Peter OReilly, center, NFL executive vice president of club business, and International and league events, speaks about special events connected to Super Bowl LVIII with Jeremy Aguero, left, and Steve Hill, president and CEO of the LVCVA, during a Las Vegas Super Bowl LVIII Host Committee news conference at the Vu Las Vegas Studios Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023.
Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023 | 2 a.m.
New Orleans and Miami have played host to the Super Bowl a combined total of nearly two dozen times. Officials in those cities are well versed in the planning and coordinating needed to welcome hundreds of thousands visitors for a weeklong celebration of football.
Las Vegas will get its first crack at hosting the celebration in 2024, with the game set for Feb. 11 at Allegiant Stadium.
And while Las Vegas has no prior experience or existing blueprints, the valley is already a major destination for spectators of the event each year, which means there’s an “incredible recipe for success” this February, said Sam Joffray, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Super Bowl LVIII Host Committee.
The Super Bowl Host Committee — which is not unlike those formed in any host city and is composed of notable community members — is dedicated to keeping the promises that Las Vegas made to the NFL in its bid for the event, and amassing the necessary funds, volunteers and staff members to make those promises happen.
Las Vegans jumped at the chance to serve on the host committee or volunteer for the event, which Joffray attributed to the fact that this is Las Vegas’ first Super Bowl and a historical milestone in the city’s history.
“Everybody wants to be able to say, ‘I was part of the first one in Vegas,’ ” he said. “It’s such a long time coming. There were so many years where everybody thought there’s no chance we’ll have a team; there’s no chance we’ll ever host the Super Bowl.”
Breaking down the host committee
Maury Gallagher, chairman of the board of Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air and chair of the Super Bowl Host Committee, said he was motivated to play a role in the event as a football fan and self-described competitor.
The first Super Bowl in the mid-20th century was just a football game, Gallagher said. Now, it “consumes the community” in which it takes place each year. And, while the event will be a major task for Las Vegas, Gallagher said he believed the valley would take it in stride.
“This is kind of like breathing for this town,” he said.
Gallagher and eight others — including representatives from the Las Vegas Raiders organization, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and resort partners — make up the host committee’s “executive committee,” and were invited into the operation as soon as it was formed.
The executive committee sets the strategic goals of the overall committee and hired Joffray to run it.
Joffray, who did the same type of work for many years in New Orleans, said the host committee had a full-time staff of 14 people, in addition to 11 subcommittees chaired by local experts. Subcommittees are targeted toward transportation, public safety, public relations and community affairs, to name a few.
Hundreds of committee members have been meeting monthly to help plan various aspects of the Super Bowl operation, whether that’s recruiting 9,000 volunteers, focusing on how the event can benefit Las Vegas or making sure it has a positive impact through environmental and social-justice programs.
“Some of our committees just have an absolute murderer’s row of talent,” Joffray said. “ … It’s overwhelming.”
The Super Bowl dwarfs almost any other event of its kind, Gallagher said, so the amount of effort needed to put it together is substantial.
“It’s a real collegial type of event — no one group can do it all,” he said. “And there’s a budget that has to be dealt with to put all this stuff on. So it’s kind of gearing up to run a big business for a short period of time, and then shutting it down.”
The event, which involves a supplier diversity program called Super Bowl LVIII Business Connect, will also offer tremendous opportunities to minority- and women-owned businesses, said Sandra Douglass Morgan, president of the Las Vegas Raiders and vice chair of the host committee.
Through partnerships with UNLV and United Way of Southern Nevada, Douglass Morgan added, local students and young adults can participate in the Super Bowl Student Internship Program.
“Having these students being able to intern and have visibility into what it takes to be a Super Bowl — these are experiences that kids and teens and young adults in Las Vegas didn’t have before,” she said.
The committee is “planting the seeds” for the potential return of the Super Bowl as well as other large-scale events, while also cultivating and growing the local community, providing new career opportunities and proving the city’s overall ability to host events of this scale, Douglass Morgan said.
“The executive committee is really focused on this game having a long lasting impact, whether it be giving businesses more training and other opportunities to be able to participate in these type of events,” she said.
“And obviously growing the next generation of leaders in sports and sports management and just different, larger-scale events.”
When the executive committee hears reports from subcommittee chairs, Gallagher says he marvels at how “capable, competent and thorough” different Las Vegas entities are at their jobs.
“One of the things that makes this town so good at what it does is the LVCVA and the leadership of Steve Hill and his team,” he said, talking about the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and its CEO. “They’re unlike any other group in the country, because all they do is promote Las Vegas …and they know how to put a party on.”
Anticipated events
Hosting the Super Bowl entails a lot more than just a football game.
Stakeholders from the host committee, the NFL, Las Vegas, Clark County and Nevada gathered for a news conference earlier this month to announce a slew of events for the week leading up to the Super Bowl on Feb. 11.
Opening night Feb. 5 at Allegiant Stadium will be open to fans and also the last public appearance of the teams before the game a week later.
The Super Bowl Experience, an interactive football theme park from the NFL, will be set up at Mandalay Bay.
Super Kids-Super Sharing, a Super Bowl initiative in its 25th year that donates books and school supplies to local kids, will take place at Pearson Community Center, and another tradition celebrating a quarter-century — the Annual Super Bowl Soulful Celebration — will be at Palms Casino Resort.
Taste of the NFL will take place at the Keep Memory Alive Event Center, and, finally, the Super Bowl Breakfast will be at Caesars Palace, which will be the NFL’s headquarters in Las Vegas.
“What other event can consume a week?” Gallagher told the Sun prior to last week’s news conference, which also included comments from Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo and Clark County Commissioner Jim Gibson. “And the turnout, the numbers of people, the corporate sponsorships that are involved — it’s just … the ultimate week of entertainment.”
Unlike some Super Bowl cities, Las Vegas’ entertainment and sports sphere is uniquely consolidated to the area around the Strip — which also has more than 100,000 hotel rooms available. For contrast, Gallagher pointed to last year’s game in Phoenix, where the stadium in which the game was played was 20 miles from downtown hotels where the majority of spectators stayed.
“Here, I think that you’ll see people walking to the Super Bowl,” he said. “It would be a nice Sunday stroll.”
The LVCVA, resorts and other entities in Las Vegas are used to hosting large-scale entertainment and events, and with a special talent at customer service, Douglass Morgan said.
“Being able to do it with, now, the big game in our city — I just know that everyone’s going to put their best foot forward, and obviously with hopes of the game coming back,” she said. “And so there’s just a great buzz of excitement.”
For years, Las Vegas never had professional sports, Douglass Morgan said, so it’s been incredible to watch the effect of the NHL, WNBA, NFL and, now, the Super Bowl on the valley.
She’s honored to be a part of bringing “the biggest show on earth” to the city she grew up in, Douglass Morgan said.
“I think the host committee has done a great job, and it’s really a testament to Sam Joffray and the team that he’s built,” she said. “And making sure there’s a really good balance of people that have helped make Las Vegas what it is, serving on this committee.”
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