Could Las Vegas Accommodate 500,000 Visitors for the Super Bowl?

The media claims that the Super Bowl is generating 500,000 visitors to Las Vegas. Really? 500,000? How is that possible? The LVCVA says that the city has 154,662 hotel rooms. Where is everyone going to stay? I think that the figure of 500,000 visitors is grossly exaggerated. That’s way more than New’s Year’s Eve (I think around 330,000 or so). What do you think? What is QoD’s take on the claim of 500,000 visitors?

We reported the ever-inflating visitor predictions in our Vegas News feature with a shaker's worth of salt grains.

Up until February 2, nine days before Super Sunday, estimates for the number of people deluging Las Vegas for Super Bowl weekend were consistently between 300,000 and 350,000. But in that morning's edition of USA Today, the number magically levitated to 450,000.

Then, on February 9, the Friday before the Big Day, a CBS News story upped the ante again to a solid half-million visitors.

We have no idea whence USA Today and CBS News pulled those estimates (except possibly from their you-know-whats). Neither was based on any other reporting we saw nor had any connection, as you say in the question, to reality. No way can Las Vegas accommodate a half-million visitors over the course of a weekend. As you also note, the upper edge of the crowds is strictly limited by the number of hotel and motel rooms and private rentals, which is where the 300,000-350,000 visitors generally fall for the biggest holidays, Thanksgiving and New Years.

In the end, the Super Bowl attracted 330,000 out of towners, pretty much in the middle of the original estimates, same as a typical New Year's Eve.

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Tim Soldan Feb-29-2024

Traffic

With the traffic glut and delays everywhere it felt like a million additional people were in town.

SCOTT Feb-29-2024

Media Over Exaggeration

This is along the lines of how the local media says Formula 1 brought in 1.2 billion dollars to the local economy. Um, last check and my bank account hasn't gone up one cent.

Randall Ward Feb-29-2024

people

numbers like that always get inflated, everyone loves an estimate

Kevin Lewis Feb-29-2024

83 trillion people

That was the actual number of Vegas visitors during Super Bowl weekend. I absolutely cannot imagine going there and fighting huge crowds and traffic, paying absurdly high prices for everything, and almost certainly having very little actual fun in the process. But I guess that 83,000,000,000,000 people disagree with me.

Roby & Kristine Farnsworth Feb-29-2024

Airport

Dave parked about 40 private jets at the St. George Utah airport because the three airport got too full of the little private jets they had to be limode from St. George, Utah to Vegas so a lot of the limos from Salt lake had to be brought down to St. George

Raymond Feb-29-2024

USA Today

When I worked for the then-fledgling USA Today back in the mid-80's, it was freely but unofficially admitted that the "factoid" on page one each weekday was purest fiction.  Being a Gannett paper, a chain never known for its commitment to accuracy, this was not surprising.  As far as I can tell, the tradition continues--just print any number so long as the paper sells.

John Feb-29-2024

Kevin For President!

I have had serious differences with the ubiquitous Mr. Lewis.  The more that I think about it, I am behind him 100% for a local office.

Common sense party 2024!

Question of the Day - 29 February 2024

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