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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher/Writer
They will have 12-14 full-time staff workers and a budget of $55 million.
Curious about this business enterprise?
Think big. Think super. Think Super Bowl 58 in Las Vegas at Allegiant Stadium on Feb. 11, 2024.
It’s the Las Vegas Super Bowl Host Committee, the folks charged with getting Las Vegas ready to host America’s ultimate football party, sports event and game in 16 months. The committee has already hired six full-timers, with another six to eight workers to be enlisted.
This committee has its own executive director, a friendly fella named Sam Joffray who moved from New Orleans to a tower condo on the Strip in January. He has been around a few blocks when it comes to throwing a Super Bowl in host cities. His first Super Bowl job was in New Orleans in 1997.
Sure, Las Vegas has its own public tourism agency, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. But while the LVCVA will provide major support for Super Bowl 58, the Super Bowl host committee says it needs its own staff and budget to pull off a sports event in a market that already attracted 311,000 visitors for Super Bowl weekend.
Another 100,000 people will be in Las Vegas for Super Bowl week in February 2024, Joffray predicted.
And of Las Vegas’ 150,000 hotel rooms, 25,000 will be needed just to accommodate visitors associated with the Super Bowl from the two teams to the NFL staffers.
The host committee staged an update meeting at Allegiant Stadium that served as kind of a pep rally that had a chamber of commerce feel to it.
Here’s Joffray sitting at the far left, with Jeremy Aguero (far right) serving as the emcee with Raiders team president Sandra Douglass Morgan and Allegiant Air CEO Maury Gallagher joining them on stage. Aguero, Douglass Morgan and Gallagher are host committee executive committee members.
Introduced as Super Bowl sponsors who will be contributing lots of money to the host committee were: Caesars Entertainment, MGM Rewards, Allegiant Air, The Howard Hughes Corporation, FEVO, iHeart Radio, PNC Bank, and UFC. Representatives of each organization received a football helmet as a thank you.
The economic impacts of hosting a Super Bowl are always a debatable topic. Many economists who study net economic effects said the Super Bowl organizers exaggerate the economic benefits, while supporters say there are major financial gains for a market.
Las Vegas is a fascinating market to study because Super Bowl weekend is already a busy tourist draw with more than 300,000 visitors. Hotel occupancy rates are already robust in Las Vegas on Super Bowl weekends, so how much higher can occupancy rates go?
This is the first Super Bowl for Las Vegas, so there’s no template for the logistics needed to host a Super Bowl here, Joffray told LVSportsBiz.com today.
“It’s not a copy and paste,” he said. “There’s no blueprint” for Las Vegas.
For the Super Bowl in Los Angeles in February, 2,000 drivers were enlisted along with 9,000 volunteers.
Joffray will be sticking around Las Vegas after the Super Bowl is staged in Las Vegas for six months. The host committee has to pay bills and conduct audits in the months after the game is played and the tourists go home.