On Las Vegas Sports Tourism: U.S. Senator Rosen Stages Tourism Field Hearing Friday To Hear From Las Vegas Big Hitters
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
She was a pleasant and very earnest host, even trying to slide a few jokes and low-key humor into the conversation to make her four guests feel comfortable.
If you parachuted into this federal government “field hearing” in the third floor room at Las Vegas Convention Center’s gigantic West Hall, you would have thought Jacky Rosen was an economic development/chamber of commerce type leading a promotional pep talk with her guests about how spectacular the Las Vegas sports tourism industry has been lately — and will be in the next few months.
But Rosen is actually a United States Senator representing Nevada and she’s firmly entrenched on the Las Vegas sports tourism bandwagon, staging a tourism subcommittee hearing Friday on the economic impacts of sports and entertainment in Las Vegas.
She was hosting four local Las Vegas folks who are very popular on the sports-entertainment speaking circuit these days. Technically speaking, this foursome were “witnesses” giving “testimony” for the hearing record.
They were:
Bill Hornbuckle, the bus boy from 45 years ago who is now the CEO of MGM Resorts International, Las Vegas’ biggest employer with the most hotel properties on the Strip
Steve Hill, the former concrete/gravel company owner who is both the CEO of the public tourism agency known as the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) and chairman of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority Board, which oversees the Raiders NFL stadium and the planned Athletics MLB ballpark.
Sandra Douglass Morgan, the Raiders team president who is a polished public speaker with private and public work experience and a home-grown Las Vegas product hired by owner Mark Davis in July 2022 to clean up a messy front office situation at the NFL team and lead the business operations of a franchise now valued at $5 billion.
Mary Beth Sewald, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce CEO who was a former TV station executive.
These are golden age times for the Las Vegas sports industry, with local teams and major events drawing tens of thousands of money-spending visitors to the Las Vegas market.
The Vegas Golden Knights and Las Vegas Raiders are already drawing thousands of out-of-market fans to their home games in Las Vegas. But that’s just the appetizer for two monster main courses — the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix Nov. 16-18 and Super Bowl 58 at Allegiant Stadium Feb. 11.
F1 and the Super Bowl will undoubtedly bring big spenders to the Las Vegas market. The Las Vegas Grand Prix is a welcomed event because the F1 race is happening on the second-slowest weekend of the calendar in Las Vegas in terms of hotel occupancy rates, Hornbuckle said.
“The pre-booking for F1 is big,” Hornbuckle pointed out.
But LVSportsBiz.com cautions readers about the economic spending and impact numbers being publicized and promoted by the LVCVA, F1 and even the media because national economists point out there are many factors that go into determining the net income generated by a sports event for a market.
These bigger-than-life sports economic numbers come under fire from economists who argue they are inflated and fail to show the exact net amount of spending; don’t explain that some visitors are simply displacing those who would have been in the market on the same dates; or the amount of tourists who stay away from visiting because they don’t want to deal with an event’s traffic and crowds.
The F1 race, which has caused all types of traffic misery for drivers because of the repaving work of the 3.8-mile route, which includes a healthy stretch of the Strip, even prompted the always positive Sewald to acknowledge the grand prix road construction and traffic snarls are a “challenge.”
Even Hornbuckle piped in during the hearing that the grand prix race road work “is a little disruptive and will continue to be.”
In response to a post-hearing question posed by Channel 3 TV reporter Cristen Drummond about the F1 traffic problems, Sewald said, “Any time you have infrastructure impacted by new development, you have to manage the growth.”
During the hearing, the panelists praised Rosen for supporting the high-speed Brightline train project to connect Southern California with Las Vegas along the Interstate 15 corridor.
In response to Rosen’s questions, the panelists often said they “echo” a lot of what their panel comrades were saying about the red-hot Las Vegas sports market helping employ people and attract visitors.
Rosen even threw in a few lines herself, noting to Douglass Morgan that the team value of the Davis-owned Raiders increased dramatically from $2.9 billion in 2019 to $5 billion in 2022 thanks to the new publicly-subsidized stadium that opened in 2020.
The Raiders’ franchise value is accurate — thanks to amenity-filled Allegiant Stadium that produced hundreds of millions in dollars revenues for Davis via personal seat licenses and corporate sponsorships from stadium founding partners. And the Raiders also generate the most ticket revenues in the NFL while luring thousands of visiting fans to the Las Vegas market.
Speaking of Allegiant Stadium, Hill touched on a topic that will be a main issue for the Las Vegas Super Bowl — security.
“Security is a much more complex topic than what most people would think about,” Hill said. “The federal government assistance is critical. Having access to to that (federal) information is critical.”
Overall, the 90-minute sports tourism session was filled with back-slapping and way-to-go praising. Rosen even cracked a few jokes, calling Hornbuckle, the “mayor of MGM.”
That prompted Hornbuckle to crack his own quip, “Don’t start calling me that. It doesn’t pay enough.”
