Fair Bidding? LVCVA Included Company In Travel Group For CFP Title Game A Month Before Same Sports Firm Submitted Bid To LVCVA To Work On CFP Title Game In Vegas
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Las Vegas’ public tourism agency, the LVCVA, had a sports marketing company attend college football’s national title game in Atlanta Jan. 20 as part of its travel party even though the deadline for the firm’s bid for a LVCVA consulting job was a month away in February.
Even though the 2027 college football championship game in Las Vegas was two years away, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority officials believed they needed to “research” the CFP (College Football Playoff) event by attending the Ohio State-Notre Dame title game in Atlanta.
And the LVCVA’s travel party included sports event company, Position Sports, which had not even been selected by the LVCVA for its PR/game production consultant job. In fact, the college football game in Atlanta was more than a month before the consulting job bid deadline for the “request for proposal,” commonly know as an “RFP.”
What makes this so newsworthy is the college football championship game was Jan. 20, while the LVCVA’s deadline for the bid for “sporting event production, public relations and game management services” for the 2027 CFP game in Las Vegas was Feb. 24. Yet Position Sports was there on the scene in Atlanta with the LVCVA at meals and in a hotel room block.
It raises the question of whether it was a done deal for the LVCVA to hire Position Sports before the RFP deadline a month later when two other companies submitted bids that were less costly than the bid provided by Position Sports. In fact, records show four companies submitted bids to be the LVCVA PR/production consultant for the 2027 national championship game at Allegiant Stadium. Position Sports’ bid price ranked third costliest of the four. Was the bidding process rigged?
By attending the Atlanta game and hanging with LVCVA staff in January, Position Sports had the advantage of seeing the CFP operation to craft a request for proposal suitable in February to the LVCVA’s needs for the 2027 championship game in Las Vegas.
Position Sports and its $1.236 million bid ended up winning the gig from the LVCVA.
LVSportsBiz.com inspected the LVCVA travel records for tourism agency staff who traveled on the public dime to confirm that Position Sports President Melissa Meacham-Grossman and Jeff Motley were part of the LVCVA hotel room block for the college football championship game in January.
At the time, Motley was the Las Vegas Motor Speedway communications chief before starting his Position Sports chief media officer job April 1. But it should be noted an LVCVA travel expense for a $4,333 meal in Atlanta in January showed meal attendee Jeff Motley as “VP of Communications, Position Sports.” Again, the CFP game was January. The consultant bid deadline was February.
Here is the Request for Proposal information for the College Football Playoff event as listed on the bid web site:
There is a connection of Melissa Grossman and Jeff Motley to LVCVA’s Lisa Motley, the agency’s vice president of sports and special events who is the LVCVA point person on the 2027 CFP game event in Las Vegas. Grossman is a friends with Lisa Motley, while Jeff Motley is Lisa Motley’s former husband.
LVSportsBiz.com inspected the bid data for this LVCVA consulting job and saw that Norton National submitted a bid of $228,000 on Feb. 24 and Smart Tyme Agency submitted a bid of $1,056,000 on the same day. Position Sports had a bid of $1,236,000 on Feb. 21.
LVSportsBiz.com contacted Motley, Grossman and representatives of the three companies that lost out on the LVCVA consulting job for responses. Motley was unavailable and a LVCVA representative told us, “will get back to you shortly” but we never heard back Wednesday.
Richard Manhattan of Propyrion, which submitted the $4.8 million bid, told LVSportsBiz.com Wednesday, “Our hope is that the process was fair . . . The LVCVA staff and board should investigate. This is the first time that Las Vegas has been selected to host this game and everything should be above board.”
Manhattan also made this point: “Our proposal reflects feedback from the LVCVA during the pre-bid conference inviting us to include subcontractors in our bid for contingency planning. We bid higher than the other firms for this reason.
“Unfortunately, the LVCVA gave less than the customary thirty days to prepare a bid. In that short amount of time, we were able to get commitments from a team of Las Vegas professionals and businesses supported by a few national firms in what we felt was a well-rounded bid that could handle any CFP contingency.”
The LVCVA hired a consultant for the 2027 college football championship game in Las Vegas because the tourism agency funded with public dollars is taking a different approach to promote the 2027 college football game than it did with the 2024 NFL Super Bowl in Las Vegas.
Super Bowl 58 at Allegiant Stadium had a Las Vegas host committee helmed by an executive director and included paid staffers, but the LVCVA is taking the college football national championship game promotion work in-house by using its own staffers and hiring Position Sports for consulting work.
The LVCVA board, in January, approved $40 million in spending to host the 2027 national championship game.
The LVCVA staff and board should investigate . . . everything should be above board — Richard Manhattan of Propyrion, one of the three companies that lost out to Position Sports for the LVCVA consulting job.
LVCVA head Steve Hill has told LVSportsBiz.com the $40 million approved by the LVCVA for the college title game in 2027 included $15 million in contingency money that was required by CFP officials.
But Hill said he does not expect that $15 million to be spent and believes the title game budget is closer to $25 million.
The bottom line, however, is that the LVCVA is still on the hook for $40 million. The LVCVA spent about $34.5 million on the Super Bowl at Allegiant Stadium, according to LVCVA budget data for 2023 and 2024.
Position Sports is not new as a partner with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Position Sports is also working with the LVCVA on promoting a four-team college basketball event at Allegiant Stadium Nov. 12, 2027.
If LVSportsBiz.com receives any relevant and newsworthy responses after this story is published, we will update this topic with another story on the LVCVA bidding process.
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