Las Vegas is no stranger to big concerts, but now the biggest night in music is coming here, and it doesn't end there.

The big game itself is coming to Southern Nevada.

The Super Bowl will be here in 2024.

We examine the benefits and costs of hosting large events like the Super Bowl.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

Welcome to Nevada Week; I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Las Vegas has long been known as the Entertainment Capital of the World, but now it could be called the event capital of the world.

With the Pro Bowl and the NHL All-Star game last week, the Super Bowl in 2024, and in just a few months, the music industry's biggest night, the Grammys, Las Vegas is on the map for hosting big events.

Joining us now to talk about the entertainment side of the equation is John Katsilometes, entertainment reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, better known as Johnny Kats, right?

-Also known as that, yes.

Commonly, yes.

-Let's start with the Grammys.

How big of a deal is this for Las Vegas, and why is Las Vegas getting the Grammys in the first place?

(John Katsilometes) Well, why we're getting it is a result of the pandemic.

You know, when the show was originally scheduled to be at Crypto.com Arena in L.A. in late January-- -Formerly the Staples Center.

-Yes, we all know it as the Staples Center.

Now it's Crypto.com Arena, and that was its home for years, the Grammys, and it made sense in L.A.

The center of the music industry is Los Angeles, at least in the western United States.

So they figured that they weren't going to be able to plan effectively with all the uncertainty about COVID and pandemic restrictions in the arena.

They wanted to be able to move off Crypto.com and move the show to later in the spring.

The availability of Las Vegas came into play then, and they were starting to scout arenas in Las Vegas and we have several, as you know.

They found MGM Grand Garden Arena was open in April, so that's how it happened.

They said we would love to at least host a show this year in Las Vegas until we sort out what's going on at Crypto.com Arena over the long term.

They have a two-year deal still at Crypto.com Arena, the Grammys, after this year.

So Las Vegas won't have the show for another two years after at least.

It has to be at Crypto barring any of the unforeseen for the next two years.

-But should Las Vegas have hope that even after this the Grammys could come back?

-Yes, because of our capacity to host major events, major award shows.

The MGM Grand Garden Arena has hosted the Academy of Country Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards.

Years ago they hosted the ESPYs, long ago, 20-something years ago.

They've had things like the VH1 Divas show has been held in there.

Special events, boxing, mixed martial arts, all assortment of concerts and basketball games.

It's a very versatile venue for televised events and televised award shows, MGM Grand Garden, so that's what appealed to the Recording Academy which puts on the Grammys.

They'd like that a lot.

They would prefer in Las Vegas to be able to use T-Mobile Arena, which is more like Crypto.com than is MGM Grand Garden, because they have a bunch of suites in there.

The suite situation in L.A. is very lucrative.

They have those luxury suites and they sell them.

I think they have like 170-something, and there's a bunch at T-Mobile Arena too where you can make money and have all your bigwigs be in there.

MGM Grand Garden doesn't have that.

They have these kind of VIP booths, boxes, but they don't have that kind of amenity.

So what to look for is how the show plays out in Las Vegas for this year and maybe set the stage for some long-term planning after it's finished its commitment in L.A. possibly with T-Mobile Arena, if the Golden Knights aren't, you know, in the playoffs.

Hockey playoffs come into play.

T-Mobile Arena is a very busy place because they have a host NHL team, but we'll see.

I'm not ruling any of this out.

My best information from people who really know this stuff is Las Vegas, this is going to be a test, the Grammy show on April 3 for Las Vegas civically to see how it plays on TV and how the Recording Academy likes the show here.

We're not a recording industry mecca, but we are a live entertainment mecca.

We're a concert and production show mecca, headliner live show mecca.

So the recording industry knows that, and that goes for the folks who come in from Nashville for the Academy of Country Music Awards.

The L.A. crew comes in here all the time.

They're here at events.

The performing touring shows come here, the specific headlining shows come here, so we have a lot of music going on.

I'm looking forward-- I'm excited to see the Grammys here not because it's going to be a cool show, it will be, it'll be great to have it here, but I'm excited for the city to be able to go through this sort of audition itself and show the Grammys what we can do.

We can have cutaways as you know all over the Strip.

Go Downtown, you can have a live performance under the Fremont Street Experience in the Viva Vision, we know that.

There's a lot of possibilities here.

