From Las Vegas' first Super Bowl to a grand finale farewell to the Tropicana, we're looking at some of the best moments of 2024 this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week.

I am Amber Renee Dixon.

2024 included many huge firsts for Las Vegas, a few impactful goodbyes, and a critical election that reshaped perspectives on Nevada politics.

We covered so many of those stories here on Nevada Week, and so here we're bringing you the best of our 2024 coverage.

We begin with a historic moment for Las Vegas, one that affected sports, the economy, and entertainment in our city when Las Vegas hosted its first ever Super Bowl.

Our Nevada Week team joined more than 6,000 journalists at Allegiant Stadium for Super Bowl's opening night.

It was the first big international look at how Las Vegas would do as a host city.

It was also a chance for players to talk to the media, and we caught up with Kansas City Chiefs Tight End Travis Kelce.

-You'll hear me say this a lot, but I want this more than I've ever wanted a Super Bowl in my life.

It's because the type of team we have, the people we have, but also because that tier of teams that have done it twice have gone down in history as some of the greats.

-And, of course, I had to ask Kelce the important question about his girlfriend, Taylor Swift.

-I've been to a Vegas wedding.

Vegas weddings are out of control.

Absolutely insane.

I don't know if I'll ever have a Vegas wedding.

- Nevada Week went back to Allegiant Stadium a few days later to see its first Super Bowl.

We met up with fans who had come in from around the world, and they told us Las Vegas exceeded their expectations.

What have you thought of the first ever Super Bowl in Las Vegas so far?

(a fan) Awesome.

Awesome.

And we should do this again.

(a fan) It's amazing.

And everybody has been so nice, really, including yourself.

(a fan) In my opinion, there's everything here.

So there's probably more people watching the game outside than inside.

You've got every facility imaginable, hotels, bars, restaurants.

I mean, this is the most incredible city, I think, in America that you could do a Super Bowl in.

-Another football fan we met, 10-year-old Super Benji Sanchez.

This two-time cancer survivor and his family were gifted tickets to the game for the advocacy work they do in spreading awareness of childhood cancer.

Nevada Week's Maria Silva caught up with him before the game, in part to show him a special message from his favorite player, 49ers Wide Receiver Deebo Samuel.

(Deebo Samuel) Super Benji, you're a strong man.

We're gonna give you a good show Sunday.

(Maria Silva) To say 10-year-old Benji Sanchez, aka Super Benji, was surprised by 49ers Wide Receiver Deebo Samuel's special shout-out is, well, an understatement.

(Benji Sanchez) [screams] [laughter] -This special shout-out, just one of many surprises the Sanchez family received leading up to Super Bowl LVIII.

The biggest one?

Tickets to the big game courtesy of the NFL and the Las Vegas Super Bowl LVIII Host Committee after being nominated by the local chapter of the American Cancer Society.

-We're going to Super Bowl!

-And not even a broken hip and bilateral surgery kept Super Benji from attending this ceremony.

Soon after that surprise, another pleasant surprise.

The Sanchez family's favorite team... -Go 9ers!

-...were heading to the Super Bowl.

-Once I knew that we we're gonna get Super Bowl tickets, I was like, No way!

I mean, No way!

My childhood dream came true!

-After the Super Bowl, which Kansas City won, attention here in Las Vegas and the rest of the country shifted to a very heated Presidential election.

With Nevada being a swing state, all three major candidates-- now President-elect Donald Trump, outgoing President Joe Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris-- spent a lot of time here at rallies and other major events.

Nevada Week was at three of these appearances to hear the campaign messages each candidate had for Nevada.

(President-elect Donald Trump) This is the first time I've said this.

And for those hotel workers and people that get tips, you're going to be very happy, because when I get to Office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips, people making tips.

[cheers and applause] We're not going to do it, and we're going to do that right away, first thing in Office, because it's been a point of contention for years and years.

(President Joe Biden) It's time for an important conversation in this country.

Our politics has gotten too heated.

I've said at the Oval Office on Sunday night, as I made clear throughout my Presidency, we all have a responsibility to lower the temperature and condemn violence in any form.

