By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
It’s no secret that UNLV football games are not exactly the hottest ticket in Las Vegas, but university sports marketers are rolling out an ‘Eat All You Can’ food deal, hoping to appeal to the stomachs of UNLV football fans to draw more bodies into Sam Boyd Stadium in 2018.
UNLV Athletics are pushing the ‘Eat All You Can’ ticket deal through a three-game, $79 per ticket package that allows fans to attend UNLV home football games with UTEP Sept. 8, Fresno State Nov. 3 and Nevada, Reno Nov. 24 and consume all the nachos, hot dogs, popcorn and soda they can from the “Snack Attack” concession stands around Sam Boyd Stadium.
And fans who have $99 season ticket deals for all six home games can pay another $30 — or five bucks per game — so that they, too, can buy into the Eat All You Can deal, said Mark Wallington, who handles public relations duties for UNLV football.
The deal kicker is fans must buy the Eat All You Can ticket deal at least a day before the game because the deal is not available on game day, Wallington told LVSportsBiz.com Tuesday during the Mountain West Conference media summit.
Wallington said the Eat All You Can ticket deal is the first of its type in college football. (UNLV Athletics call the deal Eat All You Can and not “all you can eat.”)
Limitless food deals at sports venues are sometimes used by minor league baseball teams on slow Monday or other weekday nights.
UNLV football is also offering the Eat All You Can deal as a group package, with tickets as low as $16 per ticket for groups of 20 or more fans.
The UNLV football game attendance is below the Mountain West Conference average attendance of 28,000 a game. And officials during the Mountain West gathering Tuesday lauded UNLV for trying to be creative with the limitless food deal to attract fans to football games.
“It’s a good idea. We have to be creative to get fans to come to the stadiums,” said Craig Thompson, the Mountain West Conference commissioner. “We have to do anything that attracts a broader fan base.” (LVSportsBiz.com supposes an all you can eat deal would, indeed, make your fans “broader.”)
Wallington said the limitless hot dogs will be Nathan hot dogs — a well-known brand.
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And Mike Newcomb, Sam Boyd Stadium executive director for UNLV, said there won’t be any running out of food supplies with huge freezers at the venue.
Newcomb doesn’t expect long lines to be an issue. “We will utilize the ‘Snack Attacks’ (concession stands.) We will have all the points of sale open so we will be prepared to handle the crowds or direct them down to another Snack Attack,” Newcomb explained.
Wallington noted, “We want to make sure that nobody is stuck on line so that they’re not seeing the game.”
Colorado State football coach Mike Bobo said he was impressed with the food strategy to draw UNLV fans to home games. “Everybody is trying to be creative.”
But one of Bobo’s players at Colorado State, linebacker Josh Watson, had only one question about the UNLV food deal: “Is cotton candy included?”
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The UNLV football team moves into the Raiders stadium starting in 2020, but a Mountain West team has already christened a new football stadium. Colorado State played its inaugural season in a new on-campus football stadium in 2017. Coach Mike Bobo said the stadium was $220 million and packs 40,000 fans.
San Diego voters will be voting on a proposed San Diego State football stadium referendum at the polls.
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The Las Vegas Bowl, now the Mitsubishi Motors Las Vegas Bowl, has a Mountain West Conference affiliation for two more years. And Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson said the conference is negotiating with Las Vegas Events to have a league team in the bowl game when the football event moves to the new Raiders stadium starting in 2020. There also might be a second bowl game in the Raiders’ $1.8 billion domed stadium. By the way, the stadium will use a grass playing surface for the Raiders and an artificial surface for the UNLV football team.
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Just in case you’re wondering, UNLV is one of the nine Mountain West Conference schools that sell alcohol at sports events. There are a dozen MWC schools.
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