It's going to be exciting.

-So Las Vegas is going to get to prove itself.

-Exactly.

Bring it on, they say.

-How exciting.

Talk about the Adele residency, which we cannot say has been formally cancelled, but it's leaving so many people up in the air with tickets.

We spoke off camera about if you got your tickets on the secondary market, you can't get a refund until it's officially cancelled.

-Exactly, and secondary market folks, it's become more of a common term.

It used to be kind of inside baseball, that term, but now it's more common and that's a StubHub, Viagogo, lasvegastickets.com, all these brokers that obtain tickets from Ticketmaster in this case, which is the primary ticket seller for Adele.

So Ticketmaster did what they call their verified fan system where you got into a lottery and hopefully they picked you.

You got in a couple days before the on-sale date, you registered and if you were lucky enough to be called in, you had opportunities to buy specific tickets at specific times.

And those tickets ran up to $400 a piece.

You know, from $400 to about $1,000 face value a piece for Adele, ant that's the base ticket price.

-And through Ticketmaster, people were able to get their refunds, but everybody else... -Yes.

And when Adele cancelled, if you booked your ticket through the verified system, you have up until a month after her postponement announcement, which was January 19.

You have until February 19 to get a full refund if you were lucky enough to book through Ticketmaster.

If you're like me, I did this: I went on Viagogo the day she announced that she was canceling.

Three hours before-- or postponing-- three hours before, I was able to find a ticket availability on Viagogo which I've never bought a ticket on before.

I've gotten wi-fi on flights through Viagogo before.

But I got on and got a ticket for like $280 total with fees and everything.

I have an Adele ticket now for her opening night on the orchestra floor, a single, a good seat, for $280, and I was ecstatic about this.

Three hours later she's crying on my Instagram feed about canceling the shows, and now I'm in with all the other fans wondering what's going to happen.

-What do you know about what is going to happen, and do you accept her reasoning for the show being postponed due to it not being ready with the set, production... -Well, what happens to the ticketholders in the secondary market is you have to wait for a formal announcement from either Caesars Entertainment, Live Nation or Adele herself or all three that this has been canceled.

These shows are not going to be performed, they're not going to be rescheduled at Caesar's Palace.

That has not happened yet, and I made a call on this this week.

-It gives you hope?

-It gives me-- at least it's a tangible reality.

It's where we are right now.

The show has not been canceled.

That's according to the people who do business inside the show, okay?

So I don't know if it's encouragement.

It's still a wait and see.

But once it is canceled, I can obtain my refund through the secondary market.

Now, to ask about Adele's reasoning, the longer this goes on, the less convinced I am this is an operations concern.

Her argument, her statement was very convincing, very compelling.

You know, the crying and all that, I was with her; I felt terrible.

She was not-- whatever was going on with Adele when she cut that clip, she was not prepared to perform a live residency the next night, a headlining show.

it was obvious as a human being watching her.

But for a show to have those kinds of operation problems, you would think that there would be a collective effort, everybody's eyes on the ball, hard focus.

If we're having delivery issues, let's get that situated.

If we're having, you know, problems in assembling a staff and assembling the stage, let's get on top of this right now and get this thing rebooked.

That should be the top priority from everybody involved, and I don't see that kind of activity right now.

I don't see that, and from what I've heard inside the show, there were a lot more mitigating factors about her response to what was going on that led to this rather than half my staff has COVID and I can't get my costumes delivered.

-Which in your opinion, does that damage what Las Vegas is trying to do in returning to the entertainment level pre-pandemic by having one of these performers say it's all COVID related?

-I don't know.

I don't think it's a commentary on Las Vegas because it's not a trend.

It's specific to Adele.

-But it doesn't benefit Las Vegas is what I'm saying.

-It's not great for Las Vegas to have this-- I've called her one of the brass ring residencies to have all the hype, all the tickets, all the build-up, for it to be cut short is not good for the city.

It's not good for Caesers Entertainment and it's not good for Live Nation.

It at the very least causes a disruption in your operations when you're trying to do the entire residency lineup at Caesar's Palace.

So it's not good that way, but this is an adaptable group.

I know those guys, the folks at Caesars and the team at Live Nation.

They can adapt really fast.

This is not their first challenge by a long measure.

You know, we've had other shows that have had to cancel.

