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Vegas on New Year's


Called America's Party, it's the city's big blast

Dec 18, 2006

Las Vegas officials call their annual New Year’s Eve citywide celebration America’s Party. This year’s bash will be televised, noting the stroke of midnight in each time zone as the new year rolls across the country from New York to Los Angeles.

Sponsors are underwriting many of the events.

To find out how to get your client’s message in front of New Year’s Eve revelers in Las Vegas, read on.

This is one in a Media Life series on buying the new out-of-home venues. They appear weekly.

Fast Facts 

What
Sponsorship of New Year’s Eve festivities in Las Vegas.

Who
Fremont Street Experience, headquartered in Las Vegas.

How it works
Fireworks and live entertainment anchor the New Year’s Eve celebration known as America’s Party. Festivities span the Las Vegas Strip and Fremont Street. The annual event started in 2001.

Sponsored events range from a public pyrotechnic display launched from hotel rooftops to a ticketed concert. 

The four-and-a-half-hour live concert, dubbed "CD USA," will feature Smash Mouth, All American Rejects, Chicago and other bands performing on two stages on Fremont Street. It will be shown on a 1,500-foot long screen at the concert site and broadcast nationwide on DirecTV.

Additional sponsorship packages that are available for this year’s events include:
--A 10-foot-by-10-foot space reserved on the street for interaction with party-goers, product displays in all green rooms and VIP tents, 20 tickets to America’s Party concert, and a page in the program for $30,000
--Street space, VIP product displays, 20 tickets, a page in the program and street teams that can be utilized for sampling for $40,000
--Product displays in green rooms and VIP tents, 25 tickets, a program page, street teams, branding at the main entrance, six canopy banner signs, and logo on the event canopy for $50,000
--All of the above, including 35 tickets, for $80,000
--All of the above, plus staff in the green room, for $100,000.

Creative can be provided by the advertiser or developed by Fremont Street Experience, says director of marketing Lisa Robinson.

Markets
Las Vegas

Numbers
Last year, 300,000 out-of-own visitors attended America’s Party in Las Vegas, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Attendance at the concert and other Fremont Street events, which are ticketed, is expected to be 18,000, says Live2Net vice president Marc Jay. “This is the biggest private party in America that night.”

How it is measured
The Convention and Visitors Authority provides a count of revelers on Las Vegas Boulevard, known as the Strip. Hotel occupation numbers and police estimates are used to determine crowd size.

Events on Fremont Street are ticketed, and gate counts are used to measure impressions.

Research
The average daily visitor count on Fremont Street is 26,483, according to a 2005 study by the Convention & Visitors Authority. The average time spent is over four hours.

What product categories do well
Automotive, travel, liquor, beer, soft drinks, sports drinks, electronics, banking and cellular phones are top categories, Robinson says.

Demographics
The target audience is 51 percent female, 49 percent male, and 67 percent claim a household income of $40,000 and up, according to a 2005 visitor profile study from the Convention & Visitors Authority.

“With the live audience we’re going to find mainly 25- to 34-year-olds,” says Eric Shanks, executive vice president entertainment at DirecTV, one of this year's sponsors. “Then we’ve thrown Chicago into the mix, which is going to get a lot of people both old and young.”

Making the buy
Lead time is one week. Sponsorship packages that are still available for the 2006 America’s Party range from $30,000 to $100,000.

Who’s already sponsoring New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas
DirecTV and Live2Net are current sponsors.

What they’re saying
“When it comes to television, up until now there’s been nothing to celebrate in Los Angeles at midnight. We’re going to have live look-ins in each time zone – New York, Chicago, Denver, L.A. -- throughout the night and hit the stroke of midnight in each one.” --Eric Shanks, executive vice president entertainment for DirecTV

Web site info
Fremont Street Experience at www.vegasexperience.com

 



Kathy Prentice writes about out-of-home advertising for Media Life, penning her stories from the resort town of Traverse City, in the upper reaches of Michigan.




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