Q&A: Pat Christenson

By Richard N. Velotta

Friday, Dec. 3, 2010 | 3 a.m.

In Las Vegas, it used to be that most people who could took December off.

Then, the National Finals Rodeo came to town, giving the city a major event leading into the holidays.

Even though the rodeo filled the Thomas & Mack Center year after year, the city’s tourism leaders, including Pat Christenson, saw an opportunity to make it even bigger.

Christenson, who became Las Vegas Events president in 2001, saw the rodeo as a centerpiece for more activities and the event as a template for other special events designed to draw tourists to the city and put heads in beds.

Christenson began his career in venue management in 1980 as an event coordinator for UNLV’s athletic department. He became assistant director of the newly built Thomas & Mack Center in 1983 and managed what was then known as the Las Vegas Silver Bowl, now Sam Boyd Stadium.

He developed the UNLV sports marketing department in 1995 before accepting the presidency of Las Vegas Events six years later.

Christenson spoke with In Business Las Vegas about the just completed National Finals Rodeo, how it continues to grow despite sellouts every year and whether Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has a chance of moving the event to his state-of-the-art stadium anytime soon.

IBLV: Lots of people have heard about the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, but don’t know as much about Las Vegas Events. What is it and how does it work with the LVCVA to bring special events to Las Vegas?

Christenson: Las Vegas Events is a private nonprofit group formed specifically to focus on bringing what we call neutral site special events — events that all of the hotels can share in equally. We work closely with the LVCVA on establishing a budget and priorities.

Is the “neutral site” aspect of it is to ensure that one company doesn’t get an advantage over another when events are brought in?

The idea is to lure events that all properties can share in. Some will gain more than others. An event such as the National Finals Rodeo benefits almost everyone. In fact, we have 30 NFR sponsors, and 23 or 24 of them are hotel properties. They all have a different promotion or theme running throughout the NFR and tied directly to it. But if you look at the World Cup for jumping and dressage, it’s a different audience. Whether we do the Vegoose music festival or USA Basketball, it may not benefit everybody at that time, but over the full calendar of what we do, somebody benefits all the time.

How did Las Vegas Events get started?

It started in 1983 and was developed through a state statute specifically to address the need to compete for these special events. The first big event that Las Vegas Events lured was the National Finals Rodeo.

Las Vegas Events is structured as a private nonprofit group. What are the advantages to being private as opposed to public?

The biggest advantage is the ability to compete without the constraints and bureaucracy of a huge operation. The private status allows us to go out directly and negotiate contracts. The National Finals Rodeo probably wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for our ability to keep the information confidential to compete for that to lure it here. To a certain extent, it allows us freedom to operate as a small but effective operation. We have only 14 people on our staff. But it’s an effective and thorough organization to continue to stay on top of what’s needed and work with all the hotels to bring different events here.

The biggest event the organization manages is the National Finals Rodeo. How did that begin?

There were a number of people involved. There was the convention authority, Las Vegas Events and several community leaders. I think the biggest individual involved was Benny Binion. He had a strong relationship with the cowboy in general and the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association). They and an individual named Harry Wald (former president of Caesars Palace) started a conversation with the PRCA, got its interest and were able to make a bid. In 1984, they successfully outbid Oklahoma City and the key was prize money. At the time, they doubled the prize money. It was close to $1 million the first year; now, it’s close to $6 million 26 years later.

The National Finals Rodeo continues to be special event gold standard, but I know you’re always trying to make it better. What was different this year?

I’ve been here nine years, and the first thing I discovered is that the National Finals Rodeo is the Super Bowl of rodeo. It’s the best contestants on the best stock. It’s a two-hour rodeo and the Thomas & Mack Center is the perfect venue. But we were only going to sell so many tickets to the rodeo itself. We asked ourselves how do we continue to expand the value of the National Finals Rodeo? So we created what is now called the NFR Experience. Over the past eight years, it’s developed into not only promoting just the NFR as a single event to the whole experience of being in Vegas. It’s the biggest cowboy party in the world. The NFR Experience is about having the Super Bowl of rodeo in the most exciting destination in the world. And it’s a customized experience. If you look at last year’s and this year’s event guide, you’ll see that there isn’t any city in the world — San Antonio, Dallas, Oklahoma City — that is able to provide this customized Western experience. Cowboy Christmas is a 400,000-square-foot trade show with 400 exhibits featuring the finest Western attire. It’s more than just a trade show. I think we turn down about 200 vendors a year because it’s the best. If you look at the Downtown Hoedown and everything we have developed over the years that surround the rodeo, it becomes more about the experience. I think we have 41 satellite broadcast locations (of the rodeo). Ten years ago, we had none. What we’ve found is that you don’t even have to have a ticket to experience the NFR. If you go to all these small communities that have these rodeos, they’ll tell you, “We don’t have tickets to the rodeo, we’re just going.” They go because the contestants are approachable. We have Miss Rodeo America. We literally have 30 or 40 custom events going on throughout the 10 days that (NFR) is going on. It’s actually closer to about 100 events and only 30 or 40 of them are official. So we decided to market the experience. We decided to ensure that the event would be exciting. I remember when it opened in 1985, we had a little five-piece band in the back of the Thomas & Mack Center, and after every ride they’d play the same music. Now, it’s rock ’n’ roll. The crowd sees the same two-hour rodeo with 15 contestants with seven events every single night. It’s probably the best night-after-night event produced in sports. There are so many things that could happen, but it just flows.

