Posted on: December 5, 2024, 03:05h.
Last updated on: December 5, 2024, 03:05h.
From 1971 through 2019, Sam Boyd Stadium was the largest and busiest stadium in Las Vegas. Today, after nearly five years of disuse, it’s become Sin City’s largest question mark.
On Wednesday, the Nevada Board of Regents unanimously approved Clark County’s purchase of the 36,800-seat venue from UNLV for $5 million.
Though it has so far not made its plans public, the county is expected to demolish or radically repurpose Sam Boyd Stadium. Insiders say it will most likely be converted into a public park.
The stadium’s sale price was arrived at based on the average of two wildly divergent third-party appraisals conducted in 2023 — one commissioned by UNLV that valued the land at $10.4 million, and a county-commissioned valuation of $0.
Sam Boyd Stadium has sat mostly unused since 2021, following agreements struck by UNLV with Allegiant Stadium and the Las Vegas Stadium Authority.
The sale still has to go in front of the Clark County Commission for a vote before it becomes final. The matter will likely be heard at the commission’s December 17th or January 3rd meetings.
From Glory to Ruin
Not only was Sam Boyd once the only place to watch UNLV Rebels football in person, it was the only Las Vegas stop for the world’s largest concert tours.
U2 performed there in 1992, 1997 and 2009, as did the Grateful Dead every year from 1991 through 1995. It was also the primary Las Vegas venue for monster truck jams.
Clark County built the venue on 69 acres in 1970, with $3.5 million from the state of Nevada. It originally opened as a 15K-seater called Las Vegas Stadium on October 23, 1971. The stadium’s name was changed to the Las Vegas Silver Bowl in 1978, when its capacity was expanded to 32K.
In 1984, the stadium was renamed the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl, after Boyd Gaming’s co-founder. A year later, Clark County transferred the land to UNLV, free of charge.
In 1994, the stadium received its current name, and in 1999, it was upgraded to its current capacity.
Old Boyd Network
When Allegiant Stadium opened in July 2020, Sam Boyd Stadium was immediately rendered not only obsolete but embarrassingly so.
Allegiant seats 65K for football games (28K more than Sam Boyd). It is state-of-the-art rather than desperately in need of modernization. (Sam Boyd was last renovated in 2015.) And Allegiant is only 2,650 feet from the Las Vegas Strip instead of 12 traffic-snarled miles.
But what really sealed Sam Boyd’s doom was a 2021 joint agreement UNLV struck with Allegiant Stadium to host all Rebel home games there.
As part of that agreement, UNLV promised to close Sam Boyd permanently, thereby eliminating Allegiant’s only competition for large events.
Tied to that joint agreement, the Las Vegas Stadium Authority agreed to reimburse UNLV for any season netting them less than $5 million in revenue from football, up to $3.5 million per year, until 2031.
Since a UNLV graduation ceremony held there on May 15, 2021, Sam Boyd has mostly sat empty, functioning only as a COVID testing and vaccination site from January through March of the following year, and intermittently since as a training site for Clark County firefighters.
It has also reportedly been used as shelter by unhoused people.
