Raiders games at Allegiant drew over 500k fans last season

More than 500,000 fans attended Raiders home games during the first season that fans were allowed inside Allegiant Stadium, though there was a fairly significant difference between paid attendance and actual attendance.

Raiders home games at Allegiant Stadium drew 527,727 fans over 10 home games in the 2021-22 season, according to quarterly event reports provided by the Raiders to the Las Vegas Stadium Authority.

However, there was a difference of 73,047 between the attendance totals the stadium authority gave for the 10 home games and what the Raiders announced after each game. The total announced attendance by the Raiders for those games was 600,774, according to the Raiders’ reports.

The Raiders final home game Jan. 9 against the Los Angeles Chargers wasn’t included in the stadium authority reports, since it was in the first quarter of 2022. However, the Raiders provided both the announced and paid attendance figures for the game, which was the best attended home game last season.

That game saw 58,869 fans in attendance, while the announced crowd was 62,068, according to the Raiders.

A sellout for the stadium is 62,500, based on the fixed seating in the general bowl, suites, lodges and Wynn Field Club.

The vaccine requirement

The difference between the paid and announced attendance wasn’t a surprise to the Raiders. Once the team announced it would require fans to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend games at Allegiant Stadium, some level of no-shows was expected, according to Adam Feldman, Raiders vice president, stadium management, programming and guest experience.

“Obviously that resulted in a lot of people choosing to resell their tickets and then we had a large number of people who weren’t comfortable attending events with that many people inside,” Feldman said. “All of that flooded the secondary ticket market… and that resulted in more tickets going unused. They were sold, it was just the show rate.”

Feldman foresees less of a discrepancy between paid and actual attendance for the 2022 season since the Raiders announced there will be no vaccine or mask requirement in place.

“I think it will change those no-show numbers,” Feldman said. “We can’t think of any other reason why those numbers were the way they were. We think that’s the one variable that will change (the no-show rate) going into the season.”

Stadium surpasses 1 million fans

In total, Allegiant Stadium saw over 1 million people attend events held in the $2 billion facility during the first six months that crowds were allowed inside.

Between July and December 2021, about 1.02 million people attended at least one of 93 events held at Allegiant Stadium, according to data provided to the stadium authority.

Raiders home games were the biggest draw in 2021 with 468,858 total fans, not including the Chargers game. Concerts drew 167,835 fans over the first six months, with Garth Brooks’ July 10 show being the most-attended event last year with 63,000 fans.

UNLV football games drew 93,657 fans over six home games. The most attended UNLV game was the Iowa State game, which saw 25,455 fans, with the Hawaii game behind that with 15,493 attendees.

One-off sporting events also drew big crowds with CONCACAF Gold Cup Final drawing 55,000 fans. WWE’s SummerSlam had 50,000 people and the Pac-12 football championship game drew 45,856 fans.

The last quarter of 2021 alone saw 496,906 people attend events at the stadium. Only one major concert occurred at the stadium over that time — the Rolling Stones, who drew 37,835 fans.

Smaller private events, which ranged from anywhere between four and 1,200 people, accounted for 36,416 attendees over the last two quarters of 2021.

Feldman said the Raiders couldn’t be happier with how the stadium has performed after fans were allowed inside.

“We’ve been thrilled with how the building has operated,” Feldman said. “A lot of events and it’s getting more consistent… It’s going to be really busy here starting in July with WWE on July 2, then it’s pretty much non-stop through the (NFL) season.”

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.