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LAS VEGAS — In the days leading up to last month’s Super Bowl, something curious happened in Las Vegas: The price of a hotel room crashed. In some of the fancier hotels, you could get a room for under $100. In some of the older hotels, you could get a room for under $50.
It was almost as if the Las Vegas of old had returned, the one where you might lose all your money in the casino but at least the parking was free and the buffet was cheap.
Even in a city full of big weekends, Super Bowl weekend traditionally stands out. No one has a definitive answer to what happened this year.
Some people might have gotten tired of watching the Kansas City Chiefs. Some might have been wary of spending big bucks in uncertain economic times. Some Canadians might have taken their winter travel dollars to a country whose leader does not suggest Canada surrender its independence.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts is not publicly committing to any timeline for Shohei Ohtani’s return to the mound for the Dodgers.
Steve Hill, the president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, mentioned another factor.
“We are starting to see a little bit of weakness in the more value-centric side of the market,” Hill told me.
If Las Vegas has gotten too expensive for the common man, it might have gotten too expensive for the common fan, just as the city is about to welcome a home team looking to sell three million tickets per year.
The Athletics insist they are coming in 2028, skeptics be damned. In years of covering the A’s stadium saga, I have never seen owner John Fisher look as happy and relaxed as he did here last weekend.
“This is real,” he said.
Fisher has been on a roll. After signing one player to a $60-million contract in the first 124 years of the franchise, the A’s have signed three players to $60-million contracts in three months. Outfielder Lawrence Butler and designated hitter Brent Rooker are signed through the A’s scheduled arrival in Las Vegas, as is manager Mark Kotsay.
On Thursday, the A’s named former Raiders president Marc Badain, who got Allegiant Stadium over the finish line, as their new president. On Friday, the A’s got $8.25 million in public money from the LVCVA, a tax-funded tourist bureau that bought a “Las Vegas” ad patch on the A’s uniforms for the three years the team is slated to play in Sacramento.
And, after Fisher has searched for minority investors for two years, Major League Baseball officials are vetting several interested parties, according to two people familiar with the matter but not authorized to comment publicly. That could help Fisher with the team’s projected $1.4-billion share of the ballpark construction costs.
In recent years, the game plan in America’s major sports leagues has been the same as it has been in Las Vegas: Maximize revenue, even at the risk of pricing out some customers.
The A’s ballpark plan here includes two levels of suites and 30,000 seats, the smallest seating capacity in the majors. Ticket prices are based on supply and demand, and the A’s have limited the supply.
On May 16, 2023, Anaheim’s City Council authorized a stadium evaluation for $325,000. Almost two years later, the project is not complete. It might not be complete for another year.
In 2023, when Nevada legislators approved $380 million in public funding for the A’s ballpark, Hill and team consultant Jeremy Aguero said increased tourism would help justify the investment.
“If you build a stadium in most places around the United States,” Aguero told legislators then, “it is going to have a negative economic impact.”
Las Vegas runs on 40 million tourists per year. Aguero’s study estimated the A’s could attract 9,000 tourists per game — some already coming for conventions or shows or vacations; some coming solely because of baseball.
Hotel tax revenue set a record last year, and visitor counts have almost fully rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, according to LVCVA statistics. But hotel occupancy rates are down 7% from their peak, with hotel room inventory up 13% since then.
If there is a limit to Las Vegas tourism, at least from what Hill called the “value-centric side of the market,” this could be why: A “family-friendly” tour of Allegiant Stadium costs $84.99 per person, no game included. An “experience” at the Sphere started at $94 over the weekend, no concert included.
At the MGM Grand, the hotel across the street from the ballpark site, the buffet price ranges from $32.99 to $43.99, depending on the day — and it closes at 3 p.m. A whole pizza in the food court ranges from $47.99 to $53.99. The resort fee is $50 per day and parking is at least $20 per day; those two items alone would add more than $200 to the cost of attending a three-game series.
No one needs to come to Las Vegas to gamble any more, to place a bet, to see a show, to enjoy the restaurants of celebrity chefs. No one knows where the economy will go between now and 2028. Hill said he does not yet know if Super Bowl weekend represented a blip or a warning sign.
“It was still a good weekend,” he said. “It was just not as strong as ’23.”
Las Vegas can reinvent itself, if need be. It always does.
The A’s are reinventing themselves after back-to-back 100-loss seasons in 2022 and 2023 (in part, as Oakland fans would remind you, because Fisher slashed the player payroll on his way out of town). The A’s finished ahead of the Angels last season. For what it’s worth, they have a better winning percentage than the Dodgers this spring, through Sunday’s games.
That still leaves the question of whether tourists actually would flock to Las Vegas just to see the A’s.
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The Raiders last season attracted two-thirds of their fans from out of town, according to Las Vegas Sports Authority data. The A’s would not play once a week, and someone would be far more likely to come from Kansas City to see the Chiefs on a Sunday in October than to see the Royals on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in July.
Sandy Dean, the A’s vice chairman, said the balanced schedule would help. National League teams would play in Las Vegas once every two years.
“That creates a special opportunity,” Dean said, “for people that may think, ‘I’d like to see my team in Vegas, because it only happens occasionally.’ ”
Baseball’s biggest tourist attraction, Shohei Ohtani, is set to appear in Las Vegas in 2028 — if, that is, the ballpark is completed. The site already is being prepared for construction, and Fisher said he expects a formal groundbreaking “midyear” of this year. That would leave just enough time for a projected 31-month project to be done by opening day 2028.
Even shovels in the ground, Fisher said, might not satisfy the skeptics.
“I think, at opening day,” he said, “they will be convinced.”
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