Las Vegas, the self-styled Entertainment Capital of the World, has played host to some of the biggest names: from Elvis and Elton to Sir Tom and Britney. But the city is yet to host a major professional sports franchise.

From its gaming community to its extreme heat, residents of the city have heard every excuse in the book as to why it should not have a representative in any of America’s major sporting leagues.

Recently, proposals have suggested that a foreign sport, soccer, could provide the professional sports franchise Las Vegans seek. According to MLS2LV, the organisation looking to oversee this movement, the people of Las Vegas are in favour of their vision: a 19,000 to 24,000-seat, $200m stadium, downtown, that a Major League Soccer team could call home as of the 2017 season.

“We have a piece of property that, for a long time, the city has had earmarked as an arena, but those deals fell apart,” said Justin Findlay, managing partner of Findlay Sports and Entertainment, one of two private investors behind the MLS2LV proposals. “It was an easy transition to propose a stadium, and it has [so far] had a better effect than a basketball or hockey team.”

The vision for the stadium, which needs to be secured before an official bid can be put to MLS, looks glamorous: a state-of-the-art footballing beacon, the Las Vegas strip beaming in the background. The difficulty facing MLS2LV, though, is that some of funding for the stadium will have to come from the people of Vegas, the same people who want improved sewerage systems … and well-funded educational facilities … and upgrades to their police force.

MLS2LV is proposing that the city borrow up to $50m, according to local reports. (This figure has continued to shift as the group works on tightening proposals ahead of the non-binding decision date for the stadium, 1 October.) The organisation itself – made up up of Findlay Sports and Entertainment and the Cordish Companies, which specialises in real estate, gaming, entertainment, and private equity holding – will supply $44.25m, and will assume an additional debt of $65m. The proposals also call for the city to contribute $3m annually for 30 years; $14m will need to be spent on infrastructure costs; and $22m for a new Tourism Improvement District, which it is believed will generate enough in sales tax revenue to cover this figure.

“It’s not uncommon for public funding to be part of the conversation in a large community project such as this one,” the mayor of Las Vegas, Carolyn Goodman, told the Guardian in an email correspondence.

We are the only city of our size in the nation that does not have a professional sports team. We have to decide what kind of city we want to be, and that means making decisions about what projects we want to fund.

Las Vegas, then, must now decide whether a professional football team is not only something that it wants, but is also a practical and worthy use of city money which could be spent elsewhere.

‘Las Vegas is completely different’

The bright lights of Las Vegas. Photograph: Mitchell Funk/Getty Images

Public funding in professional sports may seem like an obscure proposal to those looking at it through the Premier League’s privately-funded, billionaire-run specs. But according to MLS2LV, in American sport it has proven to be a viable alternative.

In recent soccer-specific stadium constructions, the likes of Orlando City, Houston Dynamo, Sporting Kansas City, Philadelphia Union and Toronto FC have successfully used public funds, the organisation claims (though figures seen were unattributed). Sporting Kansas City, for example, created their $200m stadium, Sporting Park, which opened in May 2011, by using $50m of their own money and $150m funded through sale tax revenue bonds. In 2013 the team, who have seen a huge spike in popularity, won the MLS title in their new home.

“In the likes of Kansas City – with the Kansas City Chiefs, the Kansas City Royals – that [visiting the stadium] is what most people go and do,” said Las Vegas councilman Stavros Anthony, one of seven representatives who will vote on the stadium proposals.

Most cities are like that; whereas Las Vegas is completely different … there is no place, probably in the world, that has the entertainment options that we do.

Few in Vegas argue that the passion for soccer in the city is any different for elsewhere in the country – including all of the council members who were interviewed for this piece.

The southern Nevada city has a population of around 2.1 million, and 40 million tourists who visit the area annually (more than 100,000 a day). This, combined with fact that a 33% of the community is Spanish-speaking or Latino, makes for not only a home demographic that on paper will lean towards supporting a local team, but also the potential for football-loving tourists to catch the occasional match, Mayor Goodman said.

Justin Findlay noted that through very little outreach, his group has already received nearly 6,000 committed season-ticket requests from locals. This makes up one-third of the 18,000-plus fans MLS2LV proposes the stadium will need in order to see a return for the funds put in by the city.

“I think there is a huge future for soccer in Las Vegas,” said councilman Bob Beers, who is opposed to proposals being put forward by MLS2LV. “We would all like to see this happen, but the question is this: is this a proper role for government?”

Beers says that no matter how fierce the local fervour for football, with there being no certainties about how successful the team will be – both financially and on the field of play – it is not worth risking taxpayer dollars, which, he believes, would be better spent on the likes of roads and schools. (In recent years, there have also been calls for public funds to be better spent on mental-health care and monsoon-season procedures.)

