This was supposed to be the week Las Vegas stamped itself as the sports capital of the world.
The 2020 NFL Draft was planned to be Vegas’ coming-out party as a legitimate sports city. Not just a fight town with a few special attractions. But a legitimate sports city and the respect that comes with that.
The glitz and glamour would have been over the top. A stage complete with a red carpet was to be built along the Fountains at the Bellagio with all the draft prospects arriving on the stage by boat. There would have been top-tier concerts and celebrity-filled parties throughout the week.
It would have been a fitting way to formally announce the arrival of the Raiders to Las Vegas and show off the $1.8 billion Allegiant Stadium on the city’s south end awaiting its first NFL game. Add the success of the Golden Knights of the NHL and the proliferation of boxing, MMA, rodeo, auto racing, golf, NCAA and other major events, Las Vegas was ready to pronounce itself the mecca of everything.
What other city can boast of a new 65,000-seat stadium and facilities like T-Mobile Arena, the MGM Grand Garden Arena, and the Thomas & Mack Center?
COVID-19 changed all that. There aren’t 600,000 people walking up and down the Strip this weekend. No concerts. No parties. The greatest draft weekend ever will have to wait until 2022.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell fumbled the announcement Thursday that the 2022 NFL Draft will be held in Las Vegas. We knew what he meant. Now all those plans in place for this year won’t go to waste. Hopefully the world will be back to normal by then and, if so, Las Vegas will be ready to show off.
“We were extremely disappointed to not have the draft in Las Vegas,” said Chris Baldizan, a senior vice president of Entertainment and Marketing for MGM Resorts. “But to have that announcement made on national television, it helps the city to have hope of what’s to come once we get through this. We’re going to come out of this and it’s nice to know the NFL has faith in Las Vegas and is ready to come back in 2022.”
The blueprint is already in place. The red carpet across the Fountains at the Bellagio will remain in the plans, which also included transporting the players along Flamingo Road to the Caesars Forum, where the draft choices were to be announced and introduced. No doubt there will be some tweaking of those plans as the world deals with the ramifications of COVID-19.
“It would be ideal to duplicate the efforts we were already working on as a city not completely knowing what the world will look like in two years,” Baldizan told The Post. “Hopefully, we’ll be somewhere close to that atmosphere. At the end of the day, it’s about making a great experience for NFL fans and our guests. Whatever that means, we’re going to do.”
The NFL draft, which began moving the draft to different cities in 2015, is scheduled to be held in Cleveland in 2021 and Kansas City in 2023. Las Vegas is a good fit for 2022. When it will be back to normal remains uncertain. The casinos have been closed since mid-March and will remain closed at least through Thursday under a stay-at-home order issued by Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak.
Not only did Las Vegas lose the millions upon millions of dollars in revenue that would have been generated by hosting the NFL draft, it’s also losing the millions normally generated through normal business.
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman has called the shutdown of businesses “insanity” and has drawn criticism for saying casinos should be reopened.
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