Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Whiskey brought the ACM Awards here, but what will get it to stay?

The Last Rodeo

Rick Diamond/Getty Images

Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn with CBS Entertainment executive Jack Sussman, Executive Producer of The ACM Awards R.A.C. Clark, President of Dick Clark Productions Orly Adelson, manager Clarence Spalding, and Executive Director Of The ACM Bob Romeo at the post show reception for ACM Presents: Brooks & Dunn - The Last Rodeo at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on April 19, 2010.

It is partly by chance and partly by an empty bottle of Crown Royal that MGM Grand will host the 46th annual Academy of Country Music Awards on Sunday night.

The show was televised from Los Angeles for more than 30 years, until one night in 2003 when the bar at the Universal Studios Hilton ran out of the Canadian whiskey. At that moment two patrons of the bar, Bob Romeo, current CEO of the Academy and Jack Lameier, former president of the board, decided there was only one sensible thing to do: Move the next year’s show to a place where the well would never run dry.

Romeo jokingly suggested Vegas. And so it was.

“I could give you a speech about business trends and numbers, but we moved the whole awards show based on a handshake and a bottle of Crown Royal,” he says.

It’s an appropriate origin for the partnership between the ACM Awards and a city that few consider to be very country. After seven years the CBS-televised award show is doing well in its adoptive home, raking in more than 13 million people last year, and locally the Academy has expanded its reach into charities and a slew of fan-focused events. It hasn’t quite become the annual National Finals Rodeo, which draws approximately 200,000 every winter, but if Romeo has his way it might be.

“The Academy constantly evolves as country music grows and changes. I think our organization is one that tries to remain nimble, tries to change with the times and tries to be as current as we can,” Romeo explains.

In 2006, ACM partnered with Fremont Street Experience for a free concert Downtown the weekend of the awards show. The event was so successful it expanded to a two-night concert series in 2007. Last year’s events drew more than 18,000 attendees, and this year, Sara Evans and Ronnie Dunn will headline concerts beginning at 6:15 on Friday and Saturday night with a dozen artists performing in all.

The Academy has also created Lifting Lives, a charity dedicated to the cause of using music as a healing tool to help those in need. In 2009, the organization began integrating a Lifting Lives segment into the awards show, which has raised more than $200,000 to date. On Monday night CBS will film a second special from MGM Grand called Girls’ Night Out: The Superstar Women of Country Music, with proceeds from that event also benefitting Lifting Lives.

This year the Academy will host its first-ever Fan Jam at the Mandalay Bay Events Center—a companion event to the official ceremony at the MGM Grand that will live stream the awards on a big screen and host live performances from acts like Sugarland, Eric Church and The Band Perry, which the ceremony will cut to periodically. The concept, Romeo explained, was to accommodate more fans than the MGM Grand Garden Arena can hold—and at a cheaper price point. Tickets for the awards began at $150 and are sold out; Fan Jam tickets are $35 and, according to Romeo, almost sold out.

“The Academy has come to Vegas and in seven years has essentially sold out the two biggest arenas in town, which to me is an unbelievable statement for the popularity of country music,” Romeo says.

For Vegas, that’s good news, too, because Romeo concedes the Academy recently considered leaving Las Vegas for Dallas. There, they could accommodate an even larger event with 50,000 to 60,000 fans. Fan Jam, then, was created as an alternative that may preserve the relationship between ACM and Vegas—if it translates well on television.

“If (Fan Jam) works, it allows me to take care of 7,000 more people,” says Romeo. “It’ll probably lead us to come up with some other ideas of things we could do in Vegas to supersize the ACMs.” One possibility being discussed is creating a country music festival that would make Vegas the go-to destination for fans every April.

While there is a lot riding on the success of this year’s ACM events, Romeo likes his odds. “We gambled when we moved there, we gambled with Fremont Street, and we gamble every year when we try something different. So far, I think I’ve had a pretty good lucky streak going in Vegas.”

Just as long as the bars don’t run out of Crown.

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