MSG, Las Vegas Sands Plan 17,500-Seat Concert Venue
May 25 2016 - 1:04PM
Dow Jones News
By Hannah Karp
Madison Square Garden Co. and Las Vegas Sands Corp. plan to open
a 400,000-square-foot, 17,500-seat concert venue on the Las Vegas
Strip, highlighting the growing importance of entertainment in the
gambling enclave.
Slated to be connected to Las Vegas Sands' Venetian and Palazzo
resorts, the new concert space pits the two companies and their
partners in the venture -- including concert promoter Live Nation
Entertainment Inc. and artist manager Irving Azoff -- against Live
Nation's rival, Anschutz Entertainment Group.
AEG and MGM Resorts International co-own the T-Mobile Arena,
which opened last month with shows by Guns N' Roses. That was the
first new venue of its size to open in the city in two decades.
Wednesday's announcement didn't include a name for the planned
venue, whose seats are all to be positioned in front of the stage.
In most sports arenas some seats end up behind the stage for
concerts. The companies didn't provide a total cost or opening
date.
Las Vegas Sands is also trying to help build a largely
taxpayer-financed stadium to house the National Football League's
Raiders, who are considering moving to Las Vegas from Oakland.
AEG and MGM designed the 20,000-seat T-Mobile Arena with
state-of-the-art locker rooms that could help lure the city's first
major-league sports team, as the National Hockey League considers
launching an expansion team there or elsewhere. But the partners
are also prepared to operate it without a resident sports team,
focusing on entertainment.
Las Vegas has several other arenas, including the 16,800-seat
MGM Grand Garden Arena inside MGM's namesake casino, though these
others are at least 20 years old.
Despite the competition, MSG' Executive Chairman James Dolan
said in a statement that Las Vegas is "an underserved market" that
was cultivated and brought to his attention by Mr. Azoff, whose
management clients include the Eagles, Steely Dan, Van Halen and
Christina Aguilera.
Their joint venture, Azoff MSG Entertainment, also manages MSG's
historic Forum in Inglewood, Calif., which was renovated and
reopened in 2013 as a music-focused venue.
"We believe this opportunity in Las Vegas, which welcomes more
than 40 million people a year, will take this model to a whole new
level," Mr. Azoff said in the same statement.
The partners have also going head-to-head with AEG in New York,
with rival music festivals.
AEG will hold its inaugural Panorama festival on New York's
Randall's Island in July -- billed as an East Coast version of its
Coachella festival in California desert -- while Live Nation
recently announced it was acquiring Governor's Ball, slated for
June, also on Randall's Island. AEG had originally aimed to host
Panorama at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, but their bid
was rejected after MSG subsequently applied to host its own
three-day festival on the same site.
Write to Hannah Karp at hannah.karp@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 25, 2016 12:49 ET (16:49 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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