(Vice President Kamala Harris) I went after transnational gangs, drug cartels, and human traffickers who came into our country illegally.

I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won.

[applause] We know our immigration system is broken, and we know what it takes to fix it-- comprehensive reform that includes, yes, strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship.

-Of course, President-elect Donald Trump won the 2024 Presidential Election, with Nevada being one of the states that ultimately turned red.

Jon Ralston, CEO of The Nevada Independent, spent much of this year on national news shows and on social media stating that Nevada is the "we matter" state.

We asked him a few days after the election about the role Nevada ultimately played.

You have long called Nevada the "we matter" state.

It is a hashtag that you have used on X a long time now.

However, you recently used the hashtag, "We didn't matter."

Why didn't we matter?

(Jon Ralston) The race was over before Nevada's votes were counted.

The so-called "blue wall," Amber, that the Democrats had fall in 2016 when Trump won fell again, and this time pretty decisively.

And that is Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Once Trump had those, Nevada's votes didn't matter, which is very sad, I guess, for the "we matter" hashtag.

I have to maybe permanently retire it.

-I got so excited here I almost knocked over my glass.

So did Nevada matter any more or any less than the other swing states?

-I think we were-- we didn't matter because, as I said, the race was over before our votes were counted, but we mattered in the sense that I think we were a reflection of what went on across the country, which was that the Democrats did not come out and vote for Democrats.

That happened in the "blue wall" states, that happened in other states that the Democrats needed to win, because Latinos did not come out, Latino Democrats did not come out and vote for Kamala Harris.

You had Latino men exit polls, Amber, this is incredible, 2 to 1 in favor of Trump.

You've never seen anything like that.

Young voters went more for Trump than people thought.

And Asian voters, which have been a reliable Democratic constituency, both here and elsewhere, also barely went for Trump in some exit polls.

Now, they're not totally reliable, but what you had is crossover voting going the other way than people thought.

A lot of people thought that Republican moderates would vote for Kamala Harris because of the issue of abortion and some other issues.

That appears not to have happened in great enough numbers.

-Okay, so this is the first time in 20 years that a Republican has won the Presidency in the state of Nevada.

How do you think Trump did this?

Or was it more of what Kamala Harris did not do?

-Listen, she came into the race late, right?

And Trump ran a an absolutely brutal negative campaign against her, not just tying her to the Biden administration, which is manifestly unpopular, but also to some of her past positions and portraying her as a far-left person, of course, calling her the buzz word "communist," and so I think that hurt her.

But he also, he benefited from people not responding to the campaign of "He's a threat to democracy," "He's unqualified for the Presidency," and more to the things that were right in front of them, I think, Amber.

There's not enough data out to back this up, but there's some.

People care more about the economy.

They care more that it costs them more to go get groceries.

And they played on fear, fear of illegal immigration.

And even though we're not a border state, you know, that's been a big issue here in other campaigns, because we have a relatively large population of undocumented immigrants in the workforce here.

And I think that was more important to people than focusing on the character issue between Trump and Kamala Harris.

-One Nevada Week guest who was open about his support for President-elect Donald Trump was Vegas Golden Knights Owner Bill Foley, who identifies as a Libertarian.

He told Nevada Week that despite not supporting President-elect Trump in 2020, he has optimism that Trump will improve the economy, and he opened up on several other topics as well, including his thoughts on the Knight's chances at a Stanley Cup run this year and what he thinks it would take to bring an NBA team to Las Vegas.

Also his personal interest in this endeavor.

Now you would like to bring an NBA team here.

The only way I know this is because I watched a video that was made when you were inducted into UNLV's Business School Hall of Fame.

I haven't seen it reported anywhere else.

Where does that stand?

-We've not made formal contact with the NBA.

They know who we are.

We are one of several that has a group that's been put together.

So we have the money.

We do own part of T-Mobile, and it would be great to give T-Mobile a real face-lift if an NBA team were to come in.

So we have a lot of things we're working on, but there'll be more revealed later.

And I learned from my time with Gary Bettman that I should not speak to anything about what a commissioner might do or might not do, because he laid it on the line for me.

