Allegiant Stadium aims to take Las Vegas concerts to next level

An ascendant EDM star with a lovelorn signature hit that dropkicks your heart right in the face.

A country music prime mover whose total record sales tops the population of Mexico — by 10 million.

A group of once-hedonistic hard rockers whose frontman may never be forgiven for helping make star-spangled board shorts a thing in the ’90s.

Illenium. Garth Brooks. Guns N’ Roses.

What does this trio have in common — other than outsize fan bases?

All three will be performing at Allegiant Stadium in an eight-week span beginning Saturday, when Illenium christens the venue.

“The stadium has always kind of been a dream of mine,” Illenium explains. “When the pandemic hit, it was kind of like, ‘What’s the craziest thing we can come back to? What’s the biggest statement and coolest thing for our fans?’”

Three stadium gigs in under two months is a big number for any market. Now, consider that it’s happening in a city that hasn’t hosted this kind of super-sized show since U2 sold out Sam Boyd Stadium in October 2009.

With Vegas home to myriad residencies boasting some of the biggest names in music and having evolved into a festival destination market that annually hosts some of the largest EDM, hip-hop, punk, rockabilly and heavy music fests in the country, the city has become as synonymous with the concert-going experience as the blackjack table.

With the opening of Allegiant Stadium, one could argue that it’s the last piece of the puzzle to cement Vegas as a live music and events capital.

“There have been artists, bands who’ve been hesitant to play Vegas because they are traditionally stadium bands, or there have been bands that have preferred to play a stadium and haven’t been able to,” says Kurt Melien, president of Live Nation Las Vegas, which is promoting both the Brooks and G n’ R shows. “And now, with such a high-profile venue, we’re able to deliver those artists to the city of Vegas.”

It’s come at considerable expense: $750 million of Allegiant Stadium’s $2 billion price tag was funded by taxpayer contributions via a hotel room tax increase. That investment needs to pay dividends with a broadened event calendar.

“I think it will expand our opportunities a lot, and it’s already doing that,” says Steve Hill, chairman of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority. “It was really kind of a driving thought process in thinking about the decision to contribute an increment of the room tax in order to make it happen. We just didn’t have a venue that could hold the world’s largest events, and that was a pretty good-sized hole in our offerings.”

Hole ostensibly filled.

“The stadium itself was probably the final piece that we needed as far as being able to do just huge events,” says Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom, who was a Nevada state senator when funding for the stadium was voted on in 2016. “I’m looking forward to having the Democratic National Convention here someday and things like that. I can’t imagine anything we can’t do now.”

How the first show at Allegiant Stadium came to be

The man who became a superstar with an album about ropin’ the wind found lassoing the first gig at Allegiant Stadium even more elusive.

Garth Brooks was originally set to inaugurate Allegiant Stadium with a concert in August 2020.

The show did phenomenal business right out of the gate: 65,000 tickets were snatched up in 75 minutes when they went on sale in March 2020.

But, COVID-19.

The concert was bumped to February 2021, before being rescheduled again for July 10.

And then an EDM star beat Brooks to the punch.

Illenium, aka Nicholas Miller, was initially booked to perform at this year’s Life is Beautiful festival in September.

He was also conceptualizing a special one-off “trilogy” show focused on his first three albums — “Ashes” (2016), “Awake” (2017), “Ascend” (2019) — where he would do a set dedicated to each one.

“I’d been working with Illenium and his manager and toured them around Allegiant last August,” says Bobby Reynolds, senior vice president of AEG Presents Las Vegas, which is co-promoting the concert. “We were just trying to find the right time to do this. He was going to take his Life is Beautiful offer and perform at that festival, and we’d pick up the stadium when we could pick up the stadium.”

After getting a firsthand look at the venue, Illenium began to eye Vegas’ star-studded July Fourth weekend, when other big names like comedians Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan and pop superstar Bruno Mars would also be in town.

“We always loved Vegas as a central hub and knowing about the weekend and how amazing it’s supposed to be,” Illenium says of performing at the stadium during the time frame in question. “We went to see it, and it kind of sucked us in. We were very inspired when we first went there.”

