Story by Alan Snel Photos by Jeff Goulding
For many years in Las Vegas, the National Finals Rodeo, the Triple-A minor league baseball team, car racing, boxing and UNLV basketball ruled the Southern Nevada sports market.
No more.
The National Football League, Formula 1 and National Hockey League have planted their flags here in Las Vegas, with Major League Baseball’s Athletics supposedly arriving in 2028 and prominent arena builder Tim Leiweke trying to build a new arena with an NBA tenant.
The one sport that has stayed unchanging to its traditions and functions as much as a lifestyle and way of life as much as it is a sport is the National Final Rodeo in Vegas. The 10-performance NFR wrapped up its annual December visit to Las Vegas Saturday.
Las Vegas Events typically pays out more than $14 million a year to the NFR’s sanctioning body, Colorado-based Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA). Las Vegas Events, the non-profit arm of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), said it would release payment details under the recently-announced ten-year extension that will kick in 2025 and last until 2035.
On Friday night, LVCVA chief Steve “Man of Many Hats” Hill donned a real cowboy hat for a ceremony on the dirt at the NFR with Las Vegas Events President Tim Keener and PRCA CEO Tom Glause to recognize the ten-year NFR-Las Vegas Events extension.
Here’s a photo of Hill, Glause and Keener, left to right, courtesy of Las Vegas Events:
Here’s how attendance has worked out. Keep in mind the opening night was canceled at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center because of the mass shooting on the UNLV campus the day before that resulted in the deaths of three UNLV professors. The PRCA and Las Vegas Events held the canceled opening night performance this past Wednesday morning.
Friday: 17,675
Saturday: 17,693
Sunday: 17,625
Monday: 17,362
Tuesday: 17,183
Wednesday: 17,185
Thursday: 17,616
Friday: 17,621
Saturday: 17,620
The nine fully-attended rounds brought 157,580 people to Thomas & Mack — an average crowd of 17,509 a night.
The vast majority of the rodeo attendees are visitors, with 87 percent to 90 percent of the fans inside Thomas & Mack Center coming from outside the Southern Nevada market in previous years. There are 28 official host NFR hotels and 60 free shuttle buses ferrying fans to Thomas & Mack Center for the rodeo performances.
*
There’s much more than National Finals Rodeo during these ten days.
NFR has given rise to many related country western events from the World Series of Team Roping at South Point to the Bullfighters Only 2023 World Championships at Resorts World.
LVSportsBiz.com photographer Jeff Goulding visited the Bullfighters Only event to check the action there, where contestants and bulls share the dirt.