We had Britney Spears with Domination, if you remember that, over at Park Theater.

That was cut down five weeks.

The entire thing was canceled five weeks before it came out.

I think they did okay at Park MGM and Park Theater, if you noticed the bookings over there, what's now Live Nation-- or Adobe Live, and I think they'll be fine at the Coliseum.

I think that it's more a commentary on I would say, in my opinion, in going all in with a single superstar like this over those specific dates.

Adele demanded this schedule for a reason.

She wanted to be the only headliner from January until April at the Coliseum.

That's a huge ask, and she got it.

-And perhaps too much.

-Yes.

-Thank you so much for coming in.

We have run out of time.

And Caesars could reportedly lose $150 million if these dates aren't rescheduled.

Johnny Kats, thank you for your time.

We move now to Super Bowl LVI between the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams.

It is in L.A. this weekend, and in honor of it being the 56th Super Bowl, 56 nonprofits in the L.A. area will share a $1 million Super Bowl Legacy Grant matched by the Super Bowl Host Committee.

The NFL says it's holding more than 30 charitable activities and community outreach events in the Los Angeles area for the Super Bowl alone and that Southern Nevada can expect similar benefits when the big game takes place here in 2024.

What the NFL accomplished here for the Pro Bowl, the league says, was just a preview.

"1-2-3."

The NFL kicked off Pro Bowl Week in Las Vegas with a revitalization project at Clark County Wetlands Park.

(Peter O'Reilly) Whenever we come into a community like we are in Las Vegas for the Pro Bowl or a Super Bowl or a draft, it's certainly about the game on the field and all of those elements, but it's about what's important in that community and how do you leave a legacy in that community.

The legacy left here, 1,200 native plants and trees planted by volunteers and local students.

(Izzy Wise) If I come back and I see the trees that they're a bit bigger, I come back and see them, it's pretty cool because I know that I did that.

In order to improve this asset to Southern Nevada.

The vegetation here filters out pollutants from the Las Vegas Wash that flow into Lake Mead which provides the community with 90% of our drinking water.

Clark County Commission Chairman Jim Gibson sits on the Las Vegas Super Bowl Host Committee which helped sell the NFL on holding a Super Bowl here.

That committee is now responsible for fulfilling the NFL's many Super Bowl requirements.

(Jim Gibson) I think the thing that startled me in our last host committee meeting was the number of volunteers.

Eight or 9,000 people will be required in order to carry this off.

We have people that will be just providing wayfinding inside the stadium.

But outside the stadium, doing all that is required in order to get people in and get people out, it is not just a traffic control issue.

It's so much more than that.

And then you have all of the emergency services that will be required.

It's all very large.

While Gibson and the committee gear up for 2024, the NFL plants seeds of encouragement.

The Wetlands project was just one of multiple community events the league held for the Pro Bowl with many more expected for Super Bowl LVIII.

The Pro Bowl, NHL All-Star Weekend and the NFL Draft are without a doubt large and notable sporting events, but they cannot compare to the prestige of a Super Bowl.

A couple of months ago, Las Vegas learned that it would get to host the big game in 2024.

It's an opportunity that comes with a lot of responsibility though.

The NFL requires a lot from its Super Bowl host city, and joining us now to talk about that is Jeremy Aguero, chief operations and analytics officer for the Las Vegas Raiders.

Welcome, Jeremy.

That title is relatively new because for the past 24 years, you were a principal analyst with Applied Analysis, a well known economic fiscal and policy research firm here in Las Vegas.

You also sit on the Las Vegas Super Bowl Host Committee, which is responsible for implementing all of the requirements that the NFL has for its host city.

Let's start with the benefits of hosting a Super Bowl.

In the story we just ran, we saw there is a tremendous impact on the community and community events, but outside of that, what are some of the other benefits?

(Jeremy Aguero) Look, I think there's all kinds of benefits, right?

We can talk about them in terms of economic benefits, jobs created, wages and salaries for people that work in our community.

We talk about businesses that are engaged as a result of the Super Bowl.

We talk about them in terms of fiscal impacts.

Taxes that are generated because people stay in our hotel rooms.

By the way, those hotel rooms are going to cost a little bit more during the Super Bowl, right?

We talk about it in terms of social impacts, which you just mentioned.

