Three Things I Learned in SaaS, Sports, Tech, & Live Events
Super Bowl Edition: Week 1
Ticket prices are high, even when adjusted for all the recent inflation, for a few reasons: a) the 49ers are a huge draw and only an hour’s flight away, but more so, b) rooms aren’t a limiting factor as they are most years. In the majority of the Super Bowl cities, rooms are very difficult to come by, which leads guests to pay $700+ per night, with a four-night minimum, for a courtyard Marriott on the outskirts of the action. Vegas is a totally different beast. The Super Bowl hardly makes a dent in the city. This is a city that hosts 600k guests annually for CES without blinking. Rooms are still available at the most prestigious resorts without a four-night minimum, which makes it easier to head to town and get tickets
Vegas is status and few events are more "status" than the Super Bowl. We are blessed to have nearly all of the major casinos in Las Vegas as clients and partners. They have customers who drive business we can only dream of. An example: in 2017, the LA Dodgers hosted game 7 of the World Series against the Houston Astros. The day after the game, I got a call from a friend at the Dodgers; one of their casino customers had sold their front-row Dugout Club tickets on StubHub, and they wanted me to call them and ask what happened. So I did. The answer I got, after the laughter, was, “Tony, that guy lost 7 million dollars at our casino last weekend. So we gave him the tickets. I don’t care if he wiped his ass with them.”
The ticket prices may stay up just because the casinos keep them up.
The Super Bowl is spring break for the corporate crowd. My kids are old enough to be aware of the reactions when they tell their small circle their parents are going to the Super Bowl every year. I get asked what it’s like.
For most guests, it’s spring break. One curated hyper VIP event after another. The whole weekend is a catered open bar where people gorge themselves and then stay out all night at exclusive parties. Grown men and women act like they're in college, staying out late, drinking a ton, and taking photos with Legends of their youth. In my younger years, I drank beers with Donovan McNabb, took tequila shots with Khloe Kardashian, and arm wrestled for $1k per match-up in a Clearwater lobby at 4 am.That’s them (and it was me, to a certain extent, in my much younger years as I kept up with clients.) Those days are long over for me. For me, it’s wall-to-wall meetings and early bedtimes. I turn into a pumpkin at midnight (which is why I love East Coast Super Bowls; I can actually stay up at the events!). Thank goodness we have twenty-somethings to do the late shift for us.
I love my job.