Country music awards exec: ‘We’ve outgrown Las Vegas’

By John Katsilometes

Thursday, May 27, 2010 | 4:27 p.m.

The event mecca that is Las Vegas, specifically the MGM Grand, has helped the Academy of Country Music Awards show bloom to one of the year’s entertainment highlights.

In seven years the ACMAs have gone from modest moorings at Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles to guaranteed sellouts at the Grand Garden Arena. Several million television viewers tune into the show, equal parts a celebration of country music and of Las Vegas, on CBS.

But in a confounding twist for the city’s civic leaders and officials at MGM Mirage, Las Vegas has helped the show become too large even for Las Vegas. But it is not too large for a venue that easily matches ACMA’s stature – Cowboys Stadium.

During a phone conversation today from his home in Los Angeles, ACM Executive Director Bob Romeo said the ACM Awards show is not guaranteed to be at the Grand Garden Arena or anywhere else in Las Vegas past next year’s broadcast set for April at the MGM Grand. Instead, Romeo and ACM officials are pushing hard to move the show to Cowboys Stadium in 2012.

“It’s a crazy thing to say we’ve outgrown Las Vegas, and when we moved there six years ago I wouldn’t believe I would have ever said that,” Romeo said. “But the truth is, we have a dilemma in that we don’t have enough seats to satisfy our needs.” Those needs include 3,000 tickets for sponsors such as Dr. Pepper, the MGM Grand’s allotment and a cut for industry VIPs. What’s left over are about 1,500 tickets sold to the public in a venue that seats about 11,000, total, for the event.

Cowboys Stadium can bring in an audience of between 56,000-60,000, which would be the greatest attendance ever for an awards show like the ACMAs.

“Last year, the lack of tickets available to the public generated 5,000 e-mails to our office,” Romeo said. “We had several thousand angry fans, and we need to do something about it.”

Nothing is settled, Romeo stressed, between ACM officials and Cowboys Stadium. No papers have yet been signed to move the show from Las Vegas, where it has been staged for the past six years (first at Mandalay Bay, and more recently at the Grand Garden Arena, where it has sold out three straight years).

To relocate for 2012, the show would need what Romeo says is “millions of dollars” in increased production costs to uproot from the now-intimate Grand Garden Arena to the behemoth that is Cowboys Stadium.

However, officials from the state of Texas have attended the past two ACMAs at MGM Grand. Texas is known for its healthy appetite for major events and its willingness to use public money to draw such events to big venues – and there is none larger than Cowboys Stadium, which drew nearly 51,000 for the Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey bout in March and attracted 110,000 for this year’s NBA All-Star Game. The domed stadium featuring the famous “JerryVision” high-definition screen (Jerry, of course, being Cowboys owner Jerry Jones) looming over the surface, is also hosting next year’s Super Bowl.

To finance such high-profile spectacles, the Texas Event Trust Fund uses revenue from a 6-percent statewide tax on hotel rooms to subsidize the costs of staging major events in the Lone Star State, distributing the funds to municipalities that meet certain criteria.

If the money to meet those costs can be raised, it’s bye-bye not just to the awards show, but to all the peripheral events that made the ACM event a citywide country celebration in Las Vegas.

Tied to this year’s event were packed concerts at Fremont Street Experience headlined by Lady Antebellum and Miranda Lambert, Kenny Chesney's 3D red carpet movie premiere at Town Square’s Rave Motion Pictures, and a Brooks & Dunn tribute the night after the awards show at MGM Grand. Plus, the country music stars had concerts and parties throughout town all week.

Absent, of course, is a facility in the middle of the action that can accommodate the ACMA’s need for additional seats. And Las Vegas is hardly blazing a trail in that direction.

On May 18, representatives of arena projects proposed for the Las Vegas area, including three on the Strip, appeared before the Clark County Commission. Represented was Texas-based IDM, which proposes a $750 million arena on the former Wet 'n Wild site off Sahara Avenue; Las Vegas Arena Foundation, a nonprofit group that wants to build a $488 million arena on property that Harrah's Entertainment Inc. owns behind Imperial Palace; and developer Garry Goett, who is looking to build a $600 million arena on 260 acres he owns near Las Vegas Boulevard, south of the Strip. Also appearing before the commission were representatives from Cordish Cos., which aims to develop an arena downtown.

The presentations were met by a skeptical County Commission, not eager to allocate public money for any arena, and argument from MGM Mirage executive Bill Hornbuckle, who said his company would be at a disadvantage when competing for events with a venue backed by public money. And all the Strip projects would require some sort of taxpayer funding.

Speaking only for the ACMs, Romeo said a 20,000-to-25,000-seat venue would make staying in Las Vegas highly attractive, and said that his organization would still partner with MGM Mirage officials to secure hotel rooms (up to 8,000 was his estimate) and host the support concerts and events tied to the event. The pre- and post-show parties, too, could be held at MGM Mirage properties – or anywhere else on the Strip.

“I don’t think MGM Grand would lose money if that were to happen, I really don’t,” he said. “If we have our all-star jam (concert) at the MGM Grand, people would be screaming for tickets. We need their hotel rooms.”

MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman said he understood the business rationale of moving the country music awards show to a venue as large as Cowboys Stadium.

"If he sees a better financial package with 100,000 seats, and if that’s what you want your awards show to look like, then that’s a legitimate decision for him to make," Feldman said. "We just don’t have 100,000 seats.

"But separate and apart from a two- or three-hour event is looking at the integrity of the event over two or three days — of finding rooms at a good price, and having access to everything that goes on here."

Romeo said he’s not certain artists would want to move out of Las Vegas permanently, either. “They love coming to Las Vegas. Kix Brooks can meet Keith Urban at Craftsteak (at MGM Grand), then hit the craps tables. Spouses can go shopping, you can see a show and have great dining, all in very close proximity. We listen to our artists, too, because without them there is no show.”

But Romeo also said, “I know a lot of artists who have never had the chance to play before 60,000 people who would love to have that chance. It would be a dream come true to them, and to thousands of fans who can’t see the show live in Las Vegas.”

Though Romeo says a move to Cowboys Stadium is at the moment a 50-50 prospect, his vision for the event is so specific it seems highly likely the event already has one foot out the door. Even the ticket prices have been investigated, with the cost close to what fans are charged at the Grand Garden Arena, between $150 and $450.

The pre-show marketing strategy, too, is in place. In a move certain to raise the eyebrows of tourism officials in Las Vegas, Romeo said he plans to use the 2011 telecast from Las Vegas to promote and even sell tickets to the 2012 show at Cowboys Stadium.

“We intend to take advantage of those 13 million viewers,” he said. “We’ll give them a website where they can order tickets online, live, during the telecast.”

The telecast from Las Vegas, being used to promote a show at Cowboys Stadium. Maybe we should tweak that famous marketing slogan: What happens here, stays here. Until it doesn’t.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats.