Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Big show rejects LV sales pitch

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has failed in its bid to uproot a large computer exposition from Los Angeles.

The LVCVA made a pitch to the Interactive Digital Software Association, organizers of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, to move the 50,000-delegate show to Las Vegas after 2006.

The show would have had a nongaming economic impact of more than $67.5 million on Las Vegas, according to the LVCVA.

Las Vegas' hotel room capacity was enticing to show organizers, who now use 45 properties to house conventioneers attending the three-day May event that draws designers, vendors and other exhibitors from the computer game industry.

Los Angeles has played host to the annual event -- known in the industry as "E3" -- seven of the last eight years. Show attendance fell dramatically in 1997, the one year the show ventured from the Los Angeles Convention Center to Atlanta.

The interactive entertainment industry is a Hollywood-high tech hybrid with most of its exhibiting companies located in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. About 400 companies exhibit each year at E3.

The show, which had been affiliated with the International Consumer Electronics Show years ago, has companies like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo as exhibitors.

Organizers have been conscientious about keeping costs down for exhibitors. This year's show, for example, was May 22-24, the Wednesday through Friday before the Memorial Day weekend, which kept exhibitors from having to pay premium labor rates to tear down the show.

At last week's show, IDSA executives officially announced plans to keep the event in Los Angeles through 2012 after flirting for weeks with a move to Las Vegas.

Los Angeles Mayor Jim Hahn made the announcement that the show was staying put.

"Los Angeles has long been known as the entertainment capital of the world," Hahn said in the announcement. "Today, we are also known as a great city on the cutting edge of trends and technology and are considered to be a leading center for creative thinking and innovative ideas."

IDSA officials would not confirm what concessions were made to keep the show in Los Angeles, but sources familiar with the deal said it involved hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The LVCVA had proposed setting up and tearing down the event in Las Vegas for $200,000 to $300,000, compared with the $900,000 cost organizers said would pay for the same service in Los Angeles.

The Las Vegas Convention Center's South Hall expansion, opened in January, has given the LVCVA additional scheduling flexibility which has made the LVCVA's convention sales representatives more aggressive in attracting new business like E3.

But Los Angeles didn't want to lose the show.

The Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau proposed that the $900,000 move-in and move-out fees be waived. Executives of the bureau also proposed that hotel tax money be diverted to the convention center to pick up labor costs to avoid losing the show.

Los Angeles officials say the convention pumps $12 million into the city's economy. LVCVA officials say the impact on Las Vegas would have been much greater.

A show with 50,000 out-of-town guests would have a nongaming economic impact of $67.5 million on Las Vegas based on pre-Sept. 11 variables, said Kevin Bagger, senior research analyst for the LVCVA.

Bagger said the fact that many of the conventioneers attending the show in Los Angeles would be close to home may account for the lower projection there.

Before the IDSA's confirmation of staying in Los Angeles, local convention planners were confident Las Vegas was getting a good look from the association.

"It's a great piece of business," said Nancy Murphy, who heads convention sales for the LVCVA. "They asked the LVCVA to look at a few dates and we were pretty confident they liked what they saw here."

Murphy said the LVCVA aggressively pursues midweek conventions and meetings in June, now one of the softest times on the calendar for meetings in Las Vegas.

"We showed them everything we have to offer," Murphy said of meetings with IDSA representatives. "At dinner at one of the properties, we had them look out the window and told them they could see 35,000 hotel rooms from that location. They said, 'Just think, we could all have rooms in the same ZIP code in Las Vegas.' "

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