By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
The Las Vegas Lights soccer team is outsourcing its ticket sales to a well-known name in the sports-business industry — Learfield IMG.
The Lights laid off its ticket sales staff and will now use Learfield IMG College Ticket Solutions, which will have five on-site salespeople looking to sell tickets for the 2021 season. There will no fans watching home Lights games at downtown Cashman Field in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed the lives of 150,000 Americans.
These Learfield IMG college ticket staffers working on the Las Vegas Lights FC account are not the Learfield crew working with UNLV Athletics to sell sponsorships. That’s a separate division under the same parent company.
The Lights had about five in-house workers, on average, on ticket sales, said Brett Lashbrook, the Lights owner. “It varied but on average a similar amount to what we’ll have moving forward with IMG Learfield,” Lashbrook said Wednesday.
The Lights, now in their third season in Las Vegas, play Saturday night (7:30pm kickoff; live on ESPN+) for their home opener against in-state rival Reno 1868 FC in the first leg of the annual Silver State Classic.
The Lights are an independent team playing in the United Soccer League, the Triple A of professional soccer. Some of the Major League Soccer teams have their Triple club in the USL, but the Lights are an indy team owned by Brett Lashbrook of Las Vegas.
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