Established in 1905 as a remote railroad stop in then scarcely populated Nevada, Vegas’ survival was far from a sure bet. Yet, after weathering the 1909-1931 ban on gambling, the 1922 national railroad strike, Prohibition and the Great Depression, Vegas emerged as a place of destiny.
From the saloons and gambling parlors of Fremont Street, the original Sin City, to the 1930s nightclubs along Boulder Highway, drinking, dancing and sinful pursuits became an economic lifeline during these trying times. Minus these lures, Vegas conceivably could have become a ghost town.
The rest, of course, is history, with gaming, tourism, conventions and one star-studded era after another producing the “Entertainment Capital of the World.”
As Vegas now asserts its supremacy as a global meetings destination and the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority (LVCVA) markets the brand worldwide, competitive pressures rise along with the opportunities. Adding more convention space is one way to stay ahead—another is boosting the star power.
Entertaining Ideas
From the 1940s on, through the Rat Pack, Elvis and other intervening eras to today’s residency-driven engagements, production shows and mega-outdoor festivals, Vegas has gone “live.” The latest update for the modern context, as Vegas does so well, is recasting how artists present, and audiences experience, live entertainment.
Las Vegas offers 30-plus indoor entertainment venues, ranging from the 19,522-seat Thomas & Mack Center (inaugurated in 1983 by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Diana Ross) to a cluster of theaters with roughly 1,100 to 2,500 seats. Long lacking, though, was the equivalent of New York’s Madison Square Garden or L.A.’s Staples Center—until last April’s debut of the 20,000-seat T-Mobile Arena.
Representing a $375 million joint venture by MGM Resorts International and global entertainment giant AEG, the striking LEED Gold-designed venue is already charting well, reaching 39th place in Pollstar’s ranking for worldwide ticket sales in its first six months of operation. The arena also helped win the expansion Golden Knights for Las Vegas, hitting the ice this year as the NHL’s 31st team.
Commanding MGM’s indoor/outdoor entertainment and dining district The Park, the arena is co-anchored by another revolutionary newcomer, the 5,200-seat Park Theater. Inaugurated last December with performances by Stevie Nicks and The Pretenders, this is where Vegas’ past meets its future.
Constructed in just 13 months on the site of the demolished Blue Man Theater, the venue was inspired by the Microsoft (formerly Nokia) Theater at the L.A. Live entertainment complex in downtown Los Angeles, and complements the T-Mobile Arena as its counterpart does the Staples Center.
Boasting one of the largest prosceniums in North America, the theater’s massive 140-foot stage is backed by a high-resolution 80-foot-by-40-foot LED wall. Configurable for everything from convention space to a basketball court, the retractable telescopic seating system allows for standing events of up to 6,400 people, or smaller gatherings of 2,400. Like the T-Mobile Arena, natural light and external access are emphasized via features including 70-foot windows and outdoor balconies.
With superstars including Bruno Mars, Cher and Ricky Martin booked for multiyear “extended engagements,” the venue is designed for artists to customize their show, while dropping the “fourth wall” between performer and audience. With the farthest seats just 145 feet from the stage, a giant projection mapping technology and studio-sharp sound system fully immerse fans in the action.
The venue marks Phase 1 of MGM’s $450 million transformation of the Monte Carlo into the 2,700-room Park MGM. Slated for completion in late 2018, the makeover will incorporate a 292-room Nomad lifestyle hotel on the upper floors.
In May 2016, Las Vegas Sands Corp. and partners, including Madison Square Garden and Live Nation, announced a possible 17,500-seat off-Strip performance venue. Then there is a proposed $1.9 billion, 65,000-seat domed stadium targeting the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, approved by the Nevada legislature last year.
Will the Raiders (or another team) jump to Vegas? NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, for one, continues to “entertain” the idea.
“It’s clear the Las Vegas market has become more diversified and more broadly involved with entertainment and hitting big events,” Goodell stated in a press conference last December. “There is a growth to the market. You can see the trajectory and where it’s going when you look at the data. There were some very positive things about it.”
While those discussions are ongoing, “continuous entertainment,” a concept introduced in the 1940s by the future Strip’s first resort, the El Rancho Las Vegas, keeps the Vegas allure in overdrive.
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Galaxy Quest
Navigating the myriad showrooms, stages and stars of the Vegas entertainment universe can be overwhelming. The same goes for the hundreds of restaurants, bars and cocktail lounges in town, which inspired Donald Cortusi to create Lip Smacking Foodie Tours (see Zoom In, page 84), his exclusive—and entertaining—answer to accessing some of the best culinary experiences in town.
Similarly, divining the entertainment menu starts at the individual property level, each a universe unto itself.