How has the culture of the rodeo changed over the years NFR has been in Las Vegas? Is there a different kind of cowboy and cowgirl on the circuit? Do they spend their time differently now than they did 10 years ago?

Yes. We’ve found that 50 percent of this crowd turns over every year. It’s like clockwork. Sometimes it’s 49 (percent), sometimes it’s 52. It’s a different crowd from the year before. I think it’s a result of it being a 10-day event. Part of it is because the ticket exchange people now have access to the tickets, but it’s also because of the variety of things that can be done here, regardless of whether you’ve been around rodeo for 50 years, or you’re 21 to 30 years old. You have a different fan today from 20 years ago or even 10 years ago.

How about the participants? Is that a different breed?

No. For the most part, it’s the same. I think the contestants are more refined, and they train differently, but for the most part the contestant and the culture of traveling from rodeo to rodeo to qualify for the NFR is the same. Some of them need to compete in 80 to 120 rodeos just to make it. It’s based on total money winnings to qualify.

Earlier this year, there were some overtures from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to move the rodeo to his new stadium. How worried are you that Dallas could pull that off?

I don’t blame any city for wanting the National Finals Rodeo. I think we’re always concerned about protecting something as valuable as the NFR. On the other hand, it’s hard for me to fathom any city being able to provide what we do for the PRCA, our partner. Look at the growth of the prize money, and look at the experience fans have when they come to a 10-day event. If you look around the country, I don’t know of any 10-day events; I don’t know of anywhere you can go 10 days in a row, through midweek and sell out that event. That’s a product of the experience and the integration of a destination such as Las Vegas. It’s a customized experience in which the hotels are fully engaged with the National Finals Rodeo. Common sense would tell me that as bad as someone may want it, like Jerry Jones, that the experience here would be the difference. In Dallas, you have a stadium. Here, you have a city. It’s a 20-minute trip from Dallas to Arlington (where the stadium is located). Your worst seat in the Thomas & Mack Center would be your best seat at Dallas Cowboys Stadium. It’s laid out as a football stadium. The Thomas & Mack would have better sight lines than any new arena because it was built for basketball. It starts right on top of the action. We only have one concourse of suites. Can someone throw a lot of money at this and possibly lure it away? Yes. It’s always possible. Our job is to continue the experience for the contestants and the fans, one that it is untouchable.

You’ve praised the Thomas & Mack Center a lot. Don’t we need a new arena to remain competitive?

Do we need one? Would a new arena enhance our position to get a new contract? Yes. But if you factor everything in, in terms of what are the priorities of the community, I’m not the guy to answer that, unfortunately.

Is the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association seriously considering a move to Dallas or somewhere else?

It has to look out for its own interests. It is looking to strike the best deal that it can for the association and for the contestants.

And that probably means evaluating everything from the prize money to the venue to the experience, right?

You’d have to ask (PRCA officials). But if I’m sitting in their seat, it’s really how does the association benefit? And to that extent, the cowboys are the biggest part of the association. So a lot of it is the prize money. But then, you’ve got to ask yourself, “If we move to Dallas and the experience isn’t good and you’ve ended a 26-year association and it doesn’t come close, how do you sustain it?” I’d ask two questions: Can we do better? And can we sustain and build upon what we had?

Keep yourself in the association’s seat for a moment. To the PRCA, what are the downsides of staging the rodeo in Las Vegas?

I can’t think of any. We have plenty of room for the stock around the Thomas & Mack Center. All the hotels are within eight miles and that’s the farthest. Most of them are within two miles. We transport everybody for free. Sixty percent of our crowd can jump on a bus and get to and from the event for free. You can experience almost any country star. Gosh, we have Garth Brooks. And Brooks & Dunn. Or you can do Cirque (du Soleil), make it a Vegas experience. The dining. The weather. All the contestants get free rooms. I think we’ve covered it all. Obviously I’m a little biased here, but I can’t imagine how they could top Las Vegas.

