Senior Vice President of Finance, Treasury & Investor Relations, Caesars Entertainment
Search every verified Brian Agnew interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Brian Agnew, Senior Vice President of Finance, Treasury & Investor Relations at Caesars Entertainment, was featured in a September 2024 interview discussing the growth and impact of Las Vegas residencies. Agnew stated that professional sports in Las Vegas have been "great for the city," noting that the city offers world-class facilities and additional experiences such as residencies. He described the modern residency as originating in 2003 with the creation of the Coliseum for Celine Dion's show "A New Day," calling it a "big risk" to build a venue for an artist at the peak of their career and fill it multiple nights a week. Agnew noted that the concept was "unproven" at the time, as the city was smaller and lacked a precedent for such residencies. He contrasted this with the present day, where artists in the prime of their careers seek to perform residencies, and highlighted the intimate access these venues provide, stating that even from the back row, audience members are only 150 feet from the performer.
“Sports in Las Vegas has been great for the city; if you're going to see your team on the road, there's nowhere better in the country to see it than Las Vegas because one the facilities are world class but then there's so many other experiences you can bolt on to it and residencies are certainly a part of that.”
“The modern residency was born in 2003 with the creation of the Coliseum for Celine Dion and her show A New Day; it was a big risk to take an artist at the peak of their career, build a venue unique for them so that guests can see and experience them in venues that they can't see anywhere else.”
“It was risky because it had never been done to build a facility of this size to pay for an artist at the peak of their career and then to be able to fill the venue three or four nights a week for many many weekends a year; it had never been done, it was unproven.”
“If you go back to 2003 the city wasn't as big as what it was, you didn't have this precedence of residencies being a success; you had Celine having to fill at the time five nights a week, so think about filling a Tuesday, a Wednesday, a Thursday.”
Sean McBurney, the regional president for Caesars Entertainment in Las Vegas, discusses the big business of residencies.
Sign in to search the full transcript archive, filter by topic, and access every quote from Brian Agnew.