I've never been talked to, anybody, like he talked to me since I was a plebe.

-And has he circled back with you on that conversation?

-We talk about it periodically.

He's proud of me, because I predicted we'd win the Stanley Cup in six.

-I'm glad you brought that up, because I have that exact clip from when I was with you at your winery in Sonoma, and you compared this process of a hockey team to the development of grapes.

Can we listen to that real quick?

-The vines really aren't hitting maturity until they've been in the ground about six years.

So it's a-- this is, you know, you can't rush it.

-It's interesting, though, because with hockey, you've always said kind of the opposite, though, that you have a quick timeline.

-I don't think it's quick at all.

Playoffs in three, Stanley Cup in six, period.

No excuses; that's the standard.

-You did it.

-Set unrealistic expectations and then exceed them.

-You want to make any other predictions?

When are the Golden Knights going back to the Stanley Cup?

-We, we're good enough to do it this year.

-So you don't want to set an expectation, though?

-Not just yet.

-Back to the NBA, a little bit more.

How many groups do you think or are you aware of that are trying to get an NBA team here?

-I've heard of a couple of others.

-A couple, okay.

And so there is one group that wants to build an arena south of the Strip, Blue Diamond area, I believe.

They say no public money, they're not going to use public money.

But it's been kind of quiet on that front.

Do you think a new arena is going to be built?

I believe a new arena is a waste of time.

T-Mobile is a perfect place for an NBA team to play.

We have a plan in place to spend about $300 million to improve T-Mobile, add seats, add hospitality, add suites, in particular, and upgrade the park.

And that's kind of what we're working on right now.

And I believe it should be done, irrespective of basketball, because hockey, we need a better arena.

And so we're working with MGM and AEG.

-You told me off camera before this that it's a tough time to build.

-Construction costs have gone through the roof.

We built the Henderson arena, Lee's Family Forum, for a total of 90,006,000 seats.

I was speaking to a fellow who owns part of the Firebird Arena in Coachella Valley.

And I said, Well, how much did you spend?

They said they spent 300 million on an AHL facility.

So it shows you where costs have gone since, since we built some things.

-Las Vegas is a massive step closer to getting another stadium.

The Oakland A's are still on track to make the move to Las Vegas.

And in order for construction to start on their stadium here, the Tropicana had to be imploded.

The Rat Pack era property had a rich history of entertainment, being the start of many Strip performers' careers such as Siegfried and Roy and Lance Burton.

It was also where visitors flocked to see Folies Bergere, the Strip's longest running show and home to many Las Vegas show girls.

We discussed the many ways this show impacted entertainment in Las Vegas on Nevada Week.

(Karen Feder) I think probably the idea for The Folies Bergere in Vegas came from the success that the Lido, that the Stardust was having with the Lido de Paris.

That was, that show came over directly from Paris just like The Folies Bergere did, and it was doing very well.

It came in '57.

So when the Trop opened in '57, it tried the headliner thing for a few years.

And then they settled on, they managed to obtain the license from The Folies Bergere to do an American version of The Folies Bergere here in Vegas, the only one there was at that point in time.

So there was a specific license that came with the show.

And at that point in time what was so fascinating is that all of the artistry of the show, the costume design, the set design, all the creatives, the choreographer, all those folks were European.

They were the same folks that were working on the Parisian show that were just-- so the whole thing was just imported here to Vegas.

And so when you look at advertisements from the era, you'll see, you know, the sort of descriptors, "A Continental Experience."

Right?

And it sort of plays into this, you know, the highest echelon of experience on the Strip at that moment in time could be found at The Folies Bergere and the Tropicana.

So it was really a certain chi-chi place to land and spend your money at that point in time.

-It would go on to be the longest-running show on the Strip.

And as you've been quoted as saying, it changed the population of Las Vegas a bit.

How so?

-Yeah, I really think so.

Especially when the show opens in '59, a lot of cast and crew are Europeans.

They're coming from all over the world to take the jobs here.

And those folks stayed here and became, you know, for generations came here.

It's funny.

As you interview people who worked within that show for that 50-year span of time, there are two and three generations of people that continued, right, that stayed in Vegas and continued with that show.

