The Fountain Of Youth: BleauLive Theater Adds A Concert Residency Stop On The Strip

Opening at the end of 2023 as the entertainment venue within the $3.7 billion Fontainebleau luxury resort just off the Las Vegas Strip, the BleauLive Theater has found its footing as the latest modern standalone casino venue, meaning not only high profile artist residencies but events of all types in the multi-configurational 4,000-capacity space.

With a splashy New Year’s opening featuring concerts by Post Malone, and sporting a 67-story hotel tower that stands 737 feet high – making it the tallest occupiable building in Nevada – the splashy mega-resort’s opening was still competing against other high-profile happenings in Sin City, such as the F1 Grand Prix taking over the Strip, the opening of the dazzling Sphere and fellow mega-resort Resorts World, as well as other recent newcomers such as Allegiant Stadium and resident NFL team the Las Vegas Raiders.

However, with a full year and a half under its belt, Fontainebleau senior vice president of entertainment Fedor Banuchi says momentum is strong as summer hits in Sin City, with repeat residency engagements coming from Pitbull, Thomas Rhett and others following other major performances, including a serendipitous, long-term residency by ’80s hitmakers Tears For Fears that basically replaced a whole arena tour.

Pollstar: Only in Las Vegas can a $3 billion resort open up and still need to get the word out.

Fedor Banuchi: There was obviously a ramp-up period when we opened, but I think being the newest resort on the Strip with the newest room with all the bells and whistles as far as production capacity, inevitably, people would want to try it out, both artists and fans.

I think we and our partners at Live Nation have done a great job campaigning for the venue and the resort to the entertainment industry. We’ve shown it’s an amazing room and an amazing hotel. We’re lucky as a fully integrated luxurious hotel where everything from the venue, the restaurants, the hotel rooms and the resort itself are all first-class.

Momentum is definitely there. Last year we did 30 or 40 shows, this year we’re going to do close to 70. Once August comes around, we are booked every weekend and with many midweek dates. If you include conventions, we’re booked almost solid. There’s a bunch of residencies that we’re working on for next year and we’re really excited about the future here.

What makes the BleauLive Theater itself stand out?

From a production standpoint, it’s a beautiful theater but the actual stage,  you can really fit in the arena-size production in there. The fly loft is  100 feet, you have giant freight elevators, six docks that are just associated with the theater. We have full production capabilities, we just hosted the American Music Awards. Everything really is kind of arena level and unique for a smaller theater, if that makes sense. 

We’re fortunate to have a great team, with a lot of Las Vegas and entertainment experience in general, and were lucky to be able to really get involved in this design of the facility and from the very beginning make sure the room would work for any size artist you can think of. You’d be surprised at how many places are built and designed by well-meaning people, but when it comes to operating them, “Oh, we didn’t realize that there was this choke point for the loading, or we didn’t realize that we couldn’t do this or that, or this system wasn’t in place.”

We’re also fortunate to have owners who truly believe in and embrace entertainment, and believe that entertainment is vital to and a pillar of our resort. You’d be surprised as well that a lot of our neighbors don’t feel the same way. So it’s a great situation that we’re in right now, and we’re hoping that we
can continue to capitalize on it and continue to offer the best artists you can see.

Live Nation is your exclusive booking partner, and already has a strong presence in Las Vegas.

Correct. They do a lot of stuff in Las Vegas, and it helps that we are the new theater. In some sense, it’s a zero-sum game because they’re not net-new shows – if a show is playing for us, it probably would have played somewhere else before. But Live Nation does a great job of placing artists where they want to be. It helps to have Live Nation on our side, but we also have to do our own push to make sure wherever we can, when people are routing their tour, someone on the artist side of the fence is saying, “Hey we heard about this. Can you tell us about this?”