Festival Fever

From the beginning, the harmonic convergence of vision, money and expertise was entirely natural. Inevitable, even.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, representing the city ceaselessly identified as "The Entertainment Capital of the World," embracing show business superpower SFX Live, which produced 13,000 events and sold 35 million tickets nationwide in 1998.

But the fun that came with last week's announcement that they will produce special events in Las Vegas has just begun. The two sides now must figure out how to attract stars, organize and promote events, fill hotel rooms and titillate the masses.

"We have 100 different ideas out there," LVCVA Vice President of Marketing Rossi Ralenkotter said. "The best way I can classify what we have in mind is city-wide events, something bigger than what (a hotel-casino) can do on its property."

Stoked by their own imaginations, members of the LVCVA and SFX Live envision day-long music fairs at Sam Boyd Stadium, the Thomas & Mack Center and even the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

They see multicultural weekend festivals drawing 50,000 fans on bright spring days.

They giddily anticipate filling thousands of otherwise vacant hotel rooms on traditionally lax weekends.

"We're really limited only by our creativity," SFX President David Sass said during a phone interview from his office in New York. "All we can tell you now is everything is fair game."

Sound nice and vague? It's meant to be. There are few specifics in the LVCVA-SFX Live partnership other than the following:

* The contract, formalized Feb. 9, runs for three years and the LVCVA paid $6.5 million to enlist SFX's formidable promotion, production and operation capabilities.

* The first joint venture (and only event scheduled thus far under the contract) is the George Strait Country Music Festival on May 8 at Sam Boyd Stadium. The 11-hour concert event, headlined by one of country music's biggest draws, will feature Tim McGraw, the Dixie Chicks, Kenny Chesney, Jo Dee Messina, Mark Wills and Asleep at the Wheel.

* SFX will bring nine events (including the Strait festival) to Las Vegas during the duration of the contract.

"We have nothing else concrete," Sass said. "We're just now starting to get the development process under way."

Another certainty: The Las Vegas name and logo will be splashed across billboards and concert placards at every SFX event across the country.

"Branding Las Vegas with out-of-town promotions, other activities in other areas, was one of the components to this deal," said Rob Dondero, vice president of R&R Advertising, who led contract negotiations for the LVCVA. "The amount of possibilities to market our name outside of our market is huge, as was the chance to bring in some sort of festival concept with jazz, folk and rock 'n' roll, all in the same event."

The Strait tour is an example of the LVCVA's seemingly boundless efforts to keep the city's name in the national consciousness. Strait, one of the top draws in county music, makes 11 stops on his 1999 national tour, as close to Las Vegas as Phoenix and as far away as Boston.

And at each venue, the Las Vegas name will be featured prominently for prospective tourists.

The results, the LVCVA hopes, will be a boost in tourism for nonpeak weekends, when the city's room occupancy is less than 90 percent.

"We're not saying nine shows in three years will fill 120,000 rooms, but it will help," Dondero said. "But signature events geared toward nonpeak weekends will help a lot."

Historically, nonpeak weekends include the first weekend of February, the second weekends of April, May, June and December, the third weekends of January, August and November, and the fourth weekend of November.

The SFX-LVCVA plan is for thousands of show tickets to be distributed to Las Vegas hotels. Guests would receive preferential ticket offers before sales to the general public.

Backstage passes, VIP events and other promotions aligned with the events would be part of the guest packages.

"I think this is one step further than what we've been doing," Ralenkotter said. "Like with the Strait show, we've got seven bands and a major headliner. We could conceivable have an event with seven bands and four major headliners."

That concept is nothing new for SFX.

Live from New York

A relatively unknown entity locally, SFX has firmly established itself across the country as a corporation with clout.

Having assumed ownership of, or lease agreements with, 73 venues -- including 14 amphitheaters in nine of the top 10 media markets in the U.S. -- the New York-based subsidiary of SFX Entertainment bills itself as the largest diversified promoter, producer and venue operator for live entertainment events in the country.

"We've always wanted to put on an incredible array of events to a huge audience," Sass said. "We're not married to any single idea."

The list of SFX Live-promoted artists and events in 1998 bolsters Sass' claim. The corporation's lineup included tours by Strait, Rod Stewart, what's left of the Spice Girls, Fleetwood Mac, Luther Vandross, OzzFest '98 (headlined by the indestructible Ozzy Osbourne), Janet Jackson, Michael Bolton and Wynnona.

