Betting on London: Vegas Uses NFL to Stem Decline in UK Visitors

Las Vegas has hosted fewer travelers from the U.K. since the Covid-19 pandemic upended the global airline business. To help restore its pull, the city’s official marketing organization has teamed up with America’s most popular sports league to help boost tourism conversions.

Vegas is the lead partner across the U.K. and Ireland this season and serves the presenting partner for the NFL’s 2024 London Games, which begin this Sunday when the Minnesota Vikings face the New York Jets at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. It’s not the first time Sin City and the league have inked partnerships, as the city hosted the 2022 NFL Draft, the ’22 and 2023 Pro Bowls at Allegiant Stadium and then Super Bowl 58 last February, also held at the Raiders’ home.

But this deal represents the tourism capital’s new playbook of using pro football to attract the attention of potential visitors from overseas who typically deliver significantly more spending than domestic visitors.

“I often say that I have the easiest product in the world to sell—and there aren’t too many people that can dispute that, but [NFL owners] may be one of them,” said Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority president Steve Hill in a video interview. “Instead of figuring out who has the better brand or easiest to sell, I said ‘let’s merge them together and build on each other.’ I still feel that way.”

Las Vegas, which in recent years has become its own sports capital, is looking to leverage the power of the NFL shield while testing its reach in a country where the sport is still a novelty but is gaining traction with local fans (Super Bowl 58 marked a 49% increase on last year’s average audience of 344,000 on Sky Sports, a group of British sports channels). For the first time, the LVCVA brand will be represented at NFL games across the pond with in-game advertising and on-field branding to go along with some in-person activations happening in and around the venues. It’s also a hospitality opportunity to host private events for LVCVA’s top sponsors and customers, like trade show organizers based in London.

“The NFL is about as American as it gets,” general manager of NFL’s U.K. office Henry Hodgson said in an interview. “If there’s audience there, whether in stadium or watching in the U.K., that will be open to the idea of traveling to the U.S. then what better brand than Las Vegas to be a partner with us on these games?”

Las Vegas wants to grow international visitation overall but has placed a special focus on the U.K., which is the city’s third-largest non-domestic market behind Canada and Mexico. Annual visitors from the U.K. and Ireland peaked at roughly 840,000 before the pandemic, but that number has dropped to below 600,000 since. The cause of that decline cannot be solely attributed to a single item, but Covid-19 disrupting airline ticket offerings from the U.K. to Las Vegas in 2020 seemed to harm tourist momentum.

LVCVA has strong relationships with Virgin Atlantic, British Airways and Norse Atlantic (which offer nonstop flights from London to Las Vegas) and usually spends its international marketing dollars across various countries and territories. But in an attempt to help with the lingering pandemic recovery, Hill says his team has decided to embark on an experiment of over-investing in specific markets for multiple years in hope of driving performance metrics and visitation revenue. The goal is to eventually host more than one million from the U.K.

Las Vegas’ recruitment through sports isn’t only via pro football. The LVCVA, which is an official partner of Formula 1, has partnered with the Silverstone track (home of the British Grand Prix) and is the training kit sponsor of English Premier League club Bournemouth AFC, which is owned by Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley.

“We may have done the (London Games) partnership anyway but the broader initiative probably wouldn’t work if we didn’t have other initiatives,” Hill said in an interview.

Las Vegas, which hosted the marquee college football matchup between USC and LSU last month, has seen its professional sports profile explode since 2017. Not only has it welcomed an NFL, NHL and WNBA team, but MLB’s Athletics are slated to move there in 2028, with the potential for the arrival of an NBA expansion team as well. The strip also hosted the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix last year, which drew a large amount of international appeal including fans from the U.K.

The city’s alignment with this year’s London Games stands out from other sports partnerships, as it represents a change in marketing strategy and the unique ploy of leveraging the power of the NFL to drive international revenue.

“We’ve tried to create this mini Super Bowl atmosphere with the London Games and markets that [international] games are played in,” Hodgson said. “Las Vegas is the capital of entertainment in the U.S. so it can be a strong partnership and one that makes a lot of sense. We’re delighted that they are on board with us.”