Hotel Room Tax Money Piling Up To Help Pay For Southern Nevada’s Public Share Of Building Raiders Stadium
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
The tourists are back booking hotel rooms bigtime in Las Vegas.
And that means hotel room tax money is back flowing into the public coffers to help pay Southern Nevada’s debt for the Raiders’ NFL stadium. Metro Las Vegas and Clark County contributed $750 million to help build the domed 62,000-seat stadium that is managed by the Raiders. The NFL team gets most of the stadium’s revenues.
Take a look at the hotel room tax revenues that are piling up this year. They far exceed the numbers of 2021 and are back to the pre-pandemic numbers of 2019. In March, April, May and June, the hotel bed money this year outdistanced the numbers for the same months in 2019. In the past 12 months, the stadium’s hotel room tax dollars have totaled anywhere from $3.3 million a month to $5.3 million a month.
Those hotel room tax dollars are vital because you might recall the Las Vegas Stadium Authority and Clark County had to tap its reserve fund not once but twice to make payments on the bonds floated for the public share of the Raiders stadium.
These bar charts are part of the materials for the Las Vegas Stadium Authority board meeting scheduled for Thursday at 1 PM at the Las Vegas Convention Center board room.
You’ll notice that entire stadium project was slightly less than $2 billion. It should be noted that the biggest obviously chunk of the project budget was about $1.4 billion to construct the stadium itself.
The Raiders also hit the jackpot with a stunning $549.2 million in personal seat licenses (PSL) that were collected from season ticket holders.
Let’s check out the attendance at Allegiant Stadium for the first quarter of 2022. That Raiders vs. Chargers game on Jan. 9 had reported attendance of 58,871.
The East West Shrine Bowl, the college football all-star game on Feb. 3, had attendance of 10,594. And the NFL Pro Bowl all-star game on Feb. 6 had attendance of 45,672. The Academy of Country Music Awards chipped in with another 21,839 on March 7.
In the concert category, while Mettalica had 45,237 on Feb. 25 and Bill Joel brought 33,991 on Feb. 26.
You’ll notice the lion’s share of the activities are “private events” where the stadium is used pretty much as a catering hall for organizations and groups. For example, for Q1 of 2022, the Raiders listed 46 total events but 40 of them were private events.
Not only do the Raiders play at Allegiant Stadium, UNLV’s football team plays there, too. The first of six home games in 2022 is set for Aug. 27. Take a look at its schedule.
UNLV left Sam Boyd Stadium, located near the Las Vegas Wash about eight miles from campus. Take a look at the revenues and net income that UNLV generated from staging events at Sam Boyd Stadium.
These numbers will also be under discussion at the stadium board meeting Thursday.
The board’s agenda also includes an item on a boring tunnel station at Allegiant Stadium like the tunnel they have at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
