Las Vegas Poised To Host NCAA Championship Events Thanks To Under-the-Radar Efforts

By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com

 

For decades the NCAA shied away from staging its national tournaments and sports championship events in Las Vegas because of the big, bad boogieman of sports gambling.

 

No more.

 

Now Las Vegas is poised to compete to host everything from NCAA basketball regional finals to the college championships in sports ranging from wrestling to volleyball.

 

While Las Vegas has focused on big-time major-league sports teams such as the Vegas Golden Knights and NFL Raiders, a former UNLV athletic director and his trusty sidekick have quietly worked under the media radar to form the foundation for a new era of college sports championships and events coming to a sports venue near you in Las Vegas.

 

Former UNLV Athletic Director Jim Livengood from 2010-13 and former Senior Assistant Athletic Director D.J. Allen, who worked with Livengood during those same years, have chatted behind the scenes with MGM Resorts International executives, Las Vegas Events President Pat Christenson and Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority staffers about making Las Vegas a mecca for hosting NCAA title events.

 

“All the stars are lining up,” Livengood told LVSportsBiz.com over lunch Wednesday. “Vegas has all the amenities. It’s one thing to hear about Las Vegas. It’s another thing to experience it.”

 

While the U.S. Supreme Court decision in May cleared the path for legalized sports gambling across the nation, a little-reported decision by college sports’ national association of athletic directors in 2015 to hold its annual gathering of thousands of college ADs at Mandalay Bay in 2020 and 2022 opened the door to the NCAA picking Las Vegas as a future staging ground for college sports titles.

 

Livengood, a former athletic director at Southern Illinois, Washington State and Arizona, was the pied piper leading the charge that the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and its thousands of ADs and sports administrators at every level of college sports hold its annual pow-wow in Las Vegas.

 

The fact that college sports industry’s key decision-makers three years ago picked Las Vegas to host the convention opened the door to the NCAA putting Las Vegas on its radar as a potential host city for collegiate sports championships.

 

With more than 6,000 members in the athletic directors association, there promises to be lots of negotiations at the 2020 convention in Las Vegas about Sin City hosting NCAA championship events. Back in 2015, Las Vegan and tennis star Andre Agassi  was in Orlando at the time and even lobbied the national association of ADs to pick Las Vegas to hold its 2020 convention.

 

“You have all the decision-makers coming to Las Vegas. Think about the power of that,” said Allen, a communications/performance coach who works with businesses on applying principles from sports.

 

When the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for states outside Nevada to ban sports betting, the NCAA took notice because now it will be logistically difficult to stage college sports championships as more and more states legalize sports gambling in the coming years, Livengood said Wednesday.

 

He noted the NCAA never had a by-law prohibiting a college sport from holding its national championship in Las Vegas.

 

 

“It was a principle,” said Livengood, former chairman of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament selection committee in 2003.

 

“The NCAA board of governors didn’t want to move ahead until the New Jersey case was settled,” Livengood observed.

 

Las Vegas already hosts four college basketball conference tournaments such as the Pac-12 and Mountain West tourneys in early March, but those are not NCAA championship-related sports events. The Pac-12 conference hoops tourney, which will also include the women’s basketball conference tournament, is probably the biggest high-profile college sports event in Las Vegas outside of the college bowl game.

 

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The NCAA has committees in various sports picking host cities for college titles in 90 sports and Las Vegas’ airport, lodging, food/beverage resources and no need to rent cars makes the city an ideal player to gain a piece of the college championship host action, Livengood said. He said he can see Las Vegas competing for a Frozen Four with T-Mobile Arena in the market.

 

 

With women’s college basketball struggling to draw big crowds in the early round and regionals, Livengood thought it would feasible to bring the entire Sweet 16 of the national women’s hoops tourney to Las Vegas.

 

Livengood and Allen have been making the rounds to MGM Resorts, the LVCVA and Las Vegas Events (the private not-for-profit that is funded by an LVCVA grant) to figure out what NCAA championship events would be the best fits in the calendar for Las Vegas’ tourism industry. For example, there’s no sense bringing in a college sports championship to town when hotel occupancy rates are already in the high 90 percent range.

 

The NCAA’s biggest championship host prize — college basketball’s Final Four — would be college sports’ juiciest financial plum for the new Raiders stadium that being built on 62 acres on the west side of Interstate 15 across the highway from Mandalay Bay.

 

 

When Livengood chaired the college basketball championship committee in 2003, his panel picked the Houston Texans’ football stadium to host the 2011 Final Four. College basketball, because of its mega-million Final Four TV right deals, provides 98 percent of the NCAA budget.

 

Livengood said the Raiders stadium could be a potential Final Four host because there “are very few Final Four sites in the West.”

 

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