Las Vegas Sports Watchdog: LVSportsBiz.com Uncovers LVCVA Sports Executive Salaries, Including $347,000 For Chief Sports Officer
By Alan Snel, LVportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — You can make a nice living promoting sports for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), the public tourism agency charged with attracting visitors to Southern Nevada.
LVCVA Chief Sports Officer Janis Burke makes $347,000 a year, Sports Business Development VP Jennifer Hawkins makes $210,000 a year and Event VP Will Hunter was hired at $220,000 a year when he began in October, according to LVCVA’s response to an LVSportssBiz.com records request May 6. It took seven weeks for the LVCVA to provide three annual salaries.
Less than a year after getting hired, Hunter is no longer an LVCVA staffer and works as a “large event planning advisor to the LVCVA,” according to the LVCVA.
The LVCVA hired Burke at the maximum salary for her position minus $400, according to this LVCVA graphic:
It’s also newsworthy to report that the percentage of LVCVA payroll has increased 50 percent from 12 percent in 2022, 2023 and 2024 to 18 percent for the 2027 budget, according to the LVCVA’s own data.
Other people are making money from sports in the LVCVA.
The LVCVA said goodbye to retiring Chief Operating Officer/Chief Sports Officer Brian Yost in November only to hire him as a consultant in early 2026 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.
LVSportsBiz.com learned in April that 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.
Meanwhile, the LVCVA in August also awarded a $651,600 contract to sports marketing firm Position Sports to work on the same exact sports event — the College Football Playoff title game in Las Vegas in January.
That contract was on top of the $190,700 that the LVCVA paid Position Sports last year under a flawed contract that had to be re-bid after LVSportsBiz.com uncovered irregularities in the LVCVA bidding process for the CFP game job.
All these LVCVA salaries and contract work paid for by public dollars is a lot of money when you consider the LVCVA itself learned that only three percent of Las Vegas visitors came to Vegas in 2025 to attend sports events.
In the past, LVCVA Steve Hill justified spending money on sports executives because the LVCVA is promoting the CFP title game in 2027, college basketball’s Final Four in 2028 and the Super Bowl in 2029.
The LVCVA finds the money to pay its sports executives in its annual budget. The tourism agency says its annual budget for 2027 is a net $630 million.
To place Chief Sports Officer Burke’s $347,000 annual salary into context, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill makes $265,000 a year, according to his Nevada Financial Disclosure Form filed March 24.
Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo — who used to be the Clark County Sheriff — makes $177,000 a year. according to his state financial disclosure form from Jan. 14.
And Clark County School District teachers make a wide variety of salaries from a low of $57,471 for a first-year teacher to $147,379, according to the CCSD licensed employee salary schedule.
The LVCVA pays tens of millions of public dollars on promoting sports in Las Vegas. Here is the budgeted amounts that the LVCVA is spending on sports events for 2027:
The national average salary in the U.S. is about $64,500 a year, while the median household income in Clark County is $76,500.
