Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

OPINION:

How many houses can one city keep full?

Wayne Newton and Shamir

Steve Marcus

An exterior view of the T-Mobile Arena on Wednesday, April 6, 2016.

How many arenas are too many? How many are enough?

In Las Vegas, we’re about to find out.

Announced last week was a partnership between Las Vegas Sands and Madison Square Garden for a 17,500-seat entertainment venue to be built on the parcel currently being used for storage facilities on Sands Avenue between Koval Lane and Manhattan Street.

Not quite on the Strip, but a few somersaults away. The arena would join MGM Grand Garden Arena, T-Mobile Arena and Mandalay Bay Events Center among large-scale arenas on the Strip. Not so far off are the Thomas & Mack Center at UNLV and the Orleans Arena. In a country where most metropolitan areas have just one or two arenas, Las Vegas offers a full house of houses.

A few quick-shot thoughts about this new entertainment enclave:

• In the news release announcing the venue, the point person from the Madison Square Garden Co. was James Dolan, executive chairman of MSG. But an MSG official not named has a strong connection to Las Vegas Sands: former Venetian/Palazzo President and Chief Operating Officer John Caparella, who in October left Las Vegas to take a position as MSG’s executive vice president of venue management.

When Caparella took that post, speculation intensified that MSG would be a partner in the project behind Venetian/Palazzo.

• The announcement of this venue, less than two months after the opening of T-Mobile Arena, and its variable capacity (it can reportedly be reduced several thousand seats from its 17,500 top level) is a sure sign there is to be intense competition for booking both arenas.

One of the partners in the Sands project is the entertainment company Live Nation, an industry leader in bringing star acts to Las Vegas (Britney Spears, J-Lo and Lionel Richie at Axis theater at Planet Hollywood among them) that also enjoys a strong booking relationship with MGM Resorts. Another partner is Azoff MSG Entertainment, headed up by highly respected entertainment executive Irving Azoff, who formerly managed the Eagles and also has managed Journey, Christina Aguilera, Van Halen, Maroon 5, Steely Dan and No Doubt.

Azoff also famously teamed with MSG in a $50 million renovation of the Forum in Los Angeles.

In short, this is a serious lineup of entertainment heavyweights.

But even with those experienced in recruiting and signing artists, selling tickets is no easy feat in Las Vegas, even among proven superstars in the music industry. Such a proven draw as Billy Joel, who has sold out 36 consecutive dates at Madison Square Garden, fell short of filling T-Mobile on April 30, largely because of characteristically stiff competition in the neighborhood surrounding the new arena (Rihanna at Mandalay Bay Events Center, Elton John at the Colosseum at Caesars, and Jason Mraz at Tiger Jam at MGM Grand).

The prospect of another like-sized venue operating each weekend will only intensify the pressure on concert bookers. Artists will benefit from the expanded offerings, certainly, and don’t discount the possibility that Las Vegas Sands could use the new venue as a giant convention space on occasion, thus lessening the pressure to use the building exclusively as a concert venue. But if anyone thinks selling tickets in Las Vegas is a blood sport now, wait until this place opens.

• A traffic plan is paramount to the early success of this venue. The access of the parcel on Sands and Koval is at least as challenging as that of T-Mobile Arena. An early read on how to deliver thousands of people in and out of the facility would be terrific. That should top operators’ list of priorities, actually.

• Interesting is the new hall’s announced flexibility. If it can dip from 17,500 to about 5,000, suddenly it will seek to pull acts that would be in play for the new theater at the Park, which is being built at the soon-to-be-renovated Monte Carlo. MGM Resorts officials seek to establish a lineup of headliners similar to what the Colosseum (with Celine, Elton, Rod Stewart, and Reba and Brooks & Dunn) and Axis have offered. Given the flexibility of MGM Grand and T-Mobile, it is likely that concerts in the 4,000- to 12,000-seat range would be performed at seven Strip venues in a single night (the Sands-MSG venue, Park theater, Colosseum, Axis, Mandalay Bay Events Center, MGM Grand and T-Mobile).

The numbers might be adjusted even higher at a couple of those arenas, and the pressure at T-Mobile would be greatly reduced if the arena is home to an NHL expansion team. But again, that is a huge volume of tickets just for arenas and large theaters on the Strip — and that’s not even counting seven Cirque shows, myriad production shows and star headliners (such as “Jersey Boys” at Paris Las Vegas, “Absinthe” at Caesars, “Rock of Ages” at Rio, “Million Dollar Quartet” at Harrah’s, the magicians David Copperfield at MGM Grand and Criss Angel at Luxor, and Donny & Marie and Olivia Newton-John at Flamingo).

And, you can toss into this entertainment Cuisinart such venues as the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel, the Foundry at SLS (also a Live Nation venue), Brooklyn Bowl and the Chelsea at Cosmopolitan.

It’s a staggering collection of venues and performers. The question, always in Las Vegas, is can all of these venues and shows survive the development of yet another large-scale facility? There is a feeling that the new venue will help draw even more tourists annually to Las Vegas, which would help all of those venues and artists mentioned. But check back in a couple of years, when the market, as always, furnishes the answer.

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