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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
Las Vegas Aces players A’ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray, Kate Martin and Sydney Colson have signed the paperwork agreeing to promote Las Vegas through social media posts for $100,000 each, according to LVCVA records received by LVSportsBiz.com this week.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), the public agency charged with drawing visitors to the Strip and Southern Nevada, attracted national headlines in May for their announcement that it would pay each of the Aces players $100,000 each as a sponsorship deal brokered through the agents of each Aces player to rep Las Vegas.
The total LVCVA sponsorship deal is $1.2 million each year ($100,000 for each of the Aces’ 12 players) for both 2024 and 2025, or $2.4 million for the two years.
LVSportsBiz.com this week received the signed contracts for Wilson, Gray, Martin and Colson from the LVCVA. There’s also a signed contract between the LVCVA’s advertising agency, R&R Partners, and Elizabeth Kitley, a Virginia Tech center picked by the Aces as the 24th selection in the last WNBA Draft.
Dondero handles many LVCVA sports sponsorship deals for R&R, a Las Vegas-based ad agency that has had a very lucrative multi-million-dollar relationship with the LVCVA over the years.
You might recall Hill announced the sponsorship deal to Aces players in their locker room in May.
“We want you to just play. We want you to keep repping Las Vegas,” Hill told the Aces players on the video that was taken in the Aces locker room. “If you do a three-peat, that’ll be icing on the cake.”
In late July, LVSportsBiz.com received a first round of signed contracts from the LVCVA showing that each player who is receiving $100,000 as an “influencer” is required to make several posts and tag “@Vegas” on her social media channels a year in a way to promote Las Vegas.
That’s easy money for Wilson and Colson who are both very good at their social media messages. Sometimes they even poke fun at each other on social media.
There was concern that the LVCVA $100,000 payments to each Aces player could be interpreted as a way for the Aces to circumvent the WNBA salary cap, but the LVCVA was direct in explaining that the influencer deals were made directly between its ad agency and the players’ agents while the team was left out.
In a prepared statement in May, Hill said the payments were legal.
“The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority made a sponsorship offer to each Las Vegas Aces player through her agent, in accordance with the rules of any sponsorship these athletes might accept, and consistent with our own long-standing sponsorship programs. We are proud to support the Las Vegas Aces, and to have them ‘just play and rep Vegas’ as ambassadors for the sports and entertainment capital of the world.”
The LVCVA said, “Our sponsorship offer to the Las Vegas Aces is no different than any other LVCVA marketing program. There are deliverables for each player, including image use, appearances and other ways of representing the Vegas brand.”