A professional court inside a resort
Before today’s arenas, the original MGM Grand offered a very different sporting attraction: professional jai alai. This was the MGM property that later became Bally’s and then Horseshoe, not the present MGM Grand on Tropicana Avenue. The Neon Museum dates the operation’s beginning to 1974 and describes an opening season averaging about 1,300 spectators a night. Resort guests could buy admission and wager on matches. Players became part of the Strip’s entertainment economy without belonging to a conventional American team league.
What spectators actually watched
Players caught and hurled a pelota with a curved wicker cesta strapped to one hand. The ball traveled against the front wall of a long court, with side and back walls keeping the rally alive and a screen protecting spectators. Nevada Magazine’s contemporary Winter 1975 report describes a court 177 feet long, 55 feet wide and 55 feet high. It records 2,200 seats, 36 professionals and twelve games a night, six nights a week. Singles and doubles used different target scores. These are specifications of that historical operation, not a capacity for any present-day arena.
The people who kept it moving
The same 1975 account names Jesús Belaustegui as manager and matchmaker, drawing players from the Basque region, Mexico and Florida. Hal Coddon announced the action. Behind the spectacle, Rafael Gurechea repaired cestas; Juan Carlos Lupi and Fernando Ortuondo helped maintain the balls and officiate. Dry desert conditions made equipment care part of the job. A match depended on specialized craft as well as athletic skill.
A migration story as well as a sports story
Mark Maynard’s 2024 Nevada Magazine feature follows the families who built lives around the court. Josu Aldecoaotalora and his wife Pilar arrived after earlier stops in Indonesia and the Philippines. José Echenique remembers his father’s teammates and the fronton. The players’ families linked Las Vegas to a much wider Basque sporting world.
The fire was an interruption, not the final chapter
The November 1980 MGM fire interrupted play, but the strongest newer histories place the permanent closure in 1983. Maynard describes falling attendance and the commercial appeal of meeting space; the fronton was ultimately converted. The Neon Museum also gives 1983 as the end. Some older accounts say the sport never returned after the fire. ArenaLV has corrected that claim in its timeline and date archive. An older article’s publication date remains valid even when one of its historical conclusions needs correction.
The community lasted longer than the court
The Lagun Onak Basque Club grew from these local ties around the end of the jai alai years. José Mari Beristain helped establish the club. Gatherings and mutual support continued into the next generation, long after professional play disappeared.
Reading the record carefully
Accounts also disagree about the debut and seat count. Las Vegas Advisor associates the fronton with the hotel’s December 1973 opening; the museum and 2024 magazine history use 1974. The contemporary 1975 scan gives 2,200 seats, while the later feature rounds the room to 2,000. Those differences are preserved here instead of manufacturing an exact first-match anniversary. Start with the readable original magazine scan, then compare the later histories.