Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas:  Fall Business Meetings Day One

This week, Brooklyn Cyclones Assistant General Manager Billy Harner will be sharing a daily blog entry from the road, as members of the front office staff attend the Major League Baseball Fall Business Meetings at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, NV.

What happens in Vegas won’t be staying in Vegas this week as I’ll be providing a daily update from the MLB Fall Business Meetings.

Now I know what you’re probably thinking -- what the hell are the Major League Baseball Fall Business Meetings? Well, to be honest I have no idea. It’s the first time that teams from Minor League Baseball have been invited to attend. My guess is that it will be similar to something called the MiLB Promotional Seminar that used to be held each fall – ya know, before any of us knew what Covid-19 was. Since 2020 all of these large seminar-type events have been scaled back, but this seems to be more like “business as usual.”

Typically, these events are a great setting for brainstorming and finding new ideas that we can try to implement into the fan experience at Maimonides Park.

We got started bright and early this morning with our flight from JFK taking off at 6:45 AM. The bright side of the early morning wakeup call was the lack of traffic on the Belt Parkway. The downside? Feeling like a zombie after a six-hour flight with a three hour time difference.

After catching an UBER from the airport to the MGM, the first thing you notice is the GINORMOUS size of this place. It’s about a 10-minute walk from the lobby to the Conference Center with all sorts of distractions along the way – stuff like slot machines, a race car (more on that later), Jabbawockeez, David Copperfield, Johnny Rockets, three pools, an Iron Chef’s restaurant, even a Nathan’s Famous right in the hotel. (nothing like a taste of home when you’re on the road).

After checking in and getting our credentials for the week, we did a little exploring of the area and apparently there is a Formula 1 Race coming here in a few weeks and the preparations are well under way. The famous fountains outside the Bellagio are gone and replaced by what looks like some sort of luxury suites for viewing the race. The Venetian – which usually has gondolas right in front – now has a dried-up pool with construction of a viewing grandstand underway. This race is gonna be something.

But enough about racing. Back to baseball. Monday night is the Welcome Reception for all MiLB Clubs, which I am actually excited about because it’s the first time I’ll be able to meet people from the other teams in the South Atlantic League. Like I mentioned earlier, this is the first time we’ve been to an event like this with other clubs since before the pandemic, so I’ve never met people a lot of folks from the other team in a non-zoom setting. So that’s exciting. Back when we were in the short-season New York-Penn League, one of my favorite things about the league was how close all the teams were and the friendships we developed with the other front office staffs. So hopefully this week will be a step in that direction,

To close out chapter one of these blogs, here are some rapid-fire thoughts on Day One so far:

• Monday Night Football kicking off at 5:00 PM is really REALLY weird. I’m usually a lights out, sleep time, guy when the game ends…but here it will be 8:00 and I don’t think that’s gonna fly.
• The technology in Las Vegas is bananas. As I’m sitting and typing this in my room, I can see the Vegas Strip outside my window. The Cosmopolitan hotel has a LED Screen on the roof that has blinking eyeballs that seemingly watch me everywhere I move. Directly next to that is the Aria which has a 25-story screen showing upcoming shows like Bruno Mars. The screen is so clear I can almost hear 24-karat magic when I look at it. Plus, I can see The Sphere – which currently has a pattern on it that looks like the Heart of Tafiti (I have four kids under nine, so most of my references will be Disney related). This place is wild.
• So in addition to their being hundreds, of people here for the MLB Business Meetings, there are also hundreds of fans from Kansas State, Georgia, Oregon and USC who kick off the Men’s College Basketball season tonight at T-Mobile Arena across the street, not to mention all the fans of LSU and Colorado’s women’s hoops teams that are playing here as well. It’s wild how many people are here for various things on a random Monday afternoon in November.

That’s all for now. Check back tomorrow for updates on our first day of actual meetings and seminars. Hope to be able to share some awesome ideas…

Billy H.