We have secured the Kensington and Richmond ballrooms on the First Floor of the Park MGM Convention Center for Thursday through Sunday Live Events. We are also adding the Hyde ballrooms on Saturday for the Main Events, giving us eight nice ballrooms for Saturday morning's Main Event leagues. I'm working on a private room for Wednesday, March 19th and Monday-Tuesday March 24-25.
The Kensington and Richmond ballrooms are each nicely sized for our auctions and private leagues each day. There are three Kensington and three Richmond ballrooms and two Hyde ballrooms. The only drawback -- and it is a big one in my opinion -- is that there's a wall between Kensington and Richmond, plus Hyde is across the hall. We will have three open leagues in both of those ballrooms and two in Hyde without a big grand stage for our Champions of Champions introductions. We'll figure something out for that on Saturday morning, but unfortunately we all won't be in one big ballroom like we were at the Mirage or at the Bellagio. I will see if I can get that big ballroom in 2026, but right now it's already taken, along with the Second Floor Griffith ballrooms. But for everything else, we'll have great space and a nice hallway/lobby for players to hang out in.
We will also have six ballrooms available on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and we plan on getting creative to make good use of each of them during that time. In football, we introduced Live $350 Rotowire Online Championship drafts to get more people to attend our live events and it was a huge hit. We may offer a few of those this year in baseball. And we are kicking around some ideas when it comes to a "Radio Row" idea that Geoff threw out. Could we offer a podcasting room and host several live podcasts from our veteran players? It has good potential -- especially with the debut CLQ Championship being held this year on Friday night -- so stay tuned as we flush out some new ideas to bring exposure to the live NFBC events. But I like how this is done at the Arizona Fall League Symposium and I could see us hosting several podcasts in one or two rooms that weekend.
Now I just want to explain how we came to pick Park MGM in Las Vegas this year. As most of you know, we have hosted NFBC live events in Las Vegas for 21 years now and we've been at a number of different hotels. Not by our choosing, mind you, as each time we left a hotel it was because of the hotel either closing or not wanting us there anymore!!!
We were at the Bellagio from 2010 to really 2022, but after a change in management there we moved to the Mirage in 2023 and 2024.The Mirage was bought by Hard Rock Casino in 2022 and has since shut down for three years as they remodel everything about the hotel. They will open in March of 2027. When I learned about this in April, I immediately reached out to several hotels in Las Vegas and even flew there in late June to meet with Caesar's officials. My goal was to stay on the Strip and to find a hotel that we could hopefully stay at for multiple years. I stayed at Paris and got the tour of multiple Caesar's hotels. Caesars and Paris were already fully booked for March, so the options were the Horseshoe (Bally's), Planet Hollywood and Flamingo. None of those were appealing, although they tried hard to get me to consider Horseshoe (just not ideal for what we like to do in the convention space).
I did reach out to a new contact at the Bellagio and unfortunately they also were fully booked for March. We were also unsuccessful after talking with the Wynn and Venetian officials. Losing the Mirage's Convention Center makes all of those top hotel's convention centers extremely appealing and it's obvious that other conventions are booking well in advance of one year out. Sorry, but we tried.
The deal with Park MGM works from a convention standpoint and they offered a room block that I think our players will like. It's affordable and many of you have stayed there either in 2019 or recently through the NFFC. They have several appealing dining choices and a sportsbook bar that is easy to hang out at. They have a Center Bar that we can also take over late at night!!!
The combination of the ballroom space and the affordable room block, plus the location on the Strip, was appealing to me.I did meet with Aria officials while I was there last month and they had perfect space for us. The Aria is a walk right over from Park MGM and is a fantastic hotel with great dining and drinking establishments, and really one of the biggest convention centers on the Strip. We have hosted some events there in the past and my sales rep was extremely nice. The space they had was ideal, but they were demanding a bigger room block and room prices were $450 a night on Friday and Saturday and $300+ much of the rest of the week. That doesn't include the $50 Resort Fee per day or taxes. It was a big room block to guarantee and by the end of the week they had already sold the space. It's definitely a hotel I would consider going forward, but I'd need to guarantee $100,000+ in room reservations, which I think is always going to be tough. We can discuss about 2026 over beers!!!
The good news is that we have a great hotel on the Strip during the First Weekend of March Madness and we hope you stay with us. Room prices are going to be $139 every night from Wednesday through the following Thursday (March 19-27), except for Friday and Saturday being $329 per night. Getting to the Convention Center from your hotel room is extremely easy and again the rooms are very affordable for this time of year. Join us for our 22nd year of the NFBC at Park MGM and we'll do everything we can to keep you busy for 7 drafting days. We're working on the Schedule of Events now and will have the new site unveiled right after the World Series.
I'll get the link to hotel reservations live soon and secure your rooms while you can because we have limited rooms each day. I didn't go overboard in securing room nights, so jump on these prices while they're still there and join us at Park MGM. See ya there in March.