In a recent council meeting, during which the seven members opted to delay a decision on the proposed stadium until 1 October, it was announced that in the worst-case scenario, the city would have to pay $8m per year in debt (around 2% of its annual operating budget).

In the best-case scenario, though, it was estimated that Cordish/Findlay would have paid off around 59% of the stadium costs after 30 years – a figure that has continued to look less of a burden to the city, with more of the funding coming privately. As well as 18 certified MLS games, the stadium could host 79 events in 2017, such as community and private events, concerts and local sports, like lacrosse. This tilts towards an argument that taxpayer dollars will be used for the community – albeit that ticket prices could be seen as private income.

Combining these additional events with projected attendance figures would mean the stadium would generate $7.4m in revenue in 2017, against $4.95m in expenses, according to the group’s study. The developer and MLS team would pay the $102m entry fee to the league.

“It’s subject to change; we are working on different alternatives right now,” said Findlay. “We want to operate the stadium, so we have gone into this with the idea that we need to really control everything, so that the MLS is at centre … and everything else revolves around it.”

One of the most difficult factors in these projections, Findlay said, is that MLS itself, as well as other outsiders, would like assurance that the team will be able to cope with Vegas’ desert climate – costs that continue to be factored into the proposals. The stadium, which will be based in a city that averages around 310 days of sunshine a year, 134 of these hotter than 32C, will need to be air-conditioned, which goes some way to explaining the higher cost, when compared to, say, Orlando’s similar-sized, $88m arena.

But Vegas also has very low humidity, which, Councilman Beers said, lends itself to encouraging people to play sports. Like elsewhere in America, soccer is extremely popular among youths in Vegas; players can play practically all year round, Beers said, with games at a humid 25C in Chicago or Washington DC proving just as, if not more, draining on the human body than 35C in Vegas.

(Despite the climate, the city successfully hosts the USA Sevens rugby tournament; its university soccer team, the UNLV Rebels, are ranked in the top 25 in the country; and Vegas also acts as a regional hub for youth tournaments, due to its vast amount of accommodation.)

The city will also come up against other areas looking to fill the 2017 MLS expansion slot. MLS2LV admits that even if its solidified stadium plans are finalised by December, when the next round of voting will take place, their formal bid to the league may still be beaten by a proposal from elsewhere. The likes of Austin, Minneapolis and Sacramento are all looking at the possibility of starting an MLS franchise.

“There is no shortage of demand from markets throughout the country to land that final MLS expansion team,” said Dan Courtemanche, executive vice president of communications for the MLS.

The league, Courtemanche said, is fortunate in that it has time on its hands: MLS is aiming for 24 teams by 2020; with the inclusion of Atlanta, New York City FC, Orlando City and David Beckham’s Miami franchise, it is left with just one slot to fill. He added that the league currently has 15 football-specific stadiums, for which there have been a variety of funding options. Some, like the Chicago Fire’s completely public-funded area, have seen taxpayer money spent wisely; others have successfully sought private investment.

From what he has read about the Vegas proposals and discussions the league have had (though nothing official has yet been handed to the MLS), Courtemanche said MLS likes the idea of a city with a high Hispanic and millennial population hosting a franchise, which could work in Las Vegas’ favour.

‘There really is an appetite for professional sport’

Werner Kok of South Africa scores a Cup-winning try against New Zealand at the USA Sevens in Las Vegas. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Before the city submits such a bid, though, a metropolis built upon bright lights and gambling must decide on a stadium that some councillors, like Beers and Anthony, believe is essentially a gamble of public funds. Their hand, currently backed by one other member, consists of the argument that public funds should never be used for philosophical outcomes: a private investor, in a city where capitalism thrives, would be more than welcome to start a team, they said.

For those on the opposite side of the table – the mayor included – it is less the case of an initial bluff, and more a case of building a sense of certainty that a Vegas-based football team is a hand that will win. The finances behind the proposed stadium continue to tighten; the ardour for football appears to be there; and with the help of technology which the city can partially fund, the climate can be kept under control.

“There have been quite a few different proposals put on the table in our city over these past seven or eight years,” said Mayor Goodman, “all of which tell you there really is an appetite for professional sport.”

The city now waits to see if the stadium proposals will mean soccer could be the sport that gives Vegas its first major sports franchise, or if, like plans for NBA, NFL and NHL franchises, it will be left in the dust, keeping sports fans waiting.

As Hunter S Thompson once put it: “For a loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth.”