And from my perspective, those folks were sort of the beginning of sort of the identity of Vegas, that bohemian culture that we do so well here, that we embrace this sort of change that happens here constantly.

I think that show folks have a lot to do with that.

-In October, the Tropicana was imploded in a spectacle worthy of its glamorous history with fireworks and a major drone show.

After more than six decades on the Strip, it only took 22 seconds and 2,000 pounds of explosives to bring the Paradise and Club towers down.

Construction on the Oakland A's stadium is scheduled to start this spring and be completed in 2028.

Las Vegas said goodbye to another major resort and casino this year, The Mirage.

This property is not being imploded, but it is being gutted and remodeled to become the next Hard Rock Hotel.

Like the Tropicana, the Mirage has an important place in Las Vegas history.

It's credited as the Strip's first megaresort, creating a blueprint for future properties and offering high-end accommodations, dining, and entertainment all in one place.

Our in-studio guests shared memories of when the resort opened and how it quickly became a massive success.

(Howard Stutz) No, it was fascinating because this was the first all-new resort in 15 years on the Strip.

And at the time, Strip resorts were basically, you put up slot machines, a buffet, table games, and, you know, maybe some other low-cost stuff, and just get people in.

That's all it was.

It was gambling joints.

Mirage, they gave away-- it was fascinating that they built an atrium with all these tropical trees and a rainforest.

And Steve, they said-- they looked at him like, Well, where's the slot machines?

How you gonna make money on this place?

So it was-- and the interest in it was worldwide.

It wasn't just, you know, just in Vegas and nationally.

It was worldwide interest.

-Why was that?

-Because it was-- I think it was just something so different for Las Vegas.

Plus it was 15 years, had been 15 years since we seen a new Strip resort.

That morning, there were, if you're familiar with the horseshoe driveway entrance, lines of people out the driveway all the way down onto the Strip on both entrances waiting to come in at noon when they opened it.

And it was just-- and it was like that the entire weekend and for weeks on end.

It was just the place that people wanted to see it after, you know, a couple years of development and building it.

So that's what it really-- it really did kick off what we see now today, as you said at the opening of what Las Vegas is today.

-Yeah, it's been described as revolutionary, iconic, transformational.

In what way, Josh?

(Josh Swissman) Well, I mean, just financially, in the first place, it was a bold move.

That resort had to make, to be able to service the debt and eke out a little bit of profit, he had to generate a million dollars in revenue a day, which at that point in time was unheard of and some people thought was crazy.

Clearly, you know, being the visionary that Steve Wynn was, he was able to see the potential there and generated well in excess of the million dollars a day.

So I think that, in terms of overall asset performance and property performance, was bold and industry leading, not only for Las Vegas, for the industry at large.

But the notion of introducing fine dining, the notion of introducing entertainment, the notion of simply introducing luxury into the gaming space was something that really hadn't happened, and certainly not at the scale that Steve Wynn programed that property to represent.

So I think in all of those ways, you saw something that was truly a revolutionary product on the Strip and beyond.

-Howard, you have a specific quote from Steve Wynn in your most recent reporting.

-That was in 2009 on the 20th anniversary.

I interviewed Steve for the Review-Journal when I did a story about the 20-year anniversary, and I asked him about the million dollars a day, and his comment was, "For all the people who thought we'd fall on our ass, I forgive them."

He said-- he said they made 1.1 million a day or more in just gaming revenue.

He said people forgot about the noncasino revenues, as you just pointed out, Josh.

It was like $800,000 a day they were making because of the restaurants and the shows.

Siegfried and Roy's show was, you know-- I forgot what he paid to bring them over from The Frontier.

-A lot of the photos we got of the grand opening of The Mirage were of Siegfried and Roy with Steve Wynn.

Kats, will you explain their influence on this property, their influence worldwide.

(John Katsilometes) Well, this is the time when grandiosity came into the Las Vegas residency headliner community.

They were, they were superstars that were created originally as a side act and brought-- and evolved that way.

There's no-- right now, there's no path to have another Siegfried & Roy in the way that they were stars at The Mirage.

