Her Side Of The Story: Public Records Show Fired LVCVA Sports Executive Disputed Agency’s Claims Against Her, Argued Firing Was ‘Wrongful Termination’
LVSportsBiz.com story summary:
— For the first time, we learn former LVCVA Vice President of Sports and Special Events Lisa Motley’s response to the public tourism agency’s decision to fire her over a contract bidding process thanks to public records received a year and four months after an LVSportsBiz.com records request in June 2025.
— Motley disagreed with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s reasons for termination, according to records. “For some reason I cannot fathom, someone is adding 2 + 2 and getting 5, which begs the question what the true motive is here,” Motley wrote in an email to the LVCVA executive who informed her she was fired.
— Motley’s lawyer, in an email to the LVCVA, requested the LVCVA preserve documents in the case and mentioned that LVCVA CEO Steve Hill “uses a cell phone setting that deletes texts after 30 days, and we will seek all available remedies for non-compliance with the preservation demand if that setting is not disabled.”
— In the end, Motley did not bring a lawsuit and there was no settlement. After working 8 1/2 years at the LVCVA, Motley began a new job a year ago as executive director of business development for Landry’s Inc., a Houston-based company focusing on dining, entertainment, gaming and hospitality.
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — The LVCVA’s former sports and special events executive who was fired in June 2025 disagreed with the reasons cited by Las Vegas’ public tourism agency for terminating her, with her lawyer telling the LVCVA that her client’s firing was a “wrongful termination,” according to public records received by LVSportsBiz.com from the LVCVA this week.
LVSportsBiz.com reported June 17, 2025 that former LVCVA VP of Sports and Special Events Lisa Motley had been fired. A day later on June 18, 2025, our news organization filed an open records request with the LVCVA to find out more about the public agency’s personnel decision regarding a key executive and to also learn Motley’s response to her termination.
The LVCVA took 16 months to provide emails and documents in response to our records request. LVSportsBiz.com was hoping the records would have been presented quicker than a year and four months, but we believe the records remain newsworthy because they show Motley’s side of the story for the first time and offers a look at the inner workings of one of Las Vegas’ most powerful and biggest-spending public agencies. After the LVCVA fired Motley last year, she declined to comment to LVSportsBiz.com. Motley also declined to comment for this story.
LVSportsBiz.com closely monitors the LVCVA because it spends hundreds of millions of public dollars on sports events and sponsorships with very little public questions and comments from its board and has undergone this past year a big transition in its sports-related executives who are paid impressive salaries.
After Motley was fired, the LVCVA hired three sports executives, including new Chief Sports Officer Janis Burke at a salary of $347,000. After Burke was hired in March 2026, it took the LVCVA three months to disclose her salary to LVSportsBiz.com. Plus, LVSportsBiz.com reported in April that former LVCVA Chief Operating Officer/Chief Sports Officer Brian Yost was hired 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. Yost had left his fulltime LVCVA job in Nov. 2025.
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The LVCVA said a reason why it fired Motley was because she disclosed confidential information about a College Football Playoff (CFP) production services job up for bid to Jeff Motley, her former husband. Records showed Lisa Motley was informed via a June 12, 2025 email from LVCVA Chief Strategy Officer Ed Finger that she was fired. The disclosure of the confidential bid specifications to her former husband was cited in the termination letter. Jeff Motley would end up working for Position Sports, the company that received the LVCVA contract to do CFP title game work.
Finger’s letter continued:
LVSportsBiz.com also reported LVCVA irregularities in the CFP production services contract bidding process and broke news June 10, 2025 that the LVCVA made the unprecedented move to put the college football championship game contract out to bid for a second time after the LVCVA had awarded a $1.2 million contract to Position Sports in March 2025 for the title game set for Allegiant Stadium in Jan. 2027. Position Sports ended up winning the contract again in August 2025 after the LVCVA re-bid the CFP work.
For the first time thanks to public records received Oct. 12, we learn how Motley responded to her termination letter.
Motley responded to Finger by saying “completely new and unsupported references to a ‘pattern of noncompliance’ and ‘violations of LVCVA policies and state laws,’ could not have been “further from the truth. For some reason I cannot fathom, someone is adding 2 + 2 and getting 5, which begs the question what the true motive is here.”
Motley also disagreed with the LVCVA statement that she released confidential information about the request for proposal (RFP) for the college football title game work. She said (Position Sports President) Melissa Grossman and Jeff (Motley) were designated as chairs for the Local Organizing Committee and it was “in this capacity that any specifics were shared with them.”
Motley declined the LVCVA offer to resign, was fired and enlisted lawyer Colleen McCarty of the Summerlin law firm of Ballard Spahr.
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On June 13, 2025, a day after Motley was fired, the LVCVA’s general counsel, Caroline Bateman, received this email from Motley’s lawyer. “Lisa’s employment being terminated thereafter without cause and without legitimate explanation is untenable and must be properly addressed,” McCarty wrote to the LVCVA.
Representing the LVCVA was Todd Bice of the Las Vegas law firm of Pisanelli Bice. Bice wrote in a June 16 email to McCarty that “the LVCVA had abundant grounds to terminate Ms. Motley’s employment. Besides, as an at-will employee, Ms. Motley could be terminated at any time — with or without cause.”
Four days later on June 20, 2025, Motley lawyer McCarty informed Bice that, “Lisa Motley’s wrongful termination, however, is far from resolved. ”
The following email included the assertion that, “The inescapable fact is that LVCVA leadership targeted Ms. Motley for wrongful termination . . . ”
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Ten days later, McCarty contacted the LVCVA lawyer, Bice, on June 30 and said two of her emails from June 23, 2025 and June 25, 2025 went unanswered.
McCarty’s email referred to Motley’s firing as an “unlawful termination” and said it is “shortsighted” if the “LVCVA wishes to forego the opportunity to resolve the matter . . . ”
On July 8, Bice responded to the Motley lawyer by saying he was traveling and that the LVCVA will not offer any severance or any settlement.
Bice noted, “her misconduct was serious and has injured LVCVA.”
He delivered this parting shot, “Any litigation by Ms. Motley will be, as you say, ‘shortsighted.’ ”
On the very next day, July 9, 2025, McCarty started her email by saying, “There is no question the LVCVA wrongfully terminated Ms. Motley.”
She also raised the issue of the LVCVA not preserving documents on the Motley firing case and mentioned that LVCVA CEO Steve Hill “uses a cell phone setting that deletes texts after 30 days, and we will seek all available remedies for non-compliance with the preservation demand if that setting is not disabled.”
That July 9, 2025 email to LVCVA lawyer Bice from Motley counsel McCarty was the last record provided to LVSportsBiz.com by the LVCVA. That was more than 15 months ago.
It should be noted that Motley’s role in the CFP contract bidding prompted a look by the Nevada Commission on Ethics, which met May 20, 2026 and approved a stipulated dismissal and letter of caution in the ethics complaint involving Motley.
Four months after Motley left the LVCVA in June 2025, she began a job in Oct. 2025 as the executive director of business development for Landry’s, a company that provides dining, entertainment, gaming and hospitality.
The LVCVA continues to work on the College Football Playoff championship game set for Allegiant Stadium Jan. 25.
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