Few Vegas titans have dreamed—and delivered—as big as Steve Wynn. Originally the name for his $2.7 billion Wynn Las Vegas resort, Le Reve (French for “The Dream”) is the award-winning spectacle of death-defying high dives and other aerial acrobatics in the water-filled “aqua-in-the-round” Wynn Theater. At sibling resort Encore, Steve Wynn’s ShowStoppers is a musical extravaganza featuring 66 singers, dancers and full orchestra. There’s also the mesmerizing outdoor Lake of Dreams, a nightly fantasy of music, lights, holography and puppetry, plus nightlife and day-life action at XS, Surrender and the Encore Beach Club.
With 2017 marking Wynn’s 50th anniversary in Las Vegas, both resorts overlook the vacant 35-acre site of the original Frontier, in which Wynn placed a stake soon after his arrival in 1967.
Opened in 1989, The Mirage was Wynn’s daring bet that launched the modern mega-resort era. Siegfried & Roy, who debuted in 1967 at the Tropicana, were the star attraction here before the 2003 tiger attack that ended Roy’s career. Home today of Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles LOVE, The Mirage is where the Cirque story began in Vegas, with 1992’s year-long Nouvelle Experience.
Wynn’s next project, the adjacent Treasure Island Hotel & Casino, opened in 1993 with life-size pirate ships and a custom-built theater for still-running Mystere, the first permanent Cirque show in Vegas.
Offering 2,885 rooms, privately owned Treasure Island is slated to complete a $6.5 million convention space expansion in early 2017, adding 12,500 square feet of space for 30,000-plus square feet overall. Other entertainment includes Gilley’s Saloon Dance Hall & Bar-B-Que, hosting private events for up to 1,400 people.
In 1998, Wynn’s $1.6 billion Bellagio and its landmark fountains set Vegas on a new course—opulent luxury. MGM, which acquired Bellagio in 2000, has only elevated that trend with projects like nearby ARIA Resort and Casino.
Opened in 2009 as part of the futuristic CityCenter complex, ARIA is the world’s largest LEED Gold-certified building. With two distinct AAA Five Diamond hotels, including the Forbes Five-Star ARIA Sky Suites, the 4,004-room resort offers 500,000 square feet of high-tech meeting and convention space.
Slated for completion by February 2018, the $160 million transformation of the Zarkana Theatre will add four levels of dynamic convention space, multiuse outdoor deck included. Sophisticated entertainment options, meanwhile, include the dual-level JEWEL Nightclub, Lift Bar and adults-only LIQUID pool.
These multidimensional worlds extend throughout the wider Southern Nevada market, from near- and off-Strip properties to regional outposts Laughlin, Mesquite and Primm. Just south of the Strip, for example, association favorite South Point Hotel, Casino and Spa offers entertainment programming galore in venues such as its 4,000-seat Equestrian Center, 400-seat showroom, 16-screen multiplex cinema, 64-lane bowling alley and 600-seat bingo parlor.
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Back to the Future
In Las Vegas, what’s current today can easily be obsolete tomorrow, and with little care for nostalgia, reinvention, typically via implosion, is the name of the game. Take ARIA and the CityCenter complex, for example. Along with The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Monte Carlo and New York-New York resorts, and T-Mobile Arena, this entire area was once the golf course for the legendary Dunes.
The 130-acre Wynn-Encore golf course is next to go, if Steve Wynn proceeds with his transformation of the links into the lagoon, hotels and other components of his $1.5 billion Paradise Park.
Golfers are not wanting, however. Located at the MGM Grand, Topgolf Las Vegas is a pioneering sports and entertainment concept with amenities that while available in other markets of this expanding enterprise, seem absolutely made to measure for Las Vegas.
Along with 108 climate-controlled hitting bays, groups can enjoy private meeting rooms and event spaces, VIP cabanas and a private suite, two seasonal pools, five unique bars, and live entertainment at a 900-person capacity concert venue.
Yet, amid a number of other future-forward projects, old Vegas maintains a prime-time position.
Along with some still-active legendary performers, a handful of vintage properties keep the yesteryear torch lit. The oldest continuously operating casino is Railroad Pass in Henderson, opened in 1931, while Downtown Las Vegas dowagers include the Golden Gate from 1955 (originally Hotel Nevada, 1906, then Sal Sagev—Las Vegas backwards—from 1931) and the El Cortez Hotel & Casino, which turns 76 this year.
Reflagged and remodeled from the Sundance (1980) and Fitzgeralds (1988), the D Casino Hotel Las Vegas, so named by owner Derek Stevens for “Downtown,” his hometown of Detroit and his own nickname, combines vintage appeal with a free-wheeling spirit of fun.
On the business side, the 34-story property offers 629 deluxe rooms and 11,000 square feet of modern meeting space and amenities, including the 6,000-square-foot Detroit Ballroom; eight breakout rooms with views of the Fremont Street Experience and SlotZilla zipline attraction; and outdoor Traverse City Patio, with function space for 100 people. Across the street, the tented 20,000-square-foot, climate-controlled Downtown Las Vegas Events Center is ideal for larger events.
