Allegiant Stadium is only in its third year of operations and second hosting ticketed events, but it’s already captivated Las Vegas and the visitors who power Southern Nevada’s economy. While it has hosted a handful of successful concerts, Las Vegas Raiders games and other sports events have brought the biggest boost to the 65,000-seat venue, and the stadium recently wrapped one of its most massive weeks so far by hosting the East-West Shrine Bowl on February 3 and the NFL Pro Bowl on February 6.
Las Vegas native Jeremy Aguero is essentially in charge of the stadium, having recently joined the Raiders staff as chief operations and analytics officer. After working closely with owner Mark Davis while helping to guide the Las Vegas Stadium Authority, Aguero left his position as principal analyst at Applied Analysis to take on a big, new challenge. We spoke with him before the Pro Bowl about his new gig, the sports boom in Las Vegas and its ongoing impact.
Moving from your own company to the Raiders is quite a change. What are your duties in this new position?
There are similarities. A lot of the projects we were working on before were all about developing and building and improving this community we call home, using data to help make better decisions, and I’m trying to do the same thing here. But here the questions to answer are different and the size of the organization is substantially larger. The role I play is basically to oversee Allegiant Stadium and the [Raiders’] analytics, community relations, government affairs and facilities. On a normal day there are a hundred or so people reporting up, and on game days, it’s a few thousand.
In recent years, Las Vegas has promoted the idea of the “Ultimate Sports Weekend” centered around NASCAR, rodeo, UFC or boxing events. Now almost every weekend feels like that.
Having grown up here, and for those of us who have spent a lot of time here, you think about what the Runnin’ Rebels were in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and talk about some of the incredible fights that have been held in Las Vegas. Rodeo has always had that presence here with Helldorado Days, then the community has matured and brought the advent of the UFC, which oftentimes gets overlooked in how much it grew and what it became. Then we saw the creation of the Speedway and the races that came with it, and it also doesn’t get the credit it deserves. The construction of T-Mobile Arena took a great deal of courage and risk by MGM Resorts, and then we have that transitional moment where the Golden Knights did something a lot of people thought was impossible in bringing hockey to the desert. Allegiant Stadium … is the latest [example] of this community showing the capability to find a way to get things done, and a lot of people deserve a lot of credit for the stadium. There were a thousand reasons why people said it couldn’t be done, but the community found the pathway, and now we’re talking not only about these big events, but about the stadium exceeding expectations.
Do you think the stadium has already exceeded those expectations, internally as well as the public perception?
We have something called The Voice of the Fan, a survey that goes out to all 32 teams around the NFL. The league conducts this survey for every game, every week, asking about security, game-day staff, everything. Allegiant Stadium was No. 1 in the entire NFL in terms of guest experience, game-day staff, safety and security. We crushed it, even under the very difficult circumstances of the pandemic and opening a new building. We couldn’t be prouder of the team.
And from an economic impact, we’ve blown [expectations] out of the water. The ripple effect of what we’re doing not only inside the stadium, but visitors coming and staying at hotels and eating at restaurants, we’re beating our numbers. We know the spend profile for Allegiant [Stadium guests] is superior, higher than what we’ve seen in the traditional leisure traveler, spending more than someone coming for a traditional special event [in Las Vegas]. We’ve seen a lift in the average daily room rate. So we’re generating that tax revenue at a higher rate than we thought, but what about the social impact? I don’t think folks always understand all the things the Raiders do in the community, and Mark Davis is humble and he’s not going to talk about all of it.
The Academy of Country Music Awards was moved from MGM Grand Garden Arena to Allegiant Stadium on March 7, and the Grammys were recently moved from LA to Las Vegas. These venues have established the city as a prime place to hold events during the challenges of the pandemic.
That’s what we’re designed to do. We have 150,000 hotel rooms and 300,000 leisure and hospitality employees, as well as one of the largest destination airports in the world. It’s seven times the size it should be for a community of our size. We are the only community in the U.S. that is designed to host people. That’s what we do.
You are in the football world now, but what about the other two sports? Why is everybody talking about Major League Baseball when it seems like Las Vegas could flip a switch and have an NBA team?
I think the success of the Knights and the Raiders has caught everyone’s attention—and this was true before I came to the Raiders but I can certainly see it in this new seat—and shown what this community has to offer, what it can develop and what it can really do [with sports teams]. How successful those other sports will be, that’s another question altogether, and I certainly have some concerns about the liability and positioning. It’s all about what team, what location, how the deals are structured, all of those details really matter.
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This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.