Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

ACM Awards returns in 2016; MGM Resorts Festival Grounds to join party

ACM Awards

Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP

George Strait and Miranda Lambert perform during the 49th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on Sunday, April 6, 2014, in Las Vegas.

2014 ACM Awards: Arrivals

Taylor Swift takes a selfie with a fan as she arrives for the 49th Academy of Country Music Awards show at the MGM Grand Garden Arena Sunday, April 6, 2014. Launch slideshow »

The strength of hosting events in Las Vegas is the city itself. Tourism officials frequently remind promoters of such spectacles as annual awards telecasts that the city can serve as a giant venue.

The facility in which the show is held, MGM Grand Garden Arena being a chief example, is sometimes just one component of a greater stage. The Academy of Country Music Awards is an example of such a citywide event. The ACM Awards telecast has toggled between Grand Garden Arena and Mandalay Bay Events Center in recent years. Last year, the Linq Promenade’s outdoor festival grounds to the east of the High Roller were folded into the event.

The ACM Awards shifted to the spacious AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on April 19 for its 50th anniversary, celebrated in Texas-sized fashion on CBS. After the show’s hoedown in the big barn that is home to the Dallas Cowboys, the show is back in Las Vegas for 2016 and is once more going to span multiple venues on the Strip.

Specifically, the new MGM Resorts Festival Grounds will be abuzz with country stars during the ACM Awards' return from April 1-3, 2016. A trio of headliners already is booked to perform over three nights: Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood and Dierks Bentley.

This is the second event booked at the Festival Grounds after the upcoming Rock in Rio USA festival the weekends of May 8-9 and May 15-16. These ACM Awards performances are to be full concerts, each night, on the open 50-acre space, not abbreviated sets, as was the case when the Linq hosted the ACM Party for a Cause last year.

Hunter Hayes did perform a full show on the Thursday night preceding the ACM Awards telecast, but the ACM Party for a Cause was a spree of 20 acts over 48 hours — those performing included Rascal Flatts, Florida Georgia Line and Keith Urban.

Mandalay Bay Events Center will continue to be used as a “throw-to” venue for the April 3 telecast, meaning that Las Vegas is matching the 70,000-capacity ACM Awards telecast with a triumvirate of indoor-outdoor venues, all on the Strip. The show from AT&T Stadium drew high praise for the scope of its staging, with crane-operated cameras sweeping over the huge crowd, but lacked any measure of coziness.

MGM Grand has always served as a versatile TV stage, and the additions of the outdoor venue with the Strip backdrop should at least equal the dynamism of thousands of country fans cheering in Arlington. It was a great show, for a one-off, but Las Vegas is saying, “We’ll take it from here.”

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.

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