The D is also serious about fun. Groups can socialize in the “Man-Cave” party space or at the Longbar, featuring more than 1,000 feet of bar top lined with TV screens. The entertainment, meanwhile, includes the long-running, top-ranked dinner show Marriage Can Be Murder, the ribald Jokesters Comedy Club, and in the D’s newly renovated showroom, Laughternoon from comedian-magician Adam London and Defending the Caveman with Kevin Burke.
Opened in 1971 on the site of Vegas’ original train depot as the Union Plaza Hotel and Casino, the 1,003-room Plaza Hotel & Casino, with its 1 Main Street address, puts on quite the show. Following a comprehensive $35 million upgrade in 2011, the property unveiled the multimillion-dollar renovation of its rooftop Pool at the Plaza last summer.
Along with Downtown’s largest ballroom, at 19,000 square feet of space, the Plaza offers generous additional breakout and prefunction space. The 70,000-square-foot rooftop pool deck’s multiple amenities include a six-ton “retro Palm Springs” food truck (hoisted up by crane last summer); stage and event space; and tennis, basketball and pickleball (a mix of tennis, table tennis and badminton) courts.
Former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar B. Goodman holds court via his entertaining dinner series at Oscar’s, his award-winning steakhouse housed in the hotel’s iconic Fremont Street-facing dome. The fun continues with shows in the Plaza’s 600-seat classic showroom, and free nightly entertainment in the Omaha Lounge.
Featuring rotating residency acts Elton John, Celine Dion and Rod Stewart at its 4,300-seat Colosseum, Caesars Palace (1966), which also offers the high-energy OMNIA nightclub and the theater-in-the-round presentation Absinthe, is among the old gang still holding court on the Strip. While successive modernizations have changed the original look of Caesars and other pillars such as The Flamingo (1946) and Tropicana (1957), Circus Circus (1968) and Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino (1969) retain that authentic touch.
Legacy-wise, the Westgate, originally the International, is a Vegas entertainment shrine.
Adjacent then as now to the Las Vegas Convention Center, the 30-story, 1,512-room hotel (since expanded to nearly 3,000 rooms) was the world’s largest at the time and first Vegas “mega-resort.” Barbra Streisand was the opening act (later inaugurating the MGM Grand Garden Arena in 1993) before Elvis Presley made the Showroom Internationale his own in a career-reviving move that ran to 837 shows, ending months before his death in 1977.
Following reflags as the Las Vegas Hilton (1971) and LVH-Las Vegas (2012), the landmark was acquired by Westgate Resorts in 2014. Sporting the world’s largest free-standing sign at its entrance, the resort’s other star credentials include Liberace, Barry Manilow, Reba McEntire, an appearance in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, and in 1993, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express.
Today, amid more than $100 million in current and planned renovations, including 1,200 newly remodeled rooms, entertainment in the Westgate Cabaret and International Theater includes classic funk band Cameo, “unfiltered” comedian Vinnie Favorito, Prince tribute show Purple Reign, and topless revue Sexxy. For rock-star accommodations, the resort’s Sky Villas were created from former Room 3000—Elvis’ home for eight years.
Riviera Boulevard, linking the Westgate to the Strip, was just renamed Elvis Presley Boulevard. Elvis is also among the icons whose photos line the partial skybridge connection between the Westgate and the Las Vegas Convention Center.
While his brand is reportedly fading in Vegas, his and other “starlights” are among the brightest beacons in Southern Nevada’s $52 billion tourism economy—and a tractor beam for groups increasingly seeking alternatives to the traditional meeting room.
“Part of that ‘Only in Vegas’ appeal, our second-to-none entertainment allows us to set ourselves apart in the meetings landscape, expand our conversation and make our initial engagement with clients more thought-provoking,” said Chris Meyer, LVCVA’s vice president of global business sales. “More than a destination, Las Vegas is an experience than runs 24 hours a day. That’s another selling point—delegates can conduct their business during the day knowing they won’t miss out on everything Las Vegas has to offer.”
Behind initiatives like last year’s sales mission to South America, new direct airlift from China via Hainan Airlines and appeal to the Asian market via investments like the new Lucky Dragon Hotel & Casino, the LVCVA and partners are spreading their wings worldwide. As arrivals into McCarran International Airport continue to rise, entertainment serves as a common language for all.
“As we have learned from our international visitors, entertainment is especially attractive because it is universally accessible and appreciated,” Meyer said. “In fact, most production shows rely solely on music and have no spoken language for the sole purpose of removing language barriers, making the experience equally available to every audience member. And, with options ranging from lounge acts to production shows to world-renowned headliners, there is something for everyone.”
