By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Meet Brooks Downing, basketball tourney traveling man.
He’s in Las Vegas Tuesday as the college basketball tournament organizer for the MGM Resorts Main Event, which brought together Colorado, TCU, Wyoming and Clemson Sunday and today.
The former Kentucky sports information director is hopping planes left and right as he puts on five college hoops tourneys for 55 games in four cities in three countries from Fort Myers, Florida to Las Vegas to Victoria, British Columbia near Vancouver in Canada during this holiday season.
Downing is also bringing together Kentucky and Utah for a Dec. 18 match-up at T-Mobile Arena.
He pulls off the basketball tournaments in Las Vegas without any financial subsidy from Las Vegas Events and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), which are known for writing checks to entice sports events to come to Las Vegas. Las Vegas Events, the non-profit events arm of the LVCVA, pays hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to each of four college basketball conferences (Pac-12, Mountain West, WCC and WAC) that stage their tournaments in Las Vegas in March.
Downing noted he received $75,000 – $200,000 from other cities’ tourism agencies to stage college basketball tournaments in their cities.
Downing has a business model for every market. In Las Vegas, he said he’s breaking even thanks to a hodge-podge of revenue sources like MGM Resorts’ contributions, sponsorships, payments from the college teams and ticket sales. On this night, TCU easily handled Wyoming, a Mountain West team, 64-47, in a tidy hour and 40 minutes.
Downing said when he stages college basketball tourneys with mid-major basketball programs, those colleges pay him because it’s hard for those colleges to find brand-name universities that want to play mid-majors in holiday tournaments.
But when he brings in college royalty like the Kentuckys and North Carolinas, Downing has to pay those blue-chip universities to participate in his tournaments.
UNLV, which played Tuesday night and defeated Jackson State, 80-57, at Thomas & Mack Center to move to 3-5, played in the MGM Resorts Main Event only two years ago in 2017. That year, UNLV defeated Rice and Utah to win the MGM Resorts Main Event and a fancy WWE-style belt.
By the looks of the crowd at T-Mobile Arena Tuesday, there could not have been more than 1,000 fans in the crowd. The arena’s upper bowl was not used. Even the UNLV team drew more of a crowd than that Tuesday evening.
That’s why Downing has to scramble to wheel and deal to massage revenues from any source.
“You’re cutting deals everywhere you can,” Downing said.
Downing puts on more than just basketball. He’s back at T-Mobile Arena for a college hockey called the Fortress Invitational that will bring the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Cornell, Providence and Ohio State together Jan. 3 and 4. Downing is partnering with the Vegas Golden Knights, which is hosting the four-team ice hockey tourney.
MGM Resorts International, a part-owner of T-Mobile Arena with LA-based Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and Golden Knights owner Bill Foley (a 1967 West Point graduate), hopes the hockey tournament in January can seed the hopes of staging a college hockey Frozen Four at the arena on the Strip.
The Golden Knights have packaged two of the January college hockey games in a $350 holiday ticket deal for fans on a season ticket wait list that includes three VGK games, plus the two college hockey games and a $25 team store gift card in the $350 package deal.
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