NFR one of toughest tickets in town

Thursday, Dec. 4, 1997 | 10:30 a.m.

Southern Nevadans wishing to see their favorite cowboy rope a calf or ride a bull have little chance of getting a ticket at face value for the National Finals Rodeo.

The annual 10-day event, which begins Friday at UNLV's Thomas and Mack Center, has been sold out since January. If you're thinking about waiting for next year, you'll have to make your ticket request by next month. Even then, your chances of securing seats will be less than one in four.

That explains why agencies such as Nevada Ticket Services are charging $50 to $400 for tickets that carry face value of only $24 and $38.

"People with season tickets hang on to their seats and if they don't go, they sell them for hundreds of dollars," an agency spokesman said. "It's a lot like being a season ticket holder for football or baseball."

That the rodeo is one of the toughest tickets in town is a matter of simple mathematics, according to Ralph Bosher. He is director of operations and tickets for Las Vegas Events, the private nonprofit agency that is sponsoring the rodeo.

Of the 17,000 seats available each night, he said 7,000 go to season ticket holders who keep their seats each year. These include Strip casinos and corporations, which distribute their tickets as perks to their favored customers.

Only about 10 percent of those season tickets will be used by Southern Nevadans, Bosher said. The remainder will be from states such as Oklahoma, Texas, Montana and California, where rodeo is popular.

Another 1,000 seats a night go to rodeo contestants and their families.

The remaining 9,000 are up for grabs in a lottery held the preceding January, 11 months before the rodeo. This year there were about 25,000 requests for those seats. Bosher expects that number to climb to 40,000 for next year's rodeo. The deadline to return applications to Thomas and Mack for the 1998 rodeo is Jan. 23.

The 17,000 seats include 7,300 in the lower level at $38 apiece, and 9,700 upstairs at $24 each.

If a fan still insists on paying only face value for a rodeo ticket, they must be prepared to stand in a long line starting as early as 10 a.m. Each day, the Thomas and Mack ticket office will sell 100 balcony tickets at $24 each.

The holders of these tickets must scramble for empty seats, however. There's a good chance they'll succeed because there are usually 100 to 200 no-shows each night, Bosher said. If an empty seat cannot be found, the ticket holder has until 30 minutes after the start of that night's events to get a full refund.

"We're just trying to give everyone a chance to get into the rodeo," Bosher said.

Scalping tickets within 1,000 feet of the arena is illegal, he said. Even those caught scalping elsewhere are liable to be arrested for selling without a business license if they're caught. Metro police make a handful of scalping arrests at each rodeo.

Season ticket holders will lose their privileges if they're caught selling their tickets for profit. Bosher said that has occurred to at least four individuals in the past three years.

He said he can trace offending season ticket holders by the seat numbers on the tickets. But he said it is costly to pursue season ticket holders who sell to ticket agencies.

"Just to pay $400 for a ticket to see who is scalping is kind of tough on our budget," Bosher said. "But it might be something we will do in the future."

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority plans to conduct its first-ever study of National Finals Rodeo fans by surveying about 1,400 of them in the coming week. The convention authority wants to know where the fans are from and how much they plan to spend during their Las Vegas visit.

"It helps us understand whether we're achieving our goal of attracting out-of-town people to these events," said convention authority spokesman Rob Powers.