A storm is coming, and it’s headed for the heart of Las Vegas.
Scott Sibella, President and Chief Operating Officer of the MGM Grand, isn’t sure where he was when the first waves landed upon his shores. He can’t recall the exact moment when he found out his hotel was going to host the biggest boxing match of the century. But for boxing fans scattered across the globe, the moment is ingrained in their minds.
On a Friday night in February, Floyd Mayweather Jr. uploaded a picture to one of his social media accounts. Filling the frame was a fight contract signed by both Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. After years of failed negotiations, the Fight of the Century was greenlit.
In the call center of the MGM Grand, a phone rang, jarring the silence. Another sounded off. Then another one. And another. The phones kept on jumping — that much, Sibella can remember.
“The phones just started ringing off the hook,” Sibella says. “And it happened for a number of days.”
People wanted to book rooms. They tried to find out how they could secure a ticket to the event. A tsunami of calls bombarded Sibella’s phone — a typical experience for Sibella whenever a fight at the MGM Grand gets announced. But this was different.
“You always get calls,” Sibella says. “But I never got anything like this.”
As President of the MGM Grand, Sibella is accustomed to the responsibilities that come with hosting a fight of this magnitude, and he and his team went to work on their game plan right away. Room logistics, crowd control, security plans, coordinating with Showtime and HBO, working with the teams of both fighters — the list is unending.
When May 2 rolls around, Sibella will be accountable for more people on his property than ever before. His chief responsibility is the safety of his guests and employees, which is why he’s coordinating heavily with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, as well as federal security teams.
For the LVMPD, the weekend is business as usual — it’s not even the most hectic of circumstances for them. That honor goes to New Year’s Eve and EDM (electronic dance music) events. Still, according to LVMPD spokesman Officer Larry Hadfield, the force will be well prepared, saying that there will be officers staffed at the event who will be both “seen and unseen.”
For Sibella, the fight brings chaos.
“Since the announcement of the fight, it’s been so hectic and crazy with the requests for rooms, tickets, Wet Republic, the nightclubs ? the demand has been off the charts,” Sibella says.
But there’s a reason why Sibella’s venue was selected for this particular fight.
“This is what we do best,” Sibella said. “They know how we prepare for fights. They know that it’s going to be a great environment. It’s going to come along the way they expect it, and that’s what this town’s all about.”
Still, the MGM Grand cannot hold as many seats as Madison Square Garden in New York. It’s not as new and flashy as Jerry Jones’ massive AT&T Stadium in Texas. But it doesn’t hurt that Mayweather, who lives in Las Vegas, prefers to do his fighting at the MGM Grand. As Sibella says, the MGM Grand is Mayweather’s “second home.”
Sibella thinks Mayweather is the reason why the MGM Grand was chosen over other venues.
“Mayweather has been very loyal,” Sibella says.
The decision hasn’t been without criticism. In mid April, HBO Sports President Ken Hershman voiced his displeasure with the venue of choice.
“The MGM has such a history so it’s hard to say it shouldn’t be there,” Hershman told reporters at the time. “But it would have made things a little bit easier [having it at a larger venue], at least having more general admission tickets for the public.”
Which brings us to the biggest roadblock Sibella and his team has faced thus far.
Shortly after the MGM Grand’s call room exploded, a problem emerged. The MGM Grand staff didn’t know what to tell potential ticket buyers because, well, they didn’t know how and when tickets would hit the open market.
A month passed, then another. And Sibella still didn’t know how to answer a question that probably seemed simple from the perspective of a buyer.
“People are calling in every day wondering where they can go see it and we couldn’t really give them answers,” Sibella says. “We just kept misleading people.”
Despite being the host of the fight, the MGM Grand didn’t get a say in the ticket process. Instead, it was left up to the discretion of the promoters. And they were taking their sweet time.
On April 15, a contract still wasn’t finalized. Bob Arum, who represents Pacquiao, refused to sign the contract he received. Finally, on April 22, it was announced that the contract was finalized and tickets would go on sale the following day. The plans were so last minute that with just three hours remaining before the tickets were made available to the public, they weren’t even uploaded in the MGM Grand’s system.
“I’ll be honest, it’s been frustrating on our part,” Sibella says. “It wasn’t difficult, it was just frustrating … It’s not how we normally do things here.”
On Thursday, April 23, at 3 p.m. ET, the tickets went on sale. A minute later, they were sold out.
The MGM Grand has been forced to plan, spend, and work tirelessly to make sure the weekend of May 2 lives up to the hype. But the work comes with benefits.
Non MGM Resorts properties in Las Vegas cannot televise the fight, which means if tourists hope to catch a glimpse of the action, they’ll have to pay $150 to watch it on MGM grounds.
The exclusivity granted to MGM Resorts has been a frequent topic of debate, but as Sibella points out, this isn’t anything out of the ordinary — this is how it’s always done.
“It’s always been like that,” Sibella says. “This one, you hear about it more because of the demand.”
Hosting Mayweather-Pacquiao is a challenge unlike any other for the MGM Grand. (Getty Images)
And it’s not lost on Sibella just how much of an edge it grants the company.
“It’s a huge advantage,” Sibella says. “We’re going to have over 60,000 seats within our company where you can go watch the fight. So I think everybody will rush to one of our properties to see this — even if they’re not staying there. It gives us a great advantage to get those people into our properties.”
Even guests staying at the MGM Grand won’t be able to purchase the fight on PPV in their rooms. They’ll have to attend a closed-circuit viewing for roughly $60 more than the PPV cost. And that’s in addition to the revved up room prices that guests are paying to stay at the site of the fight.
Sibella couldn’t offer an estimate for the amount of money the hotel will earn over the course of the weekend, but he gave a tangible example.
“Last year ? we had a fight, and our rates were up to $600-$700, and now we’re at $1500 for a room,” Sibella says. “So it tells you the demand that we have for this fight.”
As Sibella points out, MGM won’t be the only company to benefit from the fight. Anthony Nevill, Director of Race and Sports at Treasure Island Hotel and Casino, gave a similar assessment of the upcoming weekend.
“You have to remember that a lot of the people are coming to town. It’s typically kind of expensive to be able to attend the fight. There’s not enough seats to cover the number of people coming to town,” Nevill told CBSSports.com. “They’re coming from places that are still snowing, raining, sleeting?”
Like Treasure Island, other businesses will also cash in from the influx of spenders. XS Nightclub is planning on having DJ David Guetta play a set the night before the fight. To attend Guetta’s show, men will have to pay $116. For the sake of comparison, to gain access to Guetta’s show just eight days later at the same club, men will be charged only $35.50.
“It really works good for everybody,” Nevill said of the fight. “Las Vegas is about smiles — not frowns.”
When it was Arum’s turn to speak at the fight’s press conference back in March, he didn’t hesitate to address the issue of location. Arum, a resident of Las Vegas, explained why he, along with Mayweather, navigated the fight to Las Vegas.
“This fight is going to bring tremendous revenue, not only to the hotels and the properties, but also for the cab drivers, the bartenders, everybody in the hospitality industry. These are my neighbors,” Arum said at the time. “I would have been put in a terrible position to have moved, or tried to have moved, this fight out of Las Vegas ? Really, truly, this fight belongs in Las Vegas.”
It’s an opinion that Sibella echoes.
“I think these big fights belong in this city,” Sibella says. “That’s what this city’s all about.”
The truth is, this fight is bigger than Las Vegas. It’s bigger than the venue and the promoters and the fighters.
It is, as Sibella puts it, “history.”
