Orlando was last year's home of Major League Baseball's winter meetings but in 2018 the league owners will take their talents, and wallets, to Las Vegas.
The Mandalay Bay hotel-casino will play host for the winter meetings on December 9 of 2018. Vice president of global sports and events sales for MGM Resorts International, Daniel Rush, is excited to welcome the MLB back to Las Vegas.
“The baseball winter meetings provide great exposure for Mandalay Bay, MGM Resorts and Las Vegas in general,” saidRush. “All the networks will broadcast live from our host property.”
The winter meetings were previously held in Las Vegas in 2008, but trouble with splitting the event over multiple convention venues led to the MLB moving them elsewhere. Mandalay Bay's upgraded convention center will alleviate that problem and allow the league to house their owners, major league staffs, and minor league staffs all in the same building.
“It’s going to be so good at the Mandalay Bay. It’s state of the art, beautiful, brand new,” said 51s President Don Logan. “Everybody is right there. Everything is right there. You’ll get a lot more business done.
“It’s going to be the winter meetings from a venue perspective in terms of productivity and accessibility and everything that there’s ever been.”
Las Vegas is widely considered the convention capital of the world and few places are better equipped for these owners meetings, but the hopes should be for the MLB bigwigs to see the potential that both the NHL and NFL have seen in Vegas.
“There’s probably no city in the world that can do a convention as well as we do it here,” Logan said. “The space at the Mandalay (Bay) Events Center, the Mandalay Bay itself, the Delano, the Four Seasons all being in one area, there’s no other venues in the country where we can get everybody under one roof with the quality convention space, meeting space, dining space, shopping and obviously the entertainment.”
Las Vegas is quickly becoming a professional sports town and with the Raiders finalizing a location for their stadium West of the Mandalay Bay, it'd be the perfect opportunity for the owners to check out the construction and possibly visit the other available lots in the area.
Most other sports cities have complexes that hold their respective fields, stadiums, and arenas. Russell Road could become the designated are for Las Vegas sports and making the owners comfortable during their winter meetings at the Mandalay Bay will be the first step toward turning potential into reality.