Does Las Vegas get old for cowboys? What’s their biggest complaint about here? What do they love most about Las Vegas?

I think the only thing a cowboy would tell you is he’d like to be paid more. But what professional athlete doesn’t say that? Other than that, maybe they all want to stay at the Four Seasons and end up somewhere else. But think about a 10-day experience in Dallas or Houston or Phoenix. Where could they find more entertainment? Where could they find a better place or a more diverse place to spend their 10 days? Are cowboys bored with Las Vegas? Think about Las Vegas. In the past 30 years, it’s been a different place every time they come back. There’s been something different every year. The Cosmopolitan is opening this year, and we’ve just had a two-year recession. That’s the beauty of this city. Every year, it reinvents itself and it will continue to do that regardless of the economics.

So they like coming here?

I’d have to check on this, but I think 30 percent to 40 percent of the contestants are new each year. Some of these young contestants are saying, “I’m shooting for Vegas, I’m shooting for Vegas.” Do you think you’d here them say, “I’m shooting for Dallas, I’m shooting for Oklahoma City”? With the brand we’ve built in the past 25 years, it really would be a bummer to go from saying, “I’m making it to the NFR in Vegas versus Oklahoma City.” Or Dallas. Or any city. This city covers everything.

How are the financials for the rodeo? Is the sport financially healthy?

The National Finals Rodeo has sold out every year for the past 23 or 24 years. Our guarantee is all based on that. The downside is we have to sell out to break even on the event. The upside is we do. The reason we continue to sell out is we’re not dependent just on the event. We’re creating this 10-day experience around the NFR and that continues to be tweaked. We added five new hotels this year. We’ve added Miranda Lambert at the Palms this year. We’ve got the Hard Rock involved. When you ask about new, we’ve got a lot of properties that weren’t involved in the past and now they are. From a profit perspective, to secure a contract through 2014, we basically gave all the profit back to the PRCA. It gets $1 million from us and $1 million from the LVCVA for marketing (that is recovered from profits). If we continue to do better, we get a split down the road. In addition to the break even, a lot of the overhead of our staff is written into the NFR contract. Forty percent of Las Vegas Events is underwritten by the National Finals Rodeo. Over the years, through the profit of the NFR and events such as the World Cup, we’ve been able to underwrite the cost of Las Vegas Events. So it’s become a more efficient spending — or not spending — of taxpayer dollars.

Is the bankruptcy of the Indian National Finals Rodeo a concern to you?

It’s completely separate. And that’s the first I’ve heard about that. It had its finals at the South Point last year, and I heard that it grew and got better. I’m surprised. But these are two separate things.

How does Las Vegas Events leverage the rodeo in the community?

The biggest is the economic impact, measured really only on the people in the arena. We’ve played around with different ways to measure how many people are actually coming to Las Vegas for the NFR. We’ve thought about setting up surveys at the hotels or the airport, but it still probably wouldn’t give us exactly what we want. But if you go to one of these hotels during the rodeo and watch what’s going on, our estimate is that we get as many people without a ticket as have a ticket. So that $50 million (economic impact) probably is low and the total is a little larger. It doesn’t even consider the Downtown Hoedown, Cowboy Christmas or these 41 satellite locations. We even have satellite locations this year in Mesquite and Laughlin. I’m kind of excited about Mesquite and Laughlin because they can take a little piece of the NFR into the outskirts of the city. You can drive there from San Bernardino, (Calif.) or from Utah. They can build some country acts there. They might even be able to get some contestants out there throughout the day. The biggest bottom line to the community is this continued filling of hotel rooms, particularly in December. Before the rodeo came here, (hotels) were furloughing employees and doing maintenance in December and closing portions of their rooms. If you look at the growth of Las Vegas in that time, the NFR doesn’t fill all those hotel rooms, but it’s that plug in early December. Now, on top of the rodeo, we have the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon on the first weekend, and we expect 35,000 people for that. And we have NASCAR Champions Week. We’re finding more and more people interested in Las Vegas in December. I think it’s the economics of it. It’s probably when you can get the best deal.

How does Las Vegas Events use the rodeo model to develop other special events in Las Vegas?

