Sports Tourism Is Big Money For Las Vegas, But It Comes At A Price; Denver (Double OT Winner) Vs Wisconsin In Frozen Final Title Game Saturday
Story by Alan Snel Photos by Hugh Byrne
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — It was a festive crowd for the sold out Frozen Four college hockey championship at T-Mobile Arena.
The NHL Vegas Golden Knights’ home rink was adopted by North Dakota/Wisconsin and Denver/Michigan for college hockey’s final four — part of the sports tourism that injects Las Vegas’ economy with spending and helps pay off the public debt on the Raiders stadium assuming out-of-town fans are buying hotel rooms and, therefore, paying hotel room fees.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the publicly-funded tourism agency, has bulked up on hiring staffers to work on sports tourism. The LVCVA hired a new chief sports officer, a new VP for sports business development and a new VP for sports events. LVSportsBiz.com has requested the LVCVA to provide the salaries for the three new hires, but we have not received the information.
The LVCVA also hired former Chief Operating Officer Brian Yost as a consultant for up to $200,000 a year to work on the College Football Playoff championship game and is paying sports marketing company Position Sports about $650,000 to work on the same college football title game scheduled for Allegiant Stadium in January 2027.
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Sports are headline attractions. Bear witness to Las Vegas hosting college basketball’s Final Four in 2028 and the NFL’s Super Bowl 63 in 2029. What’s newsworthy, however, is that the LVCVA’s own data showed that only three percent of Las Vegas visitors said their primary reason to visit Sin City was to attend a sports event in 2025.
For all the talk of diversifying Las Vegas’ one-dimensional tourism-based economy, officials have double-downed on investing in sports tourism, events and sports venues like the A’s stadium under construction while the Las Vegas ranks low in education, health care and transportation.
The LVCVA also spends tens of millions of public dollars on subsidizing these sports events every year. For example, the Frozen Four received $500,000 from the LVCVA and Las Vegas Events for this week’s event. The F1 race, the WWE event, the A’s, the Super Bowl and others all get hefty payments from the LVCVA.
The fans who visited the Final Four today bought a ticket that gave them entry to both national semifinal games — North Dakota vs Wisconsin and Michigan vs Denver. An interesting feature of all four teams is that their starting goaltenders are all freshmen.
College bands played fight songs, while North Dakota even brought skating cheerleaders who zipped around the ice like it was Ice Capades. In the end, the North Dakota faithful walked out of T-Mobile Arena disappointed after Wisconsin won, 2-1.
Wisconsin plays the Denver Pioneers, who were outshot, 52-26, but defeated Michigan, 4-3, in double overtime.
It’s Wisconsin vs Denver for the national championship in Las Vegas Saturday at 2 PM Vegas/Pacific time.
PSA
