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A bundled-up Rob Dondero stood on the last row of bleachers at Sam Boyd Stadium glancing out to incoming traffic on Russell Road and hoping to see congestion. Instead, he was nearly blown away by December winds while witnessing just a few hundred vehicles headed toward the stadium for a college football game between UNR and Bowling Green.
Dondero was part of a group that coordinated bringing the Las Vegas Bowl to Southern Nevada in the early 1990s in a move by tourism leaders to lure visitors to the area during the slow weeks at the end of the year. Travelers, though, opted for family gatherings over recreational vacations.
That initial season brought about 7,000 fans to the game and revenue to the area of a few million dollars, but “we were doing back flips,” said John Saccenti, the game’s executive director. (With tickets sold, the announced attendance was 15,476).
Fast forward three decades.
The 30th edition of the Las Vegas Bowl is Dec. 30 at Allegiant Stadium featuring Wisconsin of the Big Ten Conference and Arizona State of the Pac-12 Conference, brining arguably the most attractive matchup in bowl history. The general consensus, especially with over-the-top Wisconsin fans leading the way, is that an attendance record of more than 60,000 fans will be established.
Of course, this is the first year the game won’t be contested at Sam Boyd, which squeezed in a bowl-best 44,615 fans in 2006 for Oregon-BYU. The move to Allegiant and game partnership with the Big Ten, Pac-12 and Southeastern Conference means the annual game in Las Vegas will be a consistent home run for the region’s economy. Hotels and bars will be packed, completing a vision Dondero and others had when brainstorming event options to fill the visitor December void after the National Finals Rodeo concludes earlier in the month.
The group—Dondero of R&R Partners, which handled special events for the Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority; Rossi Ralenkotter of the authority, and Strip visionary Herb McDonald—wasn’t disappointed with the limited showing in 1992, when Las Vegas got the rights to the former California Raisin Bowl in Fresno, Calif.
“Back then, that was 7,000 or more people in town on that date than ever before,” Dondero said.
More important: The game was televised on ESPN, giving the tourism industry “three and a half hours of broadcast television to tell the story of Las Vegas,” Dondero said. “That was a big deal.”
The bowl started its rise in 2001 when it aligned with the Pac-12, guaranteeing the game would feature a program from a notable conference with an established fan base. Nevertheless, league commissioner Tom Hansen was against the arrangement because of legalized sports gambling, and refused to travel to the game, Saccenti said.
That’s hardly the case in the modern-day landscape, as the Pac-12 hosted its football title game at near-capacity Allegiant Stadium last month, and also contests its conference basketball tournaments at T-Mobile Arena. And, of course, major professional sports have also come to town.
“We helped prove Las Vegas was the place to be,” Saccenti said. “We helped open the door to people looking different at Las Vegas.”
The year’s version of the game also signals a progression into a top-tier bowl game, as it’s contested closer to New Year’s Day, features marquee conferences—this is the first year without the non-Power 5 Mountain West—and will be shown in primetime on ESPN. Kickoff is 7:30 p.m.
The game was supposed to make its debut last December at Allegiant, but was canceled because of the pandemic.
“That’s the thing with this stadium and this destination: These teams were going to their conferences and begging to come here, and we were able to pull it off,” Saccenti said.
What a difference three decades makes.
For that initial game, workers had to replace the light bulbs at Sam Boyd to make it bright enough for the television cameras, Dondero said. The game turned out to be a classic, as Bowling Green edged UNR 35-34, and in 1995 Toledo beat UNR in college football’s first overtime game.
“With any event, you have to look at the success and the failures after the event,” Dondero said. “We kept finding more successes. We realized it was worth the investment.”