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The Morning After: Las Vegas Recovers From Garth, Conor and Giant Venue Crowds

By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com

It’s about ten minutes before 7 AM Sunday and the three middle-aged guys on electric bikes with fat tires pull up to the security post at Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium.

The 18-wheelers are already inside the giant domed stadium standing ready to haul the music set of all-world country music entertainer Garth Brooks, who 12 hours earlier brought more than 65,000 people together under one roof at the NFL stadium that hosted not a single fan during last season’s eight Las Vegas Raiders home games.

The trio were bringing their e-bikes into the stadium because they find that the electric-powered bikes that look like scooters with their smaller fat tires are the best way to get around the stadium to break down the set and send Brooks’ gear and crew packing to the next stop on the tour.

They waited patiently as the security guard contacted folks on the inside of the stadium to give the green light to the e-bike guys.

It was a hectic night in Las Vegas as T-Mobile Arena also hosted hosted UFC 264 a mile to the north on the other side of the interstate.

By daybreak, work crews were cleaning up the water bottles and debris from the parking lots surrounding the stadium.

The stadium’s bag policy caught a lot of people off-guard.

I saw husbands and boyfriends walking women’s purses back to their cars. And the stadium made lots of money with a bag check-in program, which cost $20 per bag to check in.

..

It was after the show when tens of thousands of Garth Brooks fans spilled into the Las Vegas night as the temperatures were smoldering in the mid-100s.

Lots of people walked along a closed Hacienda Avenue that spanned Interstate 15 and led them back to their cars parked in Mandalay Bay and other hotel property garages along the Strip.

Jason Dinant: “I left early and it was a breeze. Thank goodness. My friends told me it was a nightmare trying to leave.”

Kristina Swallow: “We parked at Mandalay Bay and had no issues arriving or leaving…”

Some called Ubers to whisk them away.

Others who prepaid $100 for on-site stadium parking reported it worked effectively after the concert ended.

April Hiett: “We parked in the stadium parking and was pretty easy entering and exiting the event.”

Joe D’Amico: “We walked out the main entrance was a two minute walk to the parking lot we made a turn we made another turn no traffic I was on Warm Springs on my way home within five or six minutes. Well worth the hundred dollars.”

It was a mixed bag of reactions.

Alex Acuna: “Insane, our car service (pre-arranged) just never showed, walked a few miles west to finally get a ride.”
Over at T-Mobile Arena, there were still bottle and cans left over from the UFC fight show that had announced attendance of 20,062 and gate revenue of about $16 million.

Alan Snel: Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com. Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle. In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com. After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent. Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.
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