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Raiders Las Vegas Stadium Rendering
Thursday, Dec. 13, 2018 | 2 a.m.
A group tasked with determining ways to draw to Las Vegas special sporting events such as the Super Bowl and the World Cup recommended Wednesday that tourism officials and proposed ad hoc committees split efforts to attract events.
The plan developed by the Southern Nevada Sporting Event Committee is aimed at helping efforts to fill the 65,000-seat, partially tax-funded Oakland Raiders stadium that's under construction in Las Vegas and other area venues.
"We want to be able to go after events that fill in our slow times and be strategic about it and make sure that we are bringing in as many people as we can at the right times that we need them, whether that's slow times that we need to backfill or busy times that we need to balance," committee chairman Paul Anderson said after the meeting.
The recommendations will now go to Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, who appointed the committee earlier this year and whose term ends in a few weeks. Gov.-elect Steve Sisolak, who was part of the committee in his role as chairman of the Clark County Commission, is expected to work on the recommendations.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is the agency responsible for promoting the tourist destination. Under the recommendations, it would be the lead agency in bids for large-scale events such as the NFL draft and Super Bowl. The nonprofit Las Vegas Events would head efforts to attract amateur, youth and other events.
The convention and visitors authority would also have the ability to establish supporting ad hoc committees.
The report suggests that a 0.25 percent allocation from hotel room tax revenue that the convention and visitors authority already receives be used to fund efforts for bids on events like the NCAA basketball Final Four and the Super Bowl.
The report also includes suggested statutory changes that would grant confidentiality to some proprietary information during competitive bidding processes and would also allow the convention and visitors authority to create one or more organizing committees as needed.
The approval of the report came on the same day that the NFL announced Las Vegas will host the draft in 2020. The Raiders that September will begin play at their new stadium across the freeway from the Las Vegas Strip.
“I think that’s a significant accomplishment in many ways,” committee member and Raiders president Marc Badain said. "To get the NFL to bring one of its signature events to the community is really quite outstanding and something to be proud of."
Sun reporter Ricardo Torres-Cortez contributed to this report.