They, you know, they gained the attention of international visitors.

And by the time they came back, those people could see them at The Frontier.

The Frontier show led to their booking at The Mirage.

And what we saw was that we were seeing magic and a production show in Las Vegas staged in a way, in a scale that we'd never seen before.

We had exotic animals.

We had the white tigers.

We had elephants in the show.

We had costumes that were just as ostentatious as you could imagine.

And Siegfried & Roy became a brand of Las Vegas through this entire experience.

They sold every ticket to every show for 13 years.

No Show does this.

No Show does this today.

They don't sell every ticket to every show anymore.

Even "O" doesn't do this, doesn't sell every ticket.

They went on tour in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan, two jets full of equipment and animals and cast members, built facilities in both cities, went to Radio City Music Hall and did a run there, set records at that venue, then opened at The Mirage.

So by the time they started at The Mirage, they were really well known.

You don't have to speak English to enjoy Siegfried & Roy.

The family can enjoy them.

When Letterman came out, I remember seeing them on the Letterman show for a week from Bally's.

He had to have Siegfried and Roy on.

They came out and leveled the place.

And you know, up until the end of their show, they were still hot and they left on top.

And you know, we can thank Siegfried and Roy, credit Siegfried and Roy for the magic boom in Las Vegas and the mecca it has become.

-While Las Vegas said goodbye to two major parts of entertainment history, the city looked ahead to entertainment of today and the future.

One of those big moments for 2024 was UFC hosting the first major sporting event inside the Sphere.

It was a massive undertaking to produce both the fights and all the visual elements needed for the Sphere.

We sat down with UFC President Dana White at his private bar at UFC headquarters to learn more about that process.

So this is the second year that the UFC is doing a Noche UFC in Las Vegas on Mexican Independence Day weekend.

Are you looking to make this a tradition?

(Dana White) Yeah, this will be a tentpole event for us moving forward.

This will be one of our yearly big events, whether it's here, in Mexico, Texas, Arizona, wherever we decide to do it.

But, you know, after this whole Sphere thing happened, it gave me the concept that every year I want to do something different and something special and something that we didn't do the year before.

-You wont come back to the Sphere, you already know that?

-No, the Sphere is definitely a one-of-one event.

I wanted to be first.

Nobody's ever done a live sporting event out of the Sphere.

And what was more attractive about that was everybody said it couldn't be done.

And those are the kind of things that I love.

I love when people say something can't be done.

-What was the reasoning that they had for it not being possible?

-First of all, the setup.

You know, it's theater style.

You have the big screen there.

Where would the Octagon go?

We have that big lighting rig that hangs above.

30 years.

The lighting rig hangs above.

In the lighting rig are lights that light up the octagon.

We have cameras in there, audio, microphones, all that stuff lives inside.

That's gone.

We had to figure out how do you shoot this to how do you get light.

Did you see U2?

-Yes.

-U2 had a few lights that came up like this.

They would go up and down.

-Videos, not not in person.

-Yeah.

And they would go up and down.

Our lighting is so much more complex than what they do.

Everything that we do is much more complex than a, than a concert.

But what I loved was when I went to see U2 and I was sitting in there, I realized that U2 wasn't the star of the show, the Sphere was.

So I said, this is fascinating.

How could I pull off a sporting event in here, right, where the Sphere is the star of the show, but also need the fighters to-- people need to focus on the fighters, because what you find yourself doing-- as soon as this is over, I got a box for the Eagles.

I'm going to see the Eagles at the Sphere.

-Very cool.

-And what you do is you're in these seats and you're watching the screen and you're listening to these songs that you love.

Every once in a while, you peek over and look at the band, you know, and whatever, and then you kick back and you start-- and I was blown away by the whole thing.

I'm like, How the hell could you pull off a sporting event in here and make-- so these are all the little details and things.

There's so many little pieces to this puzzle for this to come off seamlessly on September 14.

I'm looking forward to how it all plays out.

-Thank you for watching Nevada Week throughout this year.

It has been our privilege to share these stories and so many more compelling interviews with you.

Have a wonderful holiday season, and I'll see you next week right here on Nevada Week.

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