Promoter vows to liven up LV entertainment scene

When George Strait and his country music compatriots took the stage at Sam Boyd Stadium over the weekend, it marked a milestone in the city's tourism strategy.

Of the more than 37,000 seats sold in advance for the George Strait Chevy Truck Country Music Festival, about 16,000 were bought by out-of-town visitors. Of those 16,000, about 35 percent were bought by residents of the greater Los Angeles area.

Strait's tour stop was a product of SFX Live, which is bringing to Las Vegas at least nine special events on weekends that in the past have had a history of low hotel occupancy. It was the first presentation that was part of SFX's three-year, $6.75 million contract with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Bruce Eskowitz, executive vice president of SFX Live, told a crowd gathered for a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and LVCVA tourism luncheon last week that it was fortunate that the Strait Festival came on the heels of the Country Music Association's annual award presentations. That, he said, promised to draw even more walk-up sales.

Award winners Jo Dee Messina and the Dixie Chicks were among the acts that joined the Strait Festival, which began its three-month tour with an appearance in Phoenix March 6. The tour doesn't have Southern California on its itinerary and runs through June 6.

Last year, nearly 1 million people attended the Strait Festival in 18 sold-out stadiums. More than 42,000 attended this year's event at Sam Boyd Stadium, one of the smallest venues of the 1999 tour.

But Escowitz said the emphasis for this year's event was to draw as many out-of-town guests to Las Vegas as possible -- something SFX hopes to do three more times by June 30, 2000, and eight more times in three years.

The company's strategy is to heavily market Las Vegas and the special events in nine cities this year. The big push is planned in Atlanta, Boston, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Phoenix and San Francisco.

In 2000, the company will add Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis and San Antonio, Texas, to the mix and in 2001, Denver, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Tenn., and Columbus, Ohio, will be added.

So what major entertainment production is next for SFX? Escowitz wouldn't say, even though he had center stage at the chamber luncheon and some had speculated there would be an announcement at the event.

Addressing reporters after the lunch, Escowitz said he's on no timetable for delivering an event or a date.

"We're working with the authority on the next event and we have a few possibilities," Escowitz said. He promised the event would make "a big splash" on the Las Vegas entertainment scene.

A full house for the Strait Festival was a good start, he said, because many of the out-of-town attendees stayed overnight, resulting in more than 16,000 room nights spent at local resorts.

The more than 42,000 country fans at Sam Boyd Stadium over the weekend compared favorably to attendance at Junefest, a similarly formatted day-long rock concert event sponsored by KKLZ, a classic rock radio station.

SFX Live is a division of New York-based SFX Entertainment and bills itself as the largest diversified promoter, producer and venue operator for live entertainment events in the United States. Last year, the company produced 13,000 events and sold 35 million tickets.

The company produces several styles of live concerts, from rock to country, and theatrical presentations that range from "Jekyll and Hyde" to "Rent." It also offers gymnasts, ice shows, "Lord of the Dance" and monster truck rallies. The company was responsible for bringing the Broadway show "Chicago" to the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino.

The Nashville River Stages, the Music Midtown of Atlanta and the Summer Sounds of Charlotte, N.C., are all music festivals under the SFX banner.

SFX officials said they would continue to stage their events in "neutral sites" like the Thomas & Mack Center and Sam Boyd Stadium and hope that individual hotels have tie-in promotions, like similar acts, to perform in the same weekend as the SFX event.

In addition to promoting Las Vegas as the entertainment capital in its shows and festivals, SFX will mention the city in its advertising campaigns.

Eskowitz said Las Vegas hotels would get thousands of tickets for events as incentives for good customers. Resort guests would get preferential ticket offers before sales to the public. Backstage passes, meet-and-greet events and other special promotions are part of the package.

The LVCVA and SFX already have identified potential weekends for events. Weekends with occupancy levels below 90 percent are being targeted. They 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.

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