Las Vegas's so-called "fun economy" is worth an astonishing $13.7 trillion when accounting for tourism, sports, and entertainment revenue streams, according to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' Zero Labs. This dwarfs the size of major sectors like healthcare, with Las Vegas' leisure and hospitality ecosystem estimated to be nearly 9 times larger than Big Pharma. These figures come as Nevada's Sin City preps to accommodate visiting football fans for the Super Bowl this Sunday, February 11.

Yahoo Finance's Rachelle Akuffo and Akiko Fujita break down the details.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, they're talking to me ahead of the big game, Rachelle. Officials in Vegas expecting roughly 330,000 visitors for the big game, expected to generate roughly $600 million in revenue. But there's an interesting intersection that Vegas is now hitting on, something that UNLV has called the fun economy. We're talking about sports, entertainment, and then tourism. And that's why they're able to attract a lot of these sporting events now.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: I mean, when you look at that $13.7 trillion for the fun economy. That's equivalent to about 14% of the global economy. And to put that in perspective of other industries, an estimated 9 times the size of big pharma and 5 times-- nearly 5 times the size of the global automotive industry. And you raise a good point about it really being this intersection in a way that we haven't seen before. I mea, you know, Vegas, Nevada, it has the weather. It has a lot of conferences that come.

But then when you factor in sports and performances, the Super Bowl, this very global stage for Vegas in the spotlight. And something else that I'm looking at, there's a project-- a $10 billion project, which is going to expand their sports, including an NBA arena, a hotel, a resort, but a high-speed rail system connecting it to the city of Los Angeles. So then you sort of broaden it out to that sort of access as well. And that's supposed to be due in 2028. Vegas is really setting itself up very well here.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah. But sports betting really got the ball rolling there. So certainly, a lot of leagues looking at that as a destination now.