Visitation slump shows up in Allegiant Stadium room tax revenues

This summer’s tourism slump in Las Vegas is showing up in Allegiant Stadium’s room tax revenue, which is starting to lag behind expectations.

With the visitation down for 10 straight months as of October, room taxes being collected to repay the $750 million in public money provided to the Raiders to build Allegiant Stadium fell behind budgeted amounts for the fiscal year, according to Las Vegas Stadium Authority data.

Between July and September, the stadium room tax revenue is down nearly 6 percent from budgeted amounts, with $13.4 million collected of the $14.2 million budgeted, according to stadium authority data. Visitation during those three months was down 9.2 percent collectively, according to Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority data.

When compared with the same three months in 2024, stadium room tax revenue is down 12.5 percent. In fiscal year 2025, (July 2024-June 2025) room tax revenue generated $63.5 million toward paying off the stadium.

Senate Bill 1 created a 0.88 percent tax on hotel rooms in Clark County that has been collected since 2017 to repay bonds taken out by Clark County to help the Raiders finance construction of Allegiant Stadium. Between March 2017 and September, the room tax has generated $428 million, according to stadium authority data tracked by the Review-Journal.

Clark County makes bond payments for the stadium investment twice annually, usually in June and December. This year, a payment of $21.8 million was made in June. A $15.5 million payment was scheduled to be made Monday, for a 2025 total debt service of $37.4 million.

The stadium room tax will be in place through 2048; the year the final bond payment from the county is due.

There is a debt reserve fund set up in case the room tax doesn’t generate enough revenue to make the payment. That fund, which sits at $90 million, is designed to handle two years’ worth of average bond payments should there be no room tax revenue generated. The fund was tapped twice as result of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic but has since been fully replenished.

Fan attendance nears 7 million

Almost 7 million fans have attend events at the five-year-old Allegiant Stadium.

Since fans were allowed to attend events in 2021, through the end of September, about 6.9 million people have taken in a Raiders game, concert, one-off event or private function at the $2 billion stadium, according to Las Vegas Stadium Authority data provided by the Raiders.

There were three Raiders games in the third quarter of the fiscal year, plus two UNLV football games, five concerts, two other ticketed events and 27 private events, accounting for 540,241 total attendees.

Concerts, which included two nights of Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter tour, two nights of Chris Brown’s Breezy Bowl XX and one night of the Weekend’s After Hours Til Dawn tour drew a combined 233,438 fans. The Raiders’ single NFL preseason game and two regular season games drew 171,901 fans. The two other ticketed events included the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez versus Terrence Crawford mega fight, drawing a single event quarter high of 65,302 fans, while the Raiders’ open practice drew a crowd of 17,295.

The events saw a healthy number of out-of-town attendees, with the concerts seeing an average of 70 percent of fans from outside of Southern Nevada. Out-of-town attendance at Raiders games averaged 61 percent, and the Canelo-Crawford fight drew 85 percent of attendees from out of state.

UNLV’s two home games saw 42,025 attendees, highlighted by the Rebels defeat pf UCLA on Sept. 6 in front of 25,433 fans. Twenty seven private events accounted for 10,280 attendees.

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.