This is the template. We took that to a much more formal level two years ago. Before 2007, we would book an event — NASCAR, drag racing, Vegoose — and people would find the hotels, find the tickets and everything would be great. Since then, we found that other than the NFR and maybe a few other special events, they weren’t going to make it on their own. So we sat down with the hotels and created a system that instead of us just booking events and providing a sponsorship to lure an event here or even producing it ourselves, we created this signature event concept. The concept is that Las Vegas Events connects all the players. It’s very similar to what we do with the NFR. For an event to be successful today, it can’t just go on sale in conjunction with the hotels. It has to integrate the hotels. A couple of examples: the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon. What we’re asking promoters to do today is to not just bring their event here. We’re asking that all of the media used throughout their season, their TV, radio, magazines, that they sell the Las Vegas experience. The other part of it is that we don’t want them to focus just on their event. We want them to create a series of events around their event. In the case of the marathon, they have an expo, this year they have Bret Michaels, the frontman for Poison, at the finish line. They’re running on the Strip instead of in the city which becomes a stage for it and not just a road. People like that they’re running the Strip. We went from 9,000 (participants) the year before to 28,000, just because we provided a stage for it. We’re working on an event with Feld (Motor Sports) in that we have Supercross and Monster Trucks and they’re looking to create a third event. No longer is it good enough for us to support your event if you’re just going to bring your event. You need to create spinoff events and a media marketing plan that supports the experience. The hotels no longer are spread out waiting for the calls. We actually go to them, and they are sponsors linked in to the yearlong promotion. For NFR, there are 24 hotels. For NASCAR, we went from zero a year ago to eight. They said you’re going to be linked to our database of a half-million to a million and we’re going to spend special offers. The difference in the new paradigm is refining the connection to all the parties.

That’s resulted in a big increase for the marathon.

The marathon, the USA Sevens International Rugby event, the (Mountain) Dew Tour championships this year. This is the model. When we now look at people doing events, they go to our website and the criteria (are) much more refined. These are the components you need. If you’re going to be successful, you’re going to need to follow them. In order for you to qualify to do events with us, you need to agree to participate in this way.

What other special events is Las Vegas Events a part of? What new ones are on the horizon?

We produce the fireworks New Year’s Eve and that’s a conduit to other events. We did the Red Bull (motorcycle) jump one year. We do NASCAR, and obviously, we’re working on a second NASCAR race. Everybody in NASCAR and Las Vegas agree that this is the next place for a NASCAR race. Unfortunately, you have current races in place, whether they’re owned by NASCAR or (track owner) Bruton Smith and SMI (Speedway Motorsports Inc.) If we could get one event, that would be at the top of the list. Drag racing does great for us, too. There’s the USA Sevens rugby. We have a three-year contract with it. The first year was above our expectations and they were rather high. I think the experience they had will make it even bigger next year. We do the Mountain West Conference basketball tournament. The Las Vegas Bowl. The Supercross and Monster Trucks. USA Basketball. We’re a little concerned about that this year because of the potential strike by NBA players. Year in and year out, that does well. The NBA Summer League grows every year. Off-road racing in Laughlin. Barrett-Jackson (auto auction).

The Barrett-Jackson event is a good example of how we’ve shifted. Four or five years ago, we’d have never participated in an event that ended at a private property. We did it differently with Barrett-Jackson as we brought them in and said the primary goal for this event is to make it successful. Let’s not force them into one place or another. So we toured everywhere. The Las Vegas Convention Center, downtown, the Venetian, Mandalay Bay, six or seven venues. It turned out that Mandalay Bay was the best place for it. We literally said, “OK, let’s do a deal” and it saved us sponsorship dollars.

So that continues to grow. We do PBR (Professional Bull Riders) through the LVCVA. They now have two events a year. NASCAR Champions Week. I’d like to do another music festival, but with those, you never know. We’d like to do another equestrian event, and we are working on trying to bring the World Cup back again. We’re looking to find a weekend that we can do a major equestrian event every year versus every other year. Every year, we put about five events on our list and hopefully we can knock off a couple of them.

What can’t-miss special event would you like to see here in the future?

NASCAR, no question. The other event we’re working on is the Indy Racing League. The Indy Racing League is a little tougher because it has so many foreign racers and just doesn’t have the appeal NASCAR has. But it would be an event that if we integrated it with the destination has the opportunity to grow. I don’t think there’s anything that would be better for the community or better for the sport than NASCAR.

Is there anything else out there that we’ve never seen before here in Las Vegas that you’re angling for?

Every year, we’re always looking. For example, I didn’t even know what Barrett-Jackson was three years ago. I went down and saw it in Scottsdale and brought them back up here to tour the city and, voilà, it’s 50,000 people a year over at Mandalay Bay. They sold $40 million worth of cars here earlier this year. Whether it’s something where we can assist and create an environment where it’s better to do events and the destination does them or if we can figure out how to use the facilities we have to bring neutral events in. How about the Pac-10 basketball championships or the Pac-10 football championships? They hurt us a little when they decided that they’re going to do their championships at better-seated sights. But down the line, who knows? You’ve got everything here to do an event — the location of the airport, the number or rooms, the weather. Doing an event here is one plus one equals three. There’s just so much more you can add to motivate people to come to an event here versus another destination.