. However, if West Virginia got a professional sports team, it would take the pressure off of West Virginia University and its players who are still college students, it would take the load off of their shoulders of being that this is really all that West Virginia has and that one of the main reason that’s have to be perfect is so they don’t get scolded by not only the fan base that comes with collegiate sports but the whole state as well. 

Not only would it take the load off the collegiate athletes, bringing a professional sports team to West Virginia would increase their economic growth and increase the tourism of the state.

West Virginia University sports brings in about 80 million dollars revenue per year, so that would mean that a professional sports team would mean that less money would go towards WVU in a way, but it does mean that the amount of support that the team would have would be extremely high.

Much like West Virginia, Las Vegas didn’t have a professional sports team for a very long time till 2017 until they received an NHL team, the Vegas Golden Knights, and eventually the NFL’s Oakland Raiders moved to Las Vegas to become the Las Vegas Raiders so West Virginia could have the same scenario. Vegas is a much more attractive city in terms of tourism, but what it did was give Nevada residents something to root for an attend instead of just UNLV games. Now, they have several sports teams and some weight has been taken off the shoulders of the UNLV sports. This could also work the same for WVU athletes.