But I think sometimes it's often forgotten in that whole conversation is what we're doing right now, talking about the Super Bowl coming to Las Vegas, right?

This is a community that was designed to host people, right?

You think about Allegiant Stadium built during the COVID-19 crisis, what it means to show it being open.

What it means to advertise Las Vegas all over the world, right?

The most watched television program we could ask for highlighting not only two incredible football teams playing a premiere contest in our community, but highlighting our community here in Southern Nevada all over the world.

There is tremendous value to that.

You add that to the jobs and the wages and salaries, it's a huge benefit for our community.

-You mentioned jobs.

About how many do you think will be created from the Super Bowl alone?

-Well look, I mean, based on preliminary estimates, we think it's going to be in the tens of thousands of jobs that are going to be created even for that event.

We're talking about, you know, economic activity somewhere between half a billion and a billion dollars associated with a single event, and of course it's not just a single event, right?

It's not just the Super Bowl that's played on Super Bowl Sunday.

It's all the things that lead up to it, the fan experiences, the concerts, the activations that we're going to have up and down the city.

I'm willing to bet you as we sit here right now that it'll be the single largest economic event that we've ever had in Southern Nevada.

-Those jobs though, they would be considered seasonal or part time.

-There's no doubt about that.

I mean, they're obviously not going to be full-time jobs, and we kind of need to see where exactly it works.

But when we think about all the planning that goes up to have that Super Bowl, they are a lot more than just a job that's going to be over a weekend, for example.

We're talking about lots of jobs created over a relatively extended period of time.

You know, the NFL starts already in terms of its planning.

The host committee is starting already in terms of planning; as a matter of fact, already have hired the executive director for the host committee.

Those things are already taking place, and when you see something like what just happened in our community in terms of the Pro Bowl and all the lead-up and all the community activations that went around that, I mean, that's just scratching the surface for what we're going to do for the Super Bowl.

-You mentioned the $500 million economic impact, but then perhaps you said up to a billion dollars.

But if we stick with that $500 million, which is based off of past Super Bowls and their impact on the cities they've been held in, you got to factor in the cost though of putting on a Super Bowl.

Recently the LVCVA agreed that $60 million is what this is going to cost.

The host committee agreed upon that.

Before we get into where that money comes from and what it is going to be spent on, I want to ask you about the impact that already happens here in Las Vegas when there's a Super Bowl outside of Las Vegas.

-Sure, it's a great question.

-I mean, so 2019 according to the Review-Journal, Super Bowl brought 310,000 visitors to Las Vegas resulting in an economic impact of $425 million, according to Applied Analysis where you used to work.

So then you take the $500 million estimate, you subtract the $60 million in costs, and we're back to around that level.

-Well, no.

Unfortunately, we're not.

I mean, the $500 million estimate is net new on top of what we had previously.

We've already adjusted for what we would lose in terms of compression or loss in terms of that.

So I think the number is actually going to be substantially higher than where we were before.

Now, you make an excellent point, right?

We had 310,000 people in town for the Super Bowl, and we didn't even have the Super Bowl here.

So when we imagine-- -And we didn't have to pay for anything.

-Exactly.

But the average visitor that comes to Las Vegas generates about $850 per person per trip.

The average person that's going to come around the Super Bowl, the average activity is going to be three, four or five times that amount in terms of that spending profile.

The amount they're going to spend in terms of special events, the amount they're going to spend, there's parties and meetings and all the things that go around Super Bowl will be astronomically higher.

You know, Andy Abboud, during the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee, we were really in the infancy stages of just thinking about building a stadium.

He sort of mentioned when people would ask this question that, you know, essentially a rising tide lifting all boats and what it means to be a Super Bowl city.

That has always stuck with me.

And when you talk about all those resort partners, MGM and Caesars and all those executives that came up to the legislature and talked about how important it was to have a stadium for exactly events like these, right?

We have 150,000 hotel rooms.

We have upwards-- depending on how you calculate it-- about 300,000 leisure and hospitality employees.

When we talk about the importance of events like this and people making that incremental decision not only to come to Las Vegas during a weekend like this but to spend and do the type of things they're going to do, whether that's on the corporate side or the individual side, it's not even a comparison in terms of what we had previously.

-So you're saying the Super Bowl visitor spends a lot more money than the Super Bowl visitor that was coming just to watch the game on a TV.

