Former UNLV Quarterback Created Financial Game Plan For Arenas In Las Vegas
By Pat Christenson, special correspondent for LVSportsBiz.com
Steve Stallworth was one in a crop of Harvey Hyde’s recruits for UNLV’s most successful football team. Yes, there was a time when UNLV won football games. In 1984 they went 11-2 and won the Raisin Bowl. In 1986, he led the Rebels to an upset of the University of Wisconsin.
Randall Cunningham headed to the NFL, Stallworth went to work for real, first at R&R Advertising, then DRG Advertising and then KXTZ radio before joining the Thomas & Mack Center to sell venue signage. Steve would continue accumulating experience. In 1994 and 1995 he worked for three of the more than 20 professional sports teams that made short stints in Las Vegas – the CFL’s Posse, the AFL’s Sting and the Dustdevils of the CISL.
In 1995, while managing the Thomas & Mack Center and Sam Boyd Stadium, I thought (erroneously) that a solution to alleviate the athletic department’s dependency on our venue revenues would be to put together a team to manage all of UNLV’s venue and sports marketing assets (like a professional sports franchise). I went to then AD, Charlie Cavagnaro, who had been on the job less than a month to pitch the idea. He said, “give me a month to look at my marketing team.”
The following week he was back in my office, more than interested in seeing if there was any substance to my idea. I wasn’t the guy to develop the concept, but I knew someone who was. I made Steve an offer. The offer was to develop a plan and proposal to combine UNLV venue and Athletic Marketing assets. If Cavagnaro were to accept it, he had a new job.
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Steve would head the first of its kind collegiate sports marketing department. What was unique about UNLV SMD is it combined the $20M in venue revenues with UNLV football and basketball marketing assets, including scholarship, season, individual game sales, sponsorship, radio, and TV (at a time most colleges were using a third party to sell media). The Thomas & Mack Center did everything in-house. And that’s what we would do here.
Our first move was to learn from the pros (literally). Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo opened the doors to his entire marketing team. We took a two-day crash course and modeled UNLV Sports Marketing after it. In the second year of the SMD, while the football team went 0-11 and the basketball team 6-10, Stallworth’s Sports Marketing Team generated an additional $2 million to the bottom line. But more money did not solve UNLV Athletics’ problems. Rather than get dragged into their culture, we gave it back.
Steve’s skills did not go to waste. In addition to managing all corporate assets, he took over food and beverage.
Steve had amassed some distinctive skills: marketing, ticket sales, management, food and beverage, promotion, broadcasting… But his two most valuable skills were organization and people. He would prove with his next move that job knowledge was secondary to skill.
In 1998, Michael Gaughan was putting the finishing touches on his latest hotel casino – The Orleans which included an arena. Like everything else he built, this would be no ordinary arena. The 7,000 all padded-twenty-inch seat arena also had a marble concourse, 500 club seats, more restrooms (per person) than anywhere in the country and NBA-style suites. But as Walt Disney said, “You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it takes people to make the dream a reality.”
Las Vegas is one of the most competitive entertainment markets in the world. He needed the right person to ensure his commitment to design paid off. There were others with more venue experience than Steve Stallworth, but what Michael Gaughan intuitively saw was the man with the personality and character.
As usual, he was right. Steve quickly put the Orleans Arena on the map booking more than 150 events a year, including concerts, family shows, motorsports, and college basketball. In 2006 Steve brought the first college basketball tournament in a hotel/casino to Vegas. “I can’t tell you how many times I had to kick him out of my office with that idea,” recalls Gaughan. “But he never sees the impossible, only the possible.”
In 2004, he sold Coast Casinos to Boyd Gaming but kept his shares. But corporate life did not suit Gaughan. In 2006, he sold his shares in exchange for one property, the South Coast.
The Gaughan family, especially wife Paula, were imbedded in equestrian sports. Originally, the Orleans Arena was going to be an equestrian venue. He put that on hold until February of 2006, when he opened the South Point Equestrian Center. Again, Gaughan spared no expense to ensure he had the finest equestrian center in the world, including 1,200 climate-controlled horse stalls, 4,600 seats, a saloon, and an extra practice arena. But the venue struggled for three years and two managers. In 2008, he “dragged Steve up I-15” and the two reunited.
Steve had the same problem he had when he took the Orleans Arena job. He knew nothing about the equestrian event industry. Again, knowledge proved secondary to organization and character. Steve assembled a cracker jack team and set out to redefine the standard of equestrian venue management, not with just equestrian events. The arena hosts the USA Wrestling Open, the largest motorcycle auction and Archery tournament in the world. One of his “out of the box” events filled the arena floor with 660,000 gallons of water to host Jet Ski races. I’ll bet no one has done that before.
Today, the venue is booked 49 out of 52 weekends a year, providing a foundation that ensures the hotel is filled and the casino crowded. You can catch Michael Gaughan smiling a lot these days.
In 2019, recognizing his college football and event career, he was inducted into the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame. Michael Gaughan said it best. “He sleeps every night with a smile on his face. I have never met a more positive person.”
