Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019 | 2 a.m.
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To borrow the title of a cool old cowboy music album, here’s a great big Western howdy to the out-of-towners attending this year’s edition of the National Finals Rodeo.
And while we’re at it, here’s a great big thank-you to a long list of community leaders who brought the NFR to Las Vegas decades ago and have worked to keep it here.
The event has been a holiday gift that keeps on giving for Southern Nevada since 1985, when a group that included Las Vegas gaming icon Benny Binion and Las Vegas Events then-president Herb McDonald persuaded organizers to move it here from Oklahoma City.
When the 2019 NFR begins today, it will mark the 35th year the rodeo has been staged in our community.
Its value for our city, region and state has been colossal. In the early days, especially, it literally helped keep food on the table for many Southern Nevada families.
Before the NFR came to town, visitorship to Las Vegas typically slowed to a trickle between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, largely because the community was geared so much toward gaming and nightlife that many families saw it as an odd place to spend the holiday season.
In those days, resorts would close their showrooms and furlough employees until tourist traffic picked up again in January.
The rodeo changed all of that. It provided families with a full 10 days of activities, not only at the Thomas & Mack Center but at resorts, retailers and restaurants that quickly began tailoring associated events and activities for the NFR crowd.
Today, you can’t swing a bandana without hitting some type of NFR-related attraction — the massive Cowboy Christmas marketplace at the Las Vegas Convention Center, concerts by country artists, contestant autograph sessions at various locations, watch parties at resorts, sales at westernwear stores, and so on.
Meanwhile, the competition inside the arena will feature the world’s most talented riders and ropers, as always, meaning it’s a foregone conclusion that the NFR’s streak of 300 consecutive sellouts will continue.
For the community, those crowds translate to an estimated economic impact of $187.5 million, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Las Vegas was in danger of losing the event five years ago to Orlando, Fla., or Dallas, where NFL owner Jerry Jones was pressing hard to bring the rodeo to his new stadium. But a new group of community leaders stepped up to keep the NFR in Las Vegas, putting up $16.5 million in purse and sponsorship funding to lock down a 10-year contract.
It’s been a beautiful friendship, and we can’t wait to see it last through 2024 and beyond.
