We are happy to announce before the MLB playoffs even begin that we have secured our venues for the 2020 NFBC live events. We are returning to all three venues that we hosted drafts at last year. They include:
** Park MGM in Las Vegas
** Stewart Hotel in New York City
** Sheraton Northbrook in Chicago
The Bellagio in Las Vegas once again has a full facility conference going on in March, so no space was available there. We did return to the Bellagio for our NFFC live events in September and had a fantastic two weeks there, but all the begging fell on deaf ears as no space was available for us March 19-25. We hope to return there for football, but we had to look elsewhere for baseball.
We were fortunate that Park MGM had available space because they are also busy in March. We will be hosting live events there from Thursday, March 19th through Monday, March 23rd. They have a full facility conference there starting on Tuesday, March 24th, so we will reach out to the Aria or the Bellagio for space on Tuesday-Wednesday, March 24-25 for Main Events that we hope to fill in Las Vegas.
But we are happy to be returning to the Park MGM for the majority of our live events. MGM Resorts put $700 million in renovations into the hotel and it seemed like a perfect venue for our live events. The ballroom space was fantastic and we have the same big ballroom (Presidio Room) for Saturday's Main Event. We fit 7 leagues into that room and could have fit at least one more in if needed. Let's do that this year. There is also nice space outside the ballrooms for folks to hang out at and they remodeled the sports book/sports bar downstairs and it is much more convenient to watch games in now.
We will have the ballrooms across from the Presidio ballroom on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, however, I think we have ballrooms on the first floor on Thursday and Friday. The space is nice, but we'll just have to direct you to the right space early in the weekend.
We also have a room block that will be available shortly. We have rooms available from Monday, March 16th if you plan on coming in early for March Madness through Friday, March 27th. The prices range from $59 to a high of $169, which is great when you consider that this is the First Weekend of March Madness. We have a limited amount of rooms, so don't delay if you want to stay at the host site. Again, I'll post when we have the Passkey for reserving rooms, but hopefully it will be soon.
We are also returning to the Stewart Hotel in New York City, which is in an ideal location. The Big East Tournament will likely be at Madison Square Garden the weekend of March 13-15, so the area will be hopping. We will see if Tout Wars would like to share the same locale as that worked well for a lot of industry veterans who did Tout and NFBC that weekend. The space is available if Tout Wars wants to return.
The schedule is the same for New York City, but we'll look at the times a little closer, especially on Sunday. I think we can push the start time back an hour there. The same contests will be available on the same dates and we'll have some fun on Friday the 13th!!
Tom and I already have our flights booked for New York City and we'll co-host that baby again with Darik joining us in Las Vegas the next weekend.We have the Willow Room at the Sheraton Northbrook for the Chicago live events and Dean Peterson will again host those. Dean is heading to the Arizona Fall League next week and will step in for me to host the AFL drafts out there. We will host the Auction Championship on Friday at 4 pm CT on the 13th and will host the Main Event at noon on Saturday the 14th. I'm probably done trying to get a second event there after the Main, so let's get the Main full and be done.
There you go: Three familiar venues and we're booked and ready to go already. NFBC 2020 will be the 17th season of the National Fantasy Baseball Championship and we are convinced it will be our biggest and best ever. Let The Games Begin!!!
Thanks everyone and we'll see you soon.
