A few years ago, I met a gentleman who was a high-level exec at one of the big Las Vegas hotel empires. He was an interesting guy who, in the half-hour or so that we were together, never allowed the conversation to stray far from his thesis, which I will now attempt to summarize. It was that Las Vegas was The Entertainment Capital of the World and that it will become only more so. Vegas, and especially the hotel company that employed him, would eventually steal away every important entertainment event in the world. Every major concert would be in Vegas. Every major TV show would film or tape in Vegas. The days of touring, he said, would be over. If Springsteen or the Stones decided to tour for a year, for example, some L.V. venue would instead make them an offer they couldn't refuse to just play Vegas for that year.
He even had this odd idea that Vegas could usurp the Times Square tradition of New Year's Eve. He said, approximately, "We will stage such incredible events here on that night that the world will no longer care what's going on in New York on New Year's Eve. They will tune in to watch what's happening in Vegas." (This was just after New Year's Day of 1997 when, as I wrote here, they blew up one of the Vegas hotels.) Inasmuch as it's my mission in life to forever point out The Obvious, I mentioned to the man that no matter what they do in Vegas, New York will always enjoy an insurmountable advantage. The New Year arrives three hours earlier in that time zone.
The man looked at me in a way that suggested that in all their meetings and planning sessions, no one had ever thought of that. And then he paused for a moment, and I could swear he was thinking, "There must be some way to change that…"
In the eight years since that conversation, Vegas seems to have abandoned any attempts to outdo Times Square in the category of New Year's Eve celebrations. Instead, they've gone after their theater. Avenue Q is the featured attraction at the new Wynn Las Vegas hotel and another theater is currently being designed to house a long run of Spamalot. Rumor has it that Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick have turned down a staggering pile of cash to do another year of The Producers in the gambling mecca, and that other huge money offers are looming. The idea here is not merely to import road companies of New York shows — Vegas has done that for years — but to start funding new shows by major Broadway producers. The costs of mounting a new show in Manhattan are huge and some of the Vegas entrepreneurs think they can make their city more appealing. The goal is to make it as important and valid for a show to open on The Strip as it is to open on The Great White Way. I don't know if they can pull that off but they're sure gonna try.
In the meantime, some Vegas promoters have set their sights on another city's entertainment success. A group there is about to present a plan to the city of New Orleans to rent Mardi Gras to Vegas for the next few years. The premise is that it'll be a while before the Louisiana city is in any condition to stage the annual festival…so they'll hold it in Las Vegas and at the same time, raise money to help rebuild New Orleans. It sounds like someone is a little too eager to capitalize on a tragedy…but if they can make the math work, it might not be a bad idea.