Sam Boyd Stadium

Sam Boyd Stadium is a football stadium located in Whitney, Nevada, an unincorporated community in the Las Vegas Valley; the mailing address of the stadium is "Las Vegas". The stadium is named after Sam Boyd, a major figure in the hotel/casino industry in Las Vegas. The stadium consists of an uncovered horseshoe-shaped single-decked bowl. Temporary seating is occasionally erected in the open north end zone as needed. The stadium is the home of the UNLV football team and the Las Vegas Locomotives of the United Football League, the annual Maaco Bowl Las Vegas each December, and was the former home of the CFL's Las Vegas Posse and the XFL's Las Vegas Outlaws. The Stadium is also used for high school football championship games, and at times regular-season high school games for Bishop Gorman High School. The final race of the Monster Energy Supercross series is located here every year. Since 2010, it has hosted the USA Sevens leg of the annual IRB Sevens World Series in the sevens version of rugby union.

History
The stadium was completed in 1971 at a cost of $3.5 million. It was originally known as Las Vegas Stadium. The name was changed to the Las Vegas Silver Bowl in 1978 and then Sam Boyd Silver Bowl in 1984 and finally in April 1994 to Sam Boyd Stadium. The seating capacity was 15,000 from 1971 until 1977. The capacity was raised to 32,000 in 1978 and then to 36,800 in 1999. Except from 1999 to 2002 the stadium has had an artificial turf surface.

College football
Since December 18, 1992, the stadium has been the site of the annual Maaco Bowl Las Vegas, which had been formerly named the Las Vegas Bowl. In recent years, the game has been very well attended. In 2005, the football team from Brigham Young University made its first postseason appearance since 2001. Excited BYU fans over-filled the stadium; the announced attendance for the 2005 game was a record 40,053 people. The following season, BYU returned to the Las Vegas Bowl as a nationally-ranked team. Additional seating was arranged at Sam Boyd Stadium for the 2006 game; the resulting attendance of 44,615 was the largest crowd to watch a team sports event in the history of the state of Nevada. In 2007, BYU made its third straight appearance in the Las Vegas Bowl; attendance was 40,712. In 2008, BYU made its fourth straight appearance ranked as the #16 team in the nation and faced off against the Arizona Wildcats who made their first bowl appearance since 1998. Arizona won the contest, 31-21, and a record 40,047 people attended the game which featured David Hasselhoff singing the national anthem.

Sam Boyd Stadium was also the site of all three Western Athletic Conference title football games (1996–1998).