What do you think about how much money they're going to be spending gambling, because that is always important to the casinos.

-Without a doubt, but you know, gambling makes up such a lower amount in terms of the total amount of revenue that's generated on the Las Vegas Strip.

You know, 10, 20, 30 years ago it was more than 50% of the revenue that was generated.

Today it's about 30% of the amount that's generated for those large hotels and casinos.

Today, much more of that revenue comes from rooms, room revenue; much more comes from food and beverage; retail; for example, entertainment makes up a larger share.

So when we have folks that are coming to Las Vegas and they're spending that money in various different ways, that generates a lot more money and creates the diversity that we need inside of our tourism industry to make it as vibrant as it is today.

-Now, $60 million is what the host committee believes this is going to cost; 40 million of that is coming from the LVCVA, 20 million is going to be done in fundraising.

Now, the LVCVA gets most of its money based off of hotel room taxes.

When this was brought to the LVCVA board of directors, Steve Hill, the CEO of LVCVA, broke down the expenses, what makes up that 40 million, and there's a lot that goes into it.

The fanfest that you mentioned, a media center for the thousands of members that come from all over the world.

But why are these costs put on the host city?

Why does the NFL not pay for them?

-Well look, because I think the host city benefits tremendously.

I mean, you and I just talked about half a billion dollars' worth of impact, maybe as much as a billion dollars, depending on how we calculate it, all of those type of things, right?

We've talked about all the ancillary benefits in terms of the media exposure and those type of things, right?

There is a tremendous cost associated with that.

There's also a tremendous benefit associated with it, which is why cities all over the place vie to have the Super Bowl come to them.

-There was an example, Glendale, Arizona in 2015, its mayor said I'm not really all that excited about having the Super Bowl here again because back in 2008 when it was here, we spent more money-- we actually lost about a million dollars.

We spent about $3.4 million mostly on public safety, only got about 1.2 million in tax revenue from what was spent at hotels and restaurants.

So is this different though in that the LVCVA is paying for public safety, because there is $3 million allotted in that budget.

-There's a couple of things there that I think are important.

There's no doubt that it's different here than it is in other places, right?

The LVCVA is funded through room tax revenue primarily, so essentially it's those visitors, all those visitors, some that will come that weekend and others, that are offsetting this cost.

But I think it's much more important than that.

You know, I've heard this argument all the time, particularly when the stadium was originally being constructed that, you know, the economic benefits were not going to offset the amount of the cost that we, the public, were putting into that project, and there's no doubt that those things, the economics around that, is very different outside of Las Vegas.

I can't speak to Cleveland or Glendale or those types of places, but what I can tell you is when we look at all NFL stadiums, all arenas around the United States, if we look at the percentage of the people that are sitting in any seat for those venues, we look at any of them, they're going to have somewhere between 3% and 5% that are going to be out-of-town visitors over a normal year.

For us that number is in excess of 50% today that are out-of-town visitors.

Every one of those trips translates into jobs.

Every one of those trips translates into business activity that's happening with our community.

We are the only economy in the entire United States that was built and designed to host people.

We have to find ways to do that effectively.

If we're going to welcome 42 million people every year, we better find a way to make sure they stay entertained.

-Well, it certainly would make me feel better as a Las Vegas resident knowing that I'm not personally paying for the public safety at the Super Bowl.

It is on the backs of the visitors, correct?

-Look, I think so.

Look, is there going to be some cost?

Sure, there's going to be some costs that are borne by all of us.

I suppose if you stayed in a hotel and you generated some room revenue, you'd be contributing to many of the things that the LVCVA does.

But I think sometimes we forget just how important our tourism industry is to us and that it's all of our responsibility to contribute to that.

Now, you bring up a really important point in terms of public health and public safety.

Obviously there needs to be a shared cost in that, and the venue should make sure it's contributing, the event should make sure it's contributing, and let me tell you, they do.

I mean, there's a huge expense-- let's be clear that the cost of putting on a Super Bowl is substantially greater than the cost that we are going to be contributing overall in terms of the public sector.

-And it is certainly long overdue in this city, a Super Bowl.

Jeremy Aguero, thank you so much for coming in.

And thank you as always for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

For any of the resources discussed on this show, please visit our website at vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter at @nevadaweek.

♪♪♪