When events collide: Who schedules these event-filled weekends in Las Vegas?

If there’s a rugby fan from Fiji or Samoa who also happens to pull for NASCAR’s Jimmie Johnson and the UFC’s Conor McGregor — and he’s also a Gonzaga basketball enthusiast — he’s going to have difficult choices to make in Las Vegas this weekend.

This is the year that for some crazy reason, NASCAR Weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, USA Sevens rugby at Sam Boyd Stadium, UFC 196 at the MGM Grand Garden and the West Coast Conference men’s and women’s basketball tournaments at Orleans Arena will be held in Las Vegas, concurrently, or at least within the same 72 hours or thereabouts.

As one tourism official said, it’s the perfect storm. There’s a veritable tsunami of live sports from which to choose. But steaming home from the Flemish Cap with a broken ice machine amid ominous clouds, a la swordfish skipper George Clooney in the movies, is a breeze in comparison to choosing how to spend hard-earned sports entertainment dollars here this weekend.

If you didn’t know better, you’d swear the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing when this cornucopia of events was scheduled.

“It’s unusual, I will say that,” said Julian Dugas, director of sports marketing for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. “This is the best month (for local sports), no question about it.”

But is there such a thing as too much of a good thing?

Not when it comes to generating nongaming economic revenue for the city, I’m told.

When Dugas and I spoke, it was over the telephone. He sounded like a kid on Christmas morning who had just found a custom-made Red Ryder BB gun under the tree.

NASCAR Weekend by its lonesome is expected to produce around $90 million in nongaming revenue. When you throw in the blackjack drop, it’s probably in the hundreds of millions, because sometimes racing fans from the Southern states don’t understand about the splitting of aces and eights.

I’ve seen numbers close to $30 million for rugby. The UFC fights and the basketball games will generate additional tens of millions, because fans of those sports also spend lots of money on hotel rooms, and on food and drink — except when Brigham Young is playing, in which case the drink tab will be lower.

Not to worry, local coffers. Wyoming fans will be returning for next week’s Mountain West tournament at the Thomas &Mack Center, and they’ll probably be thirsty.

So as for the left hand not knowing what the right is doing, I suspect both hands will needed to count the money after everybody leaves town this weekend. And next, when the Mountain West and Pac-12 and Western Athletic Conferences hold their men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. And later in the month, when the Cubs and Mets practice hitting the cutoff man during Big League Weekend at Cashman Field.

“Once a year, we have a perfect storm where three or four events are on top of each other,” Dugas said. “But it’s not the same (spectator) demographic.”

Dugas said the rugby fan from Fiji or Samoa who pulls for Jimmie Johnson and Conor McGregor and Gonzaga is the exception rather than the rule. “There might be a little crossover, but I’m sure we’re going to be fine,” he said.

Usually, it’s only NASCAR and Gonzaga (and the other WCC teams) on this weekend. USA Sevens normally plays rugby in February, but this is an Olympic year — sevens rugby will debut as an Olympic sport at the Rio games — and new tournaments in Vancouver and Paris made the schedule change necessary.

Tournament director Rob Cornelius said the Las Vegas delegation would “fight to go back” to the February date in 2017.

He also said like NASCAR fans and Conor McGregor’s fans, rugby enthusiasts will drink a river of beer, and probably a couple of tributaries with the weather being so warm.

UFC 196 originally was to occur in Rio, under a different number. But injuries to Brazilian fighters and bug bites scuttled that card, and I’m told the economy’s not so hot in Brazil, anyway. So now the fisticuffs and roundhouse kicks have morphed into another blockbuster presentation here, with potty-mouth Conor McGregor of Ireland and Ronda Rousey vanquisher Holly Holm as headliners.

Local innkeepers are over the moon about that one, too.

“We had originally scheduled this event to be in Brazil on March 5, but once we made the fight card, we made a business decision to bring the card to the company’s hometown in Las Vegas,” a UFC official said. “… As a result, it’s now going to be an incredible weekend for sports fans.”

This isn’t Tulsa, Oklahoma, with one convention center and a couple of Quality Inns out on the Interstate on the edge of a town, they say. This is Las Vegas. We can handle it. Like in those GEICO commercials, it’s what we do.

Ryan Growney, general manager at the South Point, a major NASCAR stomping ground, said there was no room in the inn until a few rooms popped open due to last-minute cancellations. He expected those to be filled — at a premium price — before the cars hit the track for practice.

“It’s a ball that rolls,” Growney said about the big sports weekend and trickle-down economics, adding that finding a place to stay shouldn’t be a problem, even for spur-of-the-moment fans.

Dugas at LVCVA headquarters agreed. He said even with around 100,000 hotel rooms spoken for, it still leaves around 50,000 for late-arriving Portuguese rugby fans, or Loyola Marymount basketball supporters, or mixed martial arts enthusiasts from the other side of the pond, who might be the exception to the left hand knowing what the right is doing.

In their case, both hands probably will be wrapped around a tall pint of Guinness beer served at room temperature, or slightly chilled.

Because a pint of Guinness costs more than a Bud Light served out of an infield cooler at the racetrack, this also will be beneficial to the local economy, provided McGregor wins and not too much stuff gets broken.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.