There are actual legal definitions of what is and is not in a city, but you pooh-pooh legality when it's pointed out the team will not be playing in the legal municipality of "Las Vegas". Now you're citing it as a deciding factor?
To the point: Do you think GM McPhee was thinking of a legal definition when he mentioned "small businesses"?
By the way, the Las Vegas Small Business Association award winner this year was EggWorks, which owns a chain of six restaurants locally.
https://www.sba.gov/about-sba/sba-n...nces-2016-nevada-small-business-award-winners
That small business might have bought a half dozen season tickets. More importantly, if a SIX-restaurant chain is small business, owning a hotel or casino certainly is!
I just don't really understand your attachment to the Las Vegas vs Paradise thing. I realize it's a fairly unique municipal setup for a large city, but the arena is in "Las Vegas," it's just not in the City of Las Vegas.
Like I said before, if you sign legal documents with a notary in Paradise they'll say that they were signed at Las Vegas, Nevada or Clark County, Nevada. They would almost certainly not say Paradise, NV. Hell, The University of Nevada Las Vegas is in Paradise. Paradise doesn't really exist as anything other than a way for Clark County to keep portions of the county organized and to get the input of the local residents via a town advisory board. There's tons of other examples of this in Clark County like Whitney, Enterprise, Spring Valley (which is larger than just the Spring Valley neighborhood,) Lone Mountain, Winchester, etc. yet nobody would say they work in Lone Mountain.
Heck, even the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police have to call their dispatcher when they're writing tickets to find out whether they're in the city or the county to make sure they send people to the correct traffic court. People don't know whether they're in the City or the County until they get property taxes, and even then they'd be hard pressed to tell you which town within Clark County they live.
Mailing something to the T-Mobile Arena with the address of Paradise, NV isn't even acceptable by the USPS.
https://tools.usps.com/go/ZipLookup...state=Select&urbanCode=&postalCode=89158&zip= (notice that addressing it to City Center, which was the temporary name of that MGM Resorts development is listed as a recognized name, but Paradise is not.)
Want to mail your input directly to the Paradise Town Advisory Board at the Paradise Park Community Center? Don't address it to Paradise:
https://tools.usps.com/go/ZipLookup...state=Select&urbanCode=&postalCode=89121&zip=
To the point of the small business thing, there are legal definitions. While he may not be using the legal definitions to the word, trying to fit a casino into a small business category would be deceptive. I'd tend to think he's being honest and that these businesses are small business versus assuming he's lying to cover up the fact that casinos purchased the tickets.