LVCVA Tourism Agency Approves More Than $800,000 For Sports Events In Las Vegas
By Alan Snel
LVSportsBiz.com
Las Vegas public tourism agency’s job is to attract visitors to Southern Nevada, but the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority (LVCVA) also functions as an unofficial sports commission when you consider the tourism board Tuesday approved more than $800,000 for sports event sponsorships.
LVCVA chief Steve Hill also chairs the local Raiders stadium public board, so he’s clued into the sports tourism scene. And Hill’s successor, Rossi Ralenkotter, who left the LVCVA under a cloud of travel spending misuse issues, was a big baseball fan who helped the tourism agency give $80 million in public money in October 2017 as a naming rights sponsorship to Summerlin developer Howard Hughes Corporation, which built a $150 million palatial minor league baseball park for its Las Vegas Aviators.
Technically speaking, the LVCVA board approved the expenditures of these public dollars for Las Vegas Events — the agency’s non-profit events arm that gives the hotel room tax money to various sports (and music) event organizers in the form of sponsorships. Let’s take a look at the sports events receiving your public dollars:
^ $175,000 for a pro soccer tournament title game called the Leagues Cup Final at Sam Boyd Stadium on Sept. 18 that involves a tourney of four Major League Soccer teams and four professional Mexican teams.
^$115,000 for an LVCVA golf course suite at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Summerlin Oct. 2-6.
^$150,000 for the Rock ‘n Roll Marathon Nov. 14-17.
^$100,000 for the World Series of Team Roping Dec. 7-15 (when the National Finals Rodeo is held.)
^$275,000 for the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics for national meetings in 2024 and 2026.
(The LVCVA board also approved $150,000 for Las Vegas Events to give the money to the Life is Beautiful concert in Las Vegas for Sept. 20-22, but that’s not sports.)
None of the LVCVA board members questioned the sports spending except Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, who inquired what the LVCVA is getting for $275,000 when it gives that money to the college athletic directors convention.
Hill explained the athletic directors will be picking host cities for NCAA sports title events, so the money could help with the ADs selecting Las Vegas as a host town for college sports championships because the convention ” allows them to be exposed to the destination.”
The NBA Summer League, the annual professional basketball extravaganza with all 30 NBA teams and the Chinese and Croatian national teams playing 83 games from July 5-15 at UNLV, also benefits financially from the LVCVA and Las Vegas Events cash.
About $100,000 was given to the NBA Summer League this year, while another $90,000 is going to the WNBA All-Star Game at Mandalay Bay Events Center July 27. And about $150,000 is going to the USA Basketball event in August. Even the G League received about $40,000 in public tourism dollars.
Tuesday is Day 5 at the NBA Summer League, which is drawing strong attendance at Thomas & Mack Center and the connected Cox Pavilion. Las Vegas Events President Pat Christenson, in giving a quarterly report to the LVCVA board, told the LVCVA board members that the NBA Summer League “shook the house” at Thomas & Mack Center on Day 1 Friday when a 7.1 earthquake in SoCal rattled Thomas & Mack and Las Vegas.
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