LVCVA Paying Up To $200,000 A Year To Consultant Brian Yost For 2027 College Football Championship Game In Las Vegas A Few Months After Yost Left LVCVA As Chief Operating Officer
By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — In some cases, government agency executives don’t really retire.
They just come back as consultants for the same publicly-funded government agency.
Such is life at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the well-funded public tourism organization that said good bye to former LVCVA Chief Operating Officer/Chief Sports Officer Brian Yost in November only to hire him as a consultant for as much as $200,000 per calendar year to work in an executive role on the 2027 College Football Playoff National Championship Game at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas in January.
As an LVCVA consultant, Yost will serve as executive director of the Local Organizing Committee for the 2027 College Football Playoff National Championship and answer to LVCVA CEO Steve Hill.
The LVCVA entered into a consulting agreement with ServeWell Advisory, LLC, which is owned by Yost, who worked for the LVCVA from 2018 to 2025. Under the agreement, the payment rate is $300 per hour and capped at $200,000 per calendar year, according to Molly Castano, LVCVA vice president of public relations and communications.
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In an email statement to LVSportsBiz.com, Castano wrote, “In this role, he will oversee event planning and operations, coordinate with local and national partners, lead community and stakeholder engagement, and guide marketing and legacy initiatives in coordination with the LVCVA and CFP.
“The agreement also includes supporting future major sports and special events, building partnerships with sports leagues and organizers, and providing strategic guidance to LVCVA leadership on sports and special event opportunities.”
The LVCVA, which budgeted $40 million for Las Vegas to host the 2027 CFP title game, is handling the promotion and marketing of this college football game “in-house.”
This is different from the set-up when Las Vegas hosted the 2024 Super Bowl when there was a separate Las Vegas host committee to promote the NFL championship game event.
Not only is the LVCVA paying Yost as much as $200,000 for his college football title game work, the LVCVA is also paying $651,600 to sports marketing company Position Sports to help produce the 2027 college football game at Allegiant Stadium.
Position Sports won the $651,600 contract from the LVCVA in August after the tourism authority awarded a $1.236 million contract to the same Position Sports in March to work on the CFP title game.
But the LVCVA decided in June to re-bid the CFP game job after LVSportsBiz.com published stories showing a Position Sports executive attended LVCVA meals and was part of LVCVA’s hotel room block at the 2025 College Football Playoff championship game in Atlanta two months before the LVCVA awarded the job to Position Sports in March.
Besides hiring Position Sports and Yost as consultants, the LVCVA have hired three executives to work on sports events.
In January, the LVCVA hired new Chief Sports Officer Janis Burke for a salary in the $248,600-$347,400 range.
In December, the LVCVA hired Jennifer Hawkins as vice president of sports development. In October, the LVCVA hired Will Hinter as vice president of events. We have asked the LVCVA for the salaries of these three workers and when we get those numbers we will add them to this story.
Between the two consultants and three new sports workers, the LVCVA is spending more than $1 million on annual salaries and consulting fees — a lot of money when you consider LVCVA’s own data showed only three percent of all visitors came here to attend a sports event in 2025 when tourism dropped 7.5 percent in Las Vegas.
The LVCVA is is hyping WrestleMania this year, the 2027 CFP title game and the 2028 college basketball Final Four, all at Allegiant Stadium.
PSA
