LAS VEGAS -- On a normal day, Bellagio front-desk
clerk Trevor Price checks in uber-rich hotel guests toting Louis
Vuitton bags and balancing on Manolo Blahnik stilettos.
But for the next two weeks, the crowd entering the ornate
resort lobby with its $8 million chandelier will be just as
well heeled, but their heels a bit thicker.
The visitors are contestants and enthusiasts of the Wrangler
National Finals Rodeo, the annual Super Bowl of the cowboy circuit,
which is galloping into town for the 20th time, featuring 10
days of competition, camaraderie, and country music starting
Friday. More than $5 million in prize money, the most ever,
is at stake to contestants in seven events, including bull riding
and team roping.
"Everybody loves it when the hats come to town," said Steven
Hatchell, commissioner of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.
"It's the time of year when you can wear blue jeans and hats
in Vegas. So, yeah, it's sort of a dress-down time, if you think
$500 pairs of boots and hats are dressing down."
The 170,000 rodeo fans return the city to its Old West roots.
"During these weeks, Vegas is not what Vegas is in all the
glossy magazines," said Anthony Curtis, publisher of the Las
Vegas Advisor newsletter. "But that's another cool thing about
Vegas. It's flexible. It works across all the different lines
for all different audiences. [Rodeo fans] have money, too."
And to the delight of the city's resorts, they spend it at
a slow time of the year -- between Thanksgiving and Christmas
-- when Las Vegas is otherwise vacant. The national rodeo and
its related events bring in $72 million, according to Rossi
Ralenkotter, executive director of the Las Vegas Convention
and Visitors Authority.
"The casinos and locals are pretty well used to this being
Cowboy Week basically," said veteran rodeo champion Allen Bach,
47, of Weatherford, Texas. "They pretty well embrace us because
we bring a lot of income into the casinos. And we're pretty
good guests, too, I'd think."
Ralenkotter was part of a contingent that went to Colorado
Springs, in the early 1980s to persuade the rodeo's governing
body, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, to move the
event from Oklahoma City to Las Vegas. Ralenkotter and his colleagues
promised the move would expose the sport to the masses, putting
it on national television and selling out the 17,000 seats at
the Thomas & Mack Center for all 10 nights of the competition.
The demand is so great for tickets, priced at $38 or $52 depending
on the view, that more than 30 hotels are hosting parties for
those without tickets, broadcasting live via closed-circuit
television.
"When we were back in Colorado Springs, we told them, 'If
you bring the event to Las Vegas, you're going to get the national
recognition your Super Bowl deserves,' " Ralenkotter recalled.
"It's pairing up the strength of our brand with theirs that
has made this the event it is today."
Bach said the transition to Las Vegas was a challenge. Some
rodeo veterans accused the group of selling out for Sin City,
he said.
"We liked Oklahoma City because the audience was the true
hard-core rodeo fans and Oklahoma is right in the middle of
the Rodeo Belt," said Bach, who has competed in 26 rodeo championships,
including 19 of the 20 held in Las Vegas. He won $71,000 for
cattle roping last year. "In a way, it was kind of sad. Oklahoma
is a pretty conservative type of place, so then we drop down
into Las Vegas where there's all these things that just aren't
for kids to see.
"I don't take my kids around there much because everywhere
you look, there's prostitution brochures and the lights and
the glitter and the dancing girls," he said. "We try to live
a pretty conservative, Christian-values life."
Still, as uneasy as the marriage of Vegas and national rodeo
occasionally has been, Bach and other younger ropers embraced
the move for the potential to expand the purse. Professional
cowboys compete all year at smaller-money events to break even
on their expenses just for the opportunity to appear at the
big-money national, Bach said.
"It was inevitable that for rodeo to grow, it had to go somewhere
else," he said. "We all have fond memories of Oklahoma City,
though, because it really did have a special feeling there.
Out in Las Vegas, it's more a business-is-business kind of deal."
The national rodeo moved into town in 1985, before the current
high-end Vegas took hold. The city was still the capital of
the cheap buffet and almost-free entertainment. The megaresort
era that would lead to the record-shattering 37 million visitors
this year did not debut until the Mirage hotel opened in 1989.
These days, with country music attracting a more mainstream
audience, nonrodeo fans flock to Vegas during the finals to
see Dolly Parton, Randy Travis, and Sara Evans. Celebrities
such as Roger Clemens, Matthew McConaughey, Kiefer Sutherland,
and Nolan Ryan are often on hand, too.
But the combination of cowboys and haute cuisine has had its
rough spots. When celebrity restaurateur Wolfgang Puck opened
the Strip's first high-end eatery, Spago, at Caesars Palace
in 1992 during the national rodeo, he and his partners were
stunned to find that the cowboys who came to the opening took
their plates and lined up in front of the exhibition kitchen
expecting another Vegas buffet.
"A lot of our friends and professional consultants warned
us against building in Vegas, which was known for buffets then,
so when these guys came in and went for the counter, we thought,
'Oh, gosh, our friends are right, this is a mistake, this city
is all about the buffet,' " said Tom Kaplan, senior managing
partner for Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining.
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