On its 25th anniversary, Las Vegas Bowl has seen many evolutions
A guy comes into your office in April and pitches you to buy tickets for and possibly provide financial support to a college football game in December.
You, as a college football fan, say, “Great! Who’s playing?”
“I can’t say because I don’t know,” comes the reply. “In fact, I won’t know until two weeks before the game who’s playing.”
Welcome to the Las Vegas Bowl business world.
The widely celebrated college football bowl season that begins next month has evolved dramatically since the first Las Vegas Bowl in 1992 with more games — so many, in fact, that teams with losing records were invited to play last year and the NCAA had to call a moratorium on new bowls through 2019.
That’s good and bad for Las Vegas. As the 16th oldest college football bowl game of 40 on the calendar now, the Las Vegas Bowl is well established in a prime scheduling location — right in the middle of December, well before the city’s resorts fill up for New Year’s Eve and CES.
But on the downside, Las Vegas has hopes of developing a second bowl game if plans to build a 65,000-seat domed football stadium go forward. By the time the stadium would be built, existing partnerships to place teams from certain conferences in specific games could change.
For the Las Vegas Bowl, that’s what it’s all about — a classic special-event formula to put heads in beds. That’s why the contracted Mountain West and the Pacific-12 conferences, with schools in most of Las Vegas’ prime target visitor markets, are perfect for the city.
“It started like the National Finals Rodeo,” said Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Rossi Ralenkotter. “We were looking for an opportunity to establish events in the destination, especially in December.”
While most bowl games are attracted to New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, Las Vegas was just fine with being one of the first bowls to play when the second season is fresh and the run-up to Christmas usually is a great time to draw people from places like Logan, Utah, and Pullman, Washington.
TEAM AND FAN FAVORITE
Over time, the Las Vegas Bowl has become a team and fan favorite.
“For the Pac-12 schools, it’s either the Rose Bowl or Vegas,” said John Saccenti, executive director of ESPN Events and the Las Vegas Bowl. “If they can’t be in the Rose Bowl, here is where they want to be because there are so many other things to do.”
The game has sold out in nine of the last 11 years with record attendance of 44,615 in 2006 when Brigham Young University beat the University of Oregon 38-8. It was the largest attendance for a single game in state history.
Last year’s game, a 35-28 University of Utah win over BYU, was the second-best attended Las Vegas Bowl with 42,213.
Since the bowl was launched, more than 400,000 people have attended games, generating more than $300 million for the local economy. Bowl officials estimate the game generates between $20 million and $30 million each year.
Players and their fans like Las Vegas for the same reason most tourists enjoy it — there’s more to do than go to the game.
Las Vegas Bowl organizers emphasize the bowl experience as much as the game. Teams are invited to the Fremont Street Experience where players can watch the season’s game highlights on the canopy of lights.
New this year, the two teams’ coaches will get a 15-minute helicopter ride over the Strip after a banquet.
At the game itself, the pageantry of the event is as important as the 60 minutes of play.
LAS VEGAS ON THE NATIONAL STAGE
Rob Dondero of R&R Partners, president of the bowl committee, said the game not only generates revenue that is shared by other conference schools but it also spurs additional business within the tourism economy in a month when things normally slow down because of the holidays. It also puts Las Vegas on the national stage for more than three hours at a time when people are contemplating future travel plans, a valuable promotional tool.
Those three hours are also an opportunity for sponsors to distribute their marketing messages. Royal Purple, a synthetic-oil manufacturer that changed ownership earlier this year, has bowed out as a title sponsor, a level that enables a company’s name to be used in first mention.
The Las Vegas Bowl has come full circle in title sponsorships, starting without one 25 years ago and not having one now. Over the years, sponsors have included Reno Air, SEGA Sports, Pioneer Corp., Maaco and Royal Purple.
This year, the Geico Insurance Co. has signed on as a presenting sponsor so the game will be known as “the Las Vegas Bowl presented by Geico.” A handful of companies has been invited to this year’s game, including Geico, so they can consider a title sponsorship in the future. Sponsorship costs were not disclosed.
Dondero said it hasn’t been a tough sell to generate interest because many Las Vegas business people are transplants from other cities that have had bowl games.
“They ask, ‘How do we get involved? I’ve come from this and want to know how I can help,’” Dondero said.
Forty community leaders comprise the Las Vegas Bowl committee and they come from a wide array of businesses.
Ralenkotter said the blending of the brands of Las Vegas, the NCAA, the bowl sponsors and the two conferences not only generates interest on game day, which this year is Dec. 17 with a 12:30 p.m. kickoff, but throughout the year in promotional materials distributed during the season. He said the Las Vegas Bowl has some national notoriety as the first bowl game to have an overtime (1995’s 40-37 win by Toledo over the University of Nevada) and the first bowl game to have a female player (University of New Mexico placekicker Katie Hnida, whose only kick was blocked, in 2002).
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.
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