As Las Vegas morphs into a major league city, sports philanthropy ramps up too

MGM Resorts International CEO Bill Hornbuckle didn't have to make an over-the-top sales pitch to convince Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis to donate toward development of Southern Nevada's first comprehensive stand-alone children's hospital. "I laid it all out on how there's a desperate need in this community," Hornbuckle said of his lunch meeting this summer with Davis. The gaming executive and his wife, Wendy, agreed a year ago to oversee a philanthropic outreach to find donations for the $1 billion hospital being built by Intermountain Health. "I went through some of the numbers. I explained how we have to send 2,000 kids everywhere out of state for treatment because we don't have a facility like this," Hornbuckle recalled. "Mark literally said, 'Stop. I'm in.'" A few weeks later, the Raiders announced a $25 million gift, the largest philanthropic donation in the National Football League team's history.

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