And so he reached out to Reynolds about July 3.

“I’m like, ‘What?! This July 3rd? Dude, you’re crazy,’” Reynolds recalls. “I started thinking about it, and Chappelle was on sale, Bruno was on sale. I’m like, ‘Wow, this is going to be a really big week in the city, maybe we can tag on to it.”

Though Illenium was contracted to play Life is Beautiful, festival head Justin Weniger embraced the idea of the stadium concert, with Life is Beautiful coming aboard as a co-promoter of the event.

“From our standpoint, it was an artist’s dream to do this show. We want to support that,” Weniger says. “On the other side of it, we knew that there was a big initiative from the city of Las Vegas to send a signal to the world that we’re back and that we’re open. So we said, ‘We’ll do it.’”

The deal came together quickly: Talks started on a Thursday; the show was announced the following Tuesday.

“It just became a reality overnight, honestly,” Illenium says.

That the concert is an only-in-Vegas event as opposed to a traveling production is especially significant.

For Allegiant Stadium to firmly ensconce Vegas on the stadium tour circuit is one thing.

But the venue also underscores the city’sappeal as a destination market for this kind of one-off event, potentially bolstering the stadium concert calendar beyond touring shows and luring fans to Vegas for unique productions that can’t be seen anywhere else.

Illenium’s box office receipts have reflected as much.

“Sales have been through-the-roof good,” Reynolds says. “Like, through-the-roof good.”

Big venue, big schedule of events

Hey, let’s not forget about the soccer dudes and all the guys and gals in spandex body-slamming their exceedingly vascular compatriots into oblivion.

While concerts are a significant part of the stadium’s early itinerary, there are other big events on the schedule as well, like the sold-out 2021 CONCACAF Gold Cup Final soccer championships and WWE SummerSlam, both in August.

Yes, the stadium was built as the home of the Las Vegas Raiders — as well as that of the UNLV football team.

But with the Raiders playing but 10 home games a year and UNLV six, it was really the concerts and live and corporate events that enabled Allegiant Stadium to project as a financially sound endeavor — at least on paper.

For this reason, Segerblom initially voted against public funding for the stadium because he questioned the merits of helping to build a home for a highly valuable NFL franchise with taxpayer dollars when events other than football games could be the bigger revenue driver.

“I didn’t want to see the football team be the beneficiary of what I think is really going to be the more important part of it, which is the concerts and things like that,” he explains.

When stadium planners began to forecast how many events would take place at the venue annually, only about a third of them involved a pigskin.

“When we originally modeled the stadium, we had 16 football games and then 30 other events,” Hill explains. “A third of those 30 other events were corporate events — the city has a lot of big companies that come and bring tens of thousands of people, and we thought, ‘Well, they’ll do events there.’”

Live music didn’t figure too heavily into these early discussions.

“Really, we didn’t plug in very many concerts in the projection for the stadium — two or three a year, maybe?” Hill says. “Now, we’re seeing that concerts are going to be a bigger component of that than we originally thought.”

With three shows in 60 days, in addition to the other aforementioned events, the stadium’s off to a fast start schedule-wise.

“I think we have a pretty good shot of getting to the 46 events over the next 12 months even without the corporate events being a part of that right away,” Hill predicts.

Melien notes that the buzz about the venue has been strong thus far.

“We are getting more inbound calls than we expected, inquiring about the stadium,” he says. “It’s definitely resonating outside of just our local market and reaching key industry players.”

Of course, a venue like Allegiant Stadium is defined, at least in part, by its size.

Just as large in this case?

What that size represents.

“I think the city is now prepared for any type of show that any artist in the world wants to do,” Weniger says. “Knowing that we have that layered in with the foundational elements and logistics of what Las Vegas is capable of delivering from a hospitality standpoint, it makes a great destination for a music fan and a great place to play for an artist with any objectives that they want to do. I think we can confidently say that we have a shot at being the live music and live events capital of the world.”

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter and @jbracelin76 on Instagram.