LAS VEGAS — Super Bowl 58 — the first to be held in Las Vegas — is more than just a championship football game.

It will be an entertainment extravaganza, a centerpiece for championing public service, an opportunity for businesses to make money — and finally a game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers that will attract millions worldwide.

Steve Hill, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which jump-started the formation of the Las Vegas Super Bowl Host Committee, couldn’t be happier with how preparations have gone and with the matchup on the field.

“There’s a lot of star power between the Chiefs and the 49ers,” Hill said minutes after San Francisco punched its ticket to the game. “The Chiefs have a little extra star power right now because Taylor Swift brings a little extra spotlight to Las Vegas.”

Ah, Taylor Swift. Lots of attention has been placed on the pop megastar