Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2003 | 10:45 a.m.
Motorola Inc., a Schaumburg, Ill.-based technology company observing its 75th anniversary this year, will be the second company to sponsor a train on the Las Vegas Monorail.
Patrick Pharris, president and chief executive of Promethean Partners, Las Vegas, which has been contracted by the Las Vegas Monorail Co. to sign sponsors for trains and for stations along the 3.8-mile route, said Tuesday that the company is close to making an official announcement about wrapping its advertising message on a train.
Officials with Motorola, which produces a wide variety of communications products, including pagers, mobile telephones and two-way radios, could not confirm the sponsorship Tuesday.
In a related development, a source close to the monorail project said a telecommunications company is weeks away from announcing sponsorship of one of the monorail's seven stations. The source said the company, which could not be divulged, would sponsor the station at the Las Vegas Convention Center, considered the best location on the route because of the high volume of convention traffic the station is expected to generate.
Pharris and representatives of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority had no comment on the report.
Train sponsorships are being sold for $1 million a year, but Pharris said a station sponsorship would generate amounts "in the stadium-naming-rights league," worth millions of dollars.
Monster Beverage Co., a subsidiary of Corona, Calif.-based Hansen Natural Corp., was the first company to sign on to sponsor a train on the system, scheduled to open to the public in late January.
Mark Hall, senior vice president of Monster, said his company already has gotten a tremendous boost from the sponsorship, even though the company's 10-year contract doesn't officially begin until January.
"We considered the fact that being first would have its own benefits," Hall said. "On every story being written about the monorail, we rode along" and received publicity for the energy drink.
Monster, introduced by Hansen just over a year ago, has had consecutive months of increased sales since the product debuted. In a recent earnings announcement, Hansen said sales of Monster was a primary contributor to the company's profitability in the second quarter.
Hall said his company's board had to "swallow hard" when it considered the development expenses and the $1 million-per-year sponsorship cost. Although buses and buildings have had advertising messages wrapped around them, Hall said the Monster Beverage monorail train was the first of its kind and the shape and size of the vehicle presented its own design challenges.
He would not say how much the company invested in the design, but said it was a six-figure contract.
"It's a great design," Hall said. "We think it captures the essence of the brand."
He said he thinks other companies that sponsor trains will be able to benefit from Monster's experience.
Monorail test runs have been conducted since March, but the Monster train has only been in place for a few weeks.
John Haycock, president of the Las Vegas Monorail Co., said the $650 million privately funded venture continues to be on schedule and on budget. He indicated the effort to attract train sponsors is accelerating, now that the track between the MGM Grand hotel-casino and the Sahara hotel-casino is nearly complete.
He wouldn't disclose the names of other companies that have been approached to sponsor trains, but he said interest is high on the project because of the prospect of the high-profile modern vehicles being seen by 35 million Las Vegas visitors a year.
"If every company that has said they are interested in the project committed, we wouldn't have enough trains for all their ads," Haycock said.
He said initially there would be seven Bombardier Transportation trains and that operators would normally run five of them at a time, using one as a backup and having another in a maintenance rotation. During high use periods -- major conventions and shows -- all seven trains could be used at once.
The company expects passengers will pay $2.50 to ride the vehicle, the largest public monorail system to be built in the United States since 1971.
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