VEGAS INC Coverage
If you’re a sports nerd, two of the biggest events to look forward to when the weather turns warm are the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament and spring training baseball. Las Vegas gets a nice taste of both every year.
Our city is widely viewed as the second-best place to watch hoops if you can’t get to the tournament site of your favorite college team. The sports books are popular places to watch and wager on games, and the atmosphere is fantastic, especially on the first four days of the tournament, when 48 of the 65 games are played.
CBS Sports, one of the prime drivers of the tournament schedule, cooperated this year by teaming with three networks so that every game could be telecast, and the staggered start times of games was a bonus.
We should know soon about the total handle of this year’s NCAA basketball tournament, but sports book operators were anticipating that $100 million would be wagered on March Madness games, exceeding the total bet on this year’s Super Bowl.
When it comes to sports wagering, nothing beats the Super Bowl for a single-day event, but the NCAA Tournament sees the most betting action for a series.
A number of fans have questioned in their comment posts about why Las Vegas is never an NCAA Tournament site for regional games. That’s a question best answered by the NCAA, which has no fondness for the city’s casino culture and has steadfastly refused to put one of its premiere events in our city.
The organization doesn’t seem to have a problem with three conferences staging their postseason tournaments in Las Vegas. The Orleans Arena was a neutral floor for the West Coast Conference championships, sponsored locally by one of the city’s top corporate citizens,
Zappos.com. The Western Athletic Conference tournament also was played at the Orleans.
The Thomas & Mack Center has been the home of the Mountain West Conference basketball tournament since 2007 after the conference experimented with neutral-court games in Denver.
Although college basketball fares well in Las Vegas, Major League Baseball spring training flourishes 300 miles south in metropolitan Phoenix.
More than 3.5 million people attended spring games this year, a slight increase over 2010 and the third-highest total in our history. In Arizona, on the other hand, fans attended games at 10 stadiums (several teams share a facility), including a new park in Scottsdale shared by the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.
Las Vegas gets a significant piece of Major League Baseball’s spring training action largely thanks to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which sponsors the very popular Big League Weekend every year at Cashman Field.
The LVCVA arranges for lodging the teams it brings to Las Vegas. This year, the Cincinnati Reds, Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs sent teams to play in two games last month.
Spring training games are as laid back as March Madness games are electric.
Recollecting that the LVCVA once had a marketing partnership with other states and that the LVCVA occasionally collaborates with organizations to cross-market destinations got me to thinking about how Las Vegas could capitalize on the popularity of these spring attractions to sports fans.
Why not team with the Valley of the Sun to develop spring tours to the Southwest to capture East Coast residents—snowbirds?—who are always sick of their weather by the end of February?
How about packaging triangular tours that include tickets to baseball games and stays in our resorts?
A few related ideas:
• Invite Major League Baseball teams for Big League Weekend to be in Las Vegas on the four days of the second week of the NCAA Tournament. That would enable fans to watch baseball during the day and basketball in sports books at night.
• Offer discounted airfares and tour packages to Las Vegas and Phoenix from some of the cities’ major target markets on the East Coast such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C.
With the tourism economy still exhibiting some weakness, it’s extremely important for Las Vegas to capitalize on a known commodity that has a proven track record of success.