Raiders To Help Las Vegas Bowl Sell Tickets, Market Game When Bowl Game Moves To New Stadium In 2020
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
With the Las Vegas Bowl moving from good ol’ Sam Boyd Stadium near the Las Vegas Wash in 2019 to the Raiders’ luxurious, “glass-wall palace” stadium near the Strip in 2020, the Raiders will be helping the ESPN-owned bowl game on ticket sales, sponsors and stadium preparation.
“The Raiders are assisting us on how we want to scale the stadium, how we want to price the stadium,” Las Vegas Bowl Executive Director John Saccenti told LVSportsBiz.com after the bowl game’s annual luncheon at the Hard Rock casino-hotel Thursday.
“They want to fill that building,” Saccenti said. “They want to see the bowl game be successful . . . We’re going to try to make the game as affordable as possible and still pay all the bills.”
The Las Vegas Bowl game’s move to the Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium prompted bowl game organizers to say good-bye to the Mountain West Conference as one of the two participating leagues in the bowl game. The Pac-12 will stay in the Las Vegas Bowl, but now a brand-name college team from the SEC and Big 10 will alternate playing the Pac-12 team starting with an SEC/Pac-12 showdown in 2020. The Pac-12 vs. SEC/Big 10 deal is for six years. More on the new bowl game deal here.
Moving the Las Vegas Bowl to a more high-powered bowl game tier means tickets will cost more, the naming rights value will be more expensive and the current $3.2 million payout to the two teams will go up, too, Saccenti said.
Mitsubishi Motors is in the final year of its naming rights agreement with the Las Vegas Bowl. The car company will get a crack at renewing the bowl game’s title sponsorship, but it’s unclear where those talks will lead at this point, Saccenti said.
The bowl game’s current Mountain West/Pac-12 match-up will end with the 2019 game and move to the new football stadium in Los Angeles that is being built by the NFL LA Rams.
“It’s a little bittersweet,” Saccenti said of the Mountain West leaving the Las Vegas Bowl. Here are some 2019 bowl game projections for Las Vegas.
Take a look at the complete LVSportsBiz.com interview with Saccenti.
This year’s game, the final one at Sam Boyd Stadium, is set for Dec. 21 at 4:30 p.m. and it will be televised by ABC. Starting in 2020 at the Raiders stadium, the game will be played after Christmas.
The post-Dec. 25 date starting next year is OK with Las Vegas’ hotels and hospitality industry, Saccenti said.
Raiders President Marc Badain attended the bowl game luncheon and shared a few thoughts with the business and tourism folks.
He took a look at the Las Vegas Bowl helmet on the stage and cracked, “I’ve spent too much time talking about helmets.”
That sparked a round of laughs from the luncheon goers, who know about former Raiders receiver Antonio Brown and his issue with the helmet he wanted to use when he was on the Raiders roster.
Badain mentioned Saccenti was chatting him up for a few years about the prospect of shifting the Las Vegas Bowl to the Raiders’ new stadium, going back to the days of when former Gov. Brian Sandoval had a special panel called the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee in action. That committee recommended a new stadium for Las Vegas.
“I have 18 of his business cards,” Badain said of Saccenti.
After Badain’s business card joke, luncheon emcee Chet Buchanan, a local radio personality and UNLV men’s basketball and WNBA Las Vegas Aces arena public address announcer, gave Badain a business card of his own with the career aspiration of working as the Raiders stadium PA announcer one day. Hey, you never know. It’s all about networking.
Saccenti noted the Raiders’ sponsorship man was at the luncheon, too, which could help generate more bowl game sponsors.
“It’s been a great partnership so far,” Saccenti said. “We’ve become good friends.”
The luncheon speaker was former Washington State quarterback Ryan Leaf, who was the 1998 NFL overall number two draft pick by the San Diego Chargers. Leaf struggled as an NFL pro before getting addicted to drugs and landing in jail before making a comeback and getting a college football TV analyst job with ESPN this year.
The Las Vegas Bowl’s shift to the Raiders stadium will be an “upgrade of sorts,” Lead told the luncheon crowd. “We’ll miss the Mountain West. They had a chip on their shoulders every year.”
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