The National Football League may have happily endorsed the Raiders’ move from Oakland, California, to a $1.8 billion stadium just west of the Las Vegas Strip, but that doesn’t mean the league has shed its age-old discomfort with gambling.
Even with the team coming to town—not to mention the city’s hosting of the 2020 NFL draft—the league is not moving off a ban on showing the Strip on TV commercials aired during games.
That’s according Rob Dondero, an executive vice president with R&R Partners, the advertising and marketing company of record for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Speaking last week at the first-ever Las Vegas Global Sports Business Summit at the Las Vegas Convention Center, he reiterated that the NFL will “not let us show a shot of the Strip.”
“They said we can include Red Rock,” he told attendees, though he added, “I guarantee we’ll find ways to get our points across.”
Dondero was at the day-long summit to discuss sports and branding and was one of several well-local leaders who appeared to speak on the city’s future as a sports destination.
MGM Resorts International executive Mark Prows offered his opinion that an NBA team might move to Las Vegas in about five years. At the same time, he cautioned that the market not get too far ahead of itself after the Raiders arrive in 2020.
He noted that when MGM and partner AEG designed the T-Mobile Arena, home of the NHL’s Golden Knights, they included only one level of suites because the Las Vegas market does not have roster of corporations and businesses to match markets such as New York and Los Angeles.
LVSportsBiz.com agreed that with a ranking around 40th among U.S. sports markets it’s difficult to say how many more major league teams the city’s 2.2 million residents and business community can support with ticket purchases and sponsorships.
Meanwhile, if the new Las Vegas stadium ever gets the ultimate NFL plum: the Super Bowl, that could mean another first for the city: the first billion-dollar economic impact event.
That’s according to Jonas Peterson, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, who called sports “the purest form of economic development.” About two dozen speakers talked about sports marketing and the future of sports business in the region.
Peterson’s projections drew off of data from the 2018 game at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis and noted that the Super Bowl last year brought 125,000 visitors to Minnesota.
Southern Nevada will soon welcome the $1.8 billion Las Vegas stadium and $150 million Las Vegas Ballpark, and several new hotels. This, says Peterson, will lead to more investment in transportation.
Another of the speakers, Jeremy Aguero, principal for Las Vegas-based Applied Analysis talked about the development of professional sports in the city that began with the birth of the UFC and included National Finals Rodeo, minor league baseball and the NBA Summer League.
