Wayne Newton rehearses Thursday at the Thomas & Mack Center for the opening of the NBA All-Star Game. Photos by John Gurzinski.
Entertainers rehearse Thursday at the Thomas & Mack Center for the opening of Sunday's NBA All-Star Game. Most local fans will have to watch the colorful extravaganza on television.
Las Vegas is hosting the NBA's big party. But you won't find many Las Vegans on most guest lists.
As the National Basketball Association's All-Star Game bandwagon rolls into the Las Vegas Valley this week, most events are off-limits to everyday fans or have been long sold out.
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The NBA made no tickets to Sunday's game available for sale to the general public, and ducats to many other lesser events are already spoken for.
That's left locals desperate to attend upper-end events the option of buying access for four-figure amounts through Internet auction sites, or watching the happenings here on cable TV like the rest of the nation.
"The All-Star Game is a huge television studio with a game breaking out," Daren Libonati, the Thomas & Mack Center's executive director, said this week.
He believes only around 1,000 locals were able to secure seats for the All-Star Game.
It's not the first time Las Vegans have been given short shrift at the city's glitziest happenings. Consider New Year's Eve, where each year locals must fight closed streets, limited parking and restricted entry to some hotels to partake in the Strip's annual celebration geared toward out-of-towners.
The All-Star Game falls in line with that. The NBA unabashedly treats the event as a celebration for its VIPs, and assigned every one of the Thomas & Mack Center's 18,500 seats to its franchise front offices, players, corporate and broadcast partners, sponsors, a smattering of Las Vegas civic leaders and other insiders.
"It's a business opportunity," said Maureen Coyle, an NBA spokeswoman.
While bigwigs often get the lion's share of tickets to the nation's grandest sporting events, it's rare that ordinary fans are totally shut out of a stadium.
The Super Bowl, arguably the toughest ticket to buy at face value in American sports, has an annual lottery allowing any fan a chance to buy tickets. And participating teams are given thousands of tickets to sell to its season ticket holders, according to the National Football League's Web site.
Sunday's game is only one All-Star event aimed primarily at the wealthy, well-connected or just plain lucky.
More than 2,000 passes for Saturday's All-Star practice session sold out in just five minutes in December, weeks before All-Star hype hit much of the valley. And if you don't already have tickets for tonight's celebrity game, only scalpers will get you in.
On the eBay.com auction Web site Wednesday, All-Star Game tickets cost as much as $8,000 a pair, 10 times the face value and almost double that of average Super Bowl ticket auction prices earlier this month. Two passes to the celebrity game were priced as high as $549. Two All-Star practice tickets were going for up to $100.
Online auctioneers were even scalping entry to Saturday's invitation-only All-Star Gala party at the Mandalay Bay Hotel for up to $1,299 for two guests. Dozens of other celebrity parties on the Strip offered face-value entry prices of up to $500 a person.
Local fans without deep pockets or an inside connection who want to participate can still attend the NBA All-Star Jam Session, an interactive fan festival that began Thursday and runs through Monday at the Mandalay Bay South Convention Center. It's the only official event that's not already sold out, where time-specific tickets run up to $20 a person, face value.
Some valley civic leaders said they don't consider the constricted ticket situation a brushoff to locals.
"The ticket situation is not unique to Las Vegas. Every city the NBA All-Star Game goes to, those tickets are committed. There are never tickets available to the general public for the high-end events," said Erika Pope, a spokeswoman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which Coyle said received an unspecified allotment of All-Star Game tickets.
Some estimates claim as many as 150,000 people will be in town for the event or related activities.
"We know that the buzz generated around the events will likely result in additional visitors to be part of that. They might not be attending the official NBA events, but they want to be part of that buzz," Pope said.
The LVCVA is relishing the attention that will be showered on Las Vegas -- not that it's ever attention-starved -- simply by hosting the game, which will be televised in more than 200 countries worldwide.
"This is going to generate an extremely large amount of coverage for not only the game itself, but Las Vegas," Pope said. "On a world stage, Las Vegas will be able to showcase itself as the major host destination for sporting events like this," and not just a gambling mecca.
Nonetheless, some local sports fans lamented the All-Star Game's exclusivity.
"That's what professional sports has come to. It's not for the fan. It's all corporate. It's not for the fans anymore," said Dr. Victor Cohen, 57, of Henderson, who has held season tickets for the Thomas & Mack's primary tenant, the UNLV men's basketball team, for 15 years. "I don't like the idea that it's unavailable to the common fan.
"Isn't that kind of weird? That's absurd."
Not that Cohen would have bought tickets, anyway.
"I have a lack of interest in all-star types of games in general. I'm a basketball fan, and I'm not sure I'd want to go to that All-Star Game," he said.
"How many people wanted to go to the Pro Bowl," football's all-star game held last weekend. "I don't know anybody knew it was on TV last week. It's not a legitimate competition."
Agreed, said Jerry Savio, 76, of Las Vegas, a UNLV Runnin' Rebels season ticket holder for two decades.
"Even though there's great players there in the NBA, the All-Star Game is just (about) having a good party for the sponsors," Savio said. "It's not my crowd. It's not my team. It's fun for the players. It's party, party, party.
"As a local, I would rather go see the Rebels get an NCAA bid," Savio said.
Nevertheless, both Savio and Cohen agreed with Pope's contention that the game will be a plus for the valley's image and worldwide reputation.
"It's nice to have this here. It gives Las Vegas exposure," Savio said. "It's going to be a great showcase for us."