Not limiting itself to arena or stadium music shows, SFX also presented Broadway and touring productions, including "Chicago," "Cabaret," "The Who's Tommy," "Jekyll & Hyde" and "The Sound of Music."

Classified under "family attractions," SFX backed tours such as "Lord of the Dance," "Rugrats -- A Live Adventure," "The Tour of World Gymnastics," "Ice Wars" and "'The Rock and Roll Figure Skating Championships."

Nor are sporting events exempt from SFX's scope. The company promotes American Motorcyclist Association Supercross and Arenacross racing events, monster truck races and off-road racing.

All of which, in one form or another, has graced the Las Vegas stage. But in its embryonic stage, the SFX-LVCVA collaboration is zeroing in on lengthy, outdoor festivals.

"We know we want to do this in a public space, or I should say a noncasino neutral space," Sass said. "It won't have to only be music or that kind of event. We have had several hundred thousand people come to city celebrations that had a street-fair type atmosphere with music involved, connected with a certain motor sports event, for example."

The Nashville River Stages, the Music Midtown Festival in Atlanta, the Houston New Year's Eve celebration, the Charlotte Summer Sounds and the St. Louis Fair serve as examples of Sass' vision.

Ready for action

In Las Vegas, the annual rock marathon "Junefest" has drawn well at Sam Boyd Stadium, encouraging the major players for future off-the-Strip promotions.

"We're not looking just for a normal touring date that could play any venue," said Thomas & Mack Center and Sam Boyd Stadium Director Pat Christenson. "You're thinking of a bigger, more unique show like Junefest, so you're thinking Sam Boyd."

The under-expansion football stadium has a concert capacity of 50,000. Christenson stressed that the stadium and Thomas & Mack Center would seek to avoid direct competition from Strip arenas and amphitheaters.

"This is not meant to displace tours already coming here," Christenson said. "Again, we're talking about long festivals that would be touring shows like George Strait that would be at Sam Boyd anyway, or (SFX) creating something unique to the city."

Both the Thomas & Mack Center and Sam Boyd have a long history of hosting a cavalcade of events -- the Rugrats visited the Thomas & Mack last year and Sam Boyd has featured open-air shows ranging from the AMA Supercross to the Grateful Dead.

However, a new entertainment entity -- the 1,000-pound gorilla known as the Las Vegas Motor Speedway -- has emerged.

Let it roll

"We have had discussions about the possibilities out there," Dondero said. "They have a lot of potential. There is a possibility of putting concerts and so forth on out in their infield."

However, aside from a short concert by 38 Special that followed the 1998 Las Vegas 400 Winston Cup race, the 107,000-seat capacity LVMS hasn't housed anything but racing.

That could change, however. Speedway magnate Bruton Smith purchased the speedway in December and has spoken informally of adding concerts to the state-of-the-art racing facility.

LVMS General Manager Chris Powell said he has no qualms about diversifying events at the racetrack.

"We would look very favorably on doing something like a concert," he said. "Anything that draws people to Las Vegas, any event that would bring in tens of thousands of people, we'd look favorably on."

Powell could foresee multiple-day shows at LVMS, which regularly runs full weekends of racing action in support of a single major event, such as the Cup race or annual Indy Racing League event.

"A series of concerts over the course of a weekend would be similar to a full weekend of racing," he said. "We'd like to keep people here for three to four days. That's what makes people happy downtown and on the Strip."

Stadium occupancy (a crowd of 50,000 could be easily accommodated) as well as parking, concessions and restrooms make LVMS an attractive option.

"If you're talking large events with big crowds, we can do anything," Powell said. "There's nothing we couldn't do as far as concerts go."

The problem at the moment is, LVMS is being kept occupied by a more familiar event -- the Las Vegas 400, scheduled for March 7. More than 120,000 people are expected for the largest single-day sporting event in the state's history.

"If the Cup race was six months away, we'd be talking more about different events," Powell said. "Once that weekend is over with, we'll give it very close scrutiny."

That's fine with Sass.

"If you look at Las Vegas, it's so unique because of the options," he said. "It's a matter of marshaling the resources we have, seeing what's on the calendar for everyone and going from there."

Like they say in the industry, it's showtime.

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