Former LVCVA Boss, Las Vegas Tourism Industry Leader Rossi Ralenkotter Dies Friday; Major Vegas Sports Backer Was 78
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Less than a month ago, Rossi Ralenkotter made his final public appearance.
The local minor league baseball team, the Las Vegas Aviators, gave away free Rossi Ralenkotter bobbleheads Sept. 19 at a baseball stadium that Ralenkotter help finance as the former president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA).
Ralenkotter loved baseball. His bobblehead had a Cincinnati Reds ballcap and a Stars baseball jersey. The Reds were Ralenkotter’s favorite MLB team and the Stars were the Triple-A ballclub here in Las Vegas before the club was re-branded into the 51s and then the Aviators, which was the name of the team at the new $150 million stadium built in Downtown Summerlin.
Ralenkotter, as the former LVCVA chief, helped secure an $80 million naming rights deal for Howard Hughes Corp., the Aviators’ former owner, to help build the impressive ballpark with the pool beyond the centerfield wall and the seats made of a special mesh material to help keep fans cooler in the hot Vegas summers.
Ralenkotter knew how to get things done for the LVCVA and for the tourism-entertainment industry that fuels Las Vegas’ one-trick-pony economy.
Some of those baseball fans receiving the Rossi Ralenkotter bobbleheads had not heard of Ralenkotter.
If they only knew the man who died Friday morning after battling and coping with cancer for many years. Ralenkotter was 78 years old.
He grew up in Las Vegas and worked at the LVCVA for 45 years before he retired from Las Vegas’ publicly-funded tourism promotion agency in 2018 amid an investigation into the LVCVA’s purchase and handling of Southwest Airlines gift cards purchased with public dollars. After serving his last 14 years as LVCVA chief, Ralenkotter left the government tourism agency with a lucrative retirement deal.
A criminal indictment had accused him of using the public-funded airline gift cards for personal travel. He settled with Nevada ethics commissioners and pleaded no contest to a felony charge.
Ralenkotter’s 45-year career at the LVCVA captured the story of a tourism market that exploded in growth from a town of less than 30,0000 hotel rooms to more than 150,000; from 8 million annual visitors to more than 40 million. We’re talking an astronomical tourism growth of more than 500 percent during the man’s tenure at the LVCVA.
He enjoyed sports and planted the seeds of Las Vegas’ now coveted sports industry with Cashman Field in downtown Las Vegas housing the Triple-A baseball Stars and with college football’s Las Vegas Bowl, now played at the publicly-subsidized Allegiant Stadium (which is run by the NFL Raiders).
Many Las Vegas sports events from the National Finals Rodeo to the NBA Summer League came to Sin City during Ralenkotter’s long tenure at the LVCVA. (Interestingly enough, Formula 1 car racing talked to Las Vegas while Ralenkotter was at the LVCVA, but the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix didn’t actually take over the Strip corridor until the inaugural street race in Nov. 2023 when current LVCVA CEO Steve Hill was overseeing the public agency.)
In 1992, Ralenkotter led a team of Las Vegas boosters that lured the former California Raisin Bowl to relocate from Fresno, California, to Las Vegas.
Poised to play its 33rd event in two months, the Las Vegas Bowl has become a regular date on the college football bowl calendar.
“No one person has been more important to the Las Vegas Bowl than Rossi,” said John Saccenti, executive director of the SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl. “Not only was it Rossi’s foresight that brought a major sports event to Las Vegas during a slow season for tourism, but his dedication to the game and its continued success helped kickstart the great sports explosion that we’ve seen in Las Vegas over the past 25 years.”
Ralenkotter and the LVCVA had close business relations with the R&R Partners advertising firm that worked with the public tourism agency on the “What Happens Here, Stays Here” marketing campaign more than two decades ago. The 2003 slogan became part of the American pop culture and language lexicon.
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