Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

LVCVA ensured Las Vegas was a topic of conversation during Super Bowl week

Officials were on hand in Miami to promote the upcoming NFL Draft and beyond

Super Bowl 54

David J. Phillip / AP

Grow lights cover a portion of the grass field inside Hard Rock Stadium Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, in Miami Gardens, Fla., in preparation for the NFL Super Bowl 54 football game.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell wasn’t thinking about a Super Bowl in Las Vegas this week as he prepared for today’s game between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs.

“I think we should get through the draft before we focus on the Super Bowl,” Goodell said when asked about Las Vegas at his annual Super Bowl week news conference.

He might be one of the only ones resisting looking ahead. That was at least the experience of Fletch Brunelle, vice president of marketing at Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority, as he spent three days on site at the Super Bowl 54 headquarters in the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Brunelle helmed a booth promoting Las Vegas right outside the famed Super Bowl radio row and greeted hundreds of visitors, including fans, media and business partners. A lot of them shared the same thought.

“They want to see a Super Bowl come sooner rather than later,” said Fletch Brunelle, the LVCVA vice president of marketing. “They’re very excited to see us here.”

Brunelle and his team’s primary objective was to spread information about the 2020 NFL Draft, which is being held on and around the Strip from April 23-25, and Las Vegas’ emergence as a sports destination. But they couldn’t escape Super Bowl speculation.

Las Vegas is believed to have the inside track on landing the 2025 game, with the draft winding up as an appetizer delivered a half-decade before the main course.

“When we look at the draft, one of the things we’ve been talking about is it’s a dry run making sure we understand the dynamics and logistics about the Super Bowl and what it will look like,” Brunelle said. “As you walk around the Super Bowl compared to the draft, there’s a lot more that goes on around the city. There’s a lot of coordination that’s going to need to happen.”

The LVCVA’s previous NFL stop was at the 2019 draft in Nashville. Brunelle said gaining first-hand knowledge of the event informed some of the plans for the upcoming draft.

“Their activation was on their Broadway area, which was fascinating to see and they also had a little walk to get to their fan fest, which was by their stadium,” Brunelle said. “So when we take a look at what we’re doing with the Bellagio and closing the Strip all the way from the Flamingo to Koval, just that area by Caesars Forum, it’s going to be very convenient for the fans to get around and enjoy the entire experience. Not only those experiences, but also what they can do after the fan fest is going to be fascinating for the visitors to Las Vegas.”

Accessibility and proximity of venues is a big topic of conversation at Super Bowl 54. It’s been a hassle to get from one event to another in a timely fashion amid the South Florida traffic.

It’s taken as much as an hour for shuttle buses to travel less than 10 miles between the media hotels and convention center to the 49ers’ team hotel, where they’ve held the bulk of their media access. The delay to the Chiefs’ hotel, which is farther North, has been even longer.

That should be less of a problem in a theoretical Super Bowl in Las Vegas, where everything is more centrally located.

“It’s all right there,” UFC President and frequent Super Bowl visitor Dana White said. “Can you imagine this in Las Vegas? Listen, it’s going to the best one they’ve ever done.”

Brunelle and his team departed Miami to head back to Las Vegas Thursday afternoon but left behind a replica of the Las Vegas sign and displayed photos of Allegiant Stadium and NFL Draft renderings. White became the de facto spokesperson when he posted up in front of their former space more than an hour after he was scheduled to leave, greeting fans and signing autographs.

He also may have inadvertently co-opted their same message, as earlier in the day he was hyping up all of Las Vegas’ sports offerings.

“I don’t think people here realize it,” White said. “This is no exaggeration: Every day I drive to work, I’m behind guys that have either Golden Knights’ license plates or Golden Knights’ stickers. It’s such a huge sports town now, and the Raiders are going to take it to another level.”

Brunelle said he ended up discussing a lot more than the NFL Draft and Raiders during his time in Miami. He was also able to tout the Pac-12 Championship Game and reformatted Las Vegas Bowl as well as the ongoing construction of Caesars Forum and Wynn Las Vegas’ convention center expansion in different meetings.

The time in Miami invigorated Brunelle and his team.

“I don’t believe we’ve done any activations in the Super Bowl in the past, and frankly, we might not have been welcome in the past,” Brunelle said. “I’m a native Las Vegan so for me personally it’s a pinch-me moment to be able to have Las Vegas a partner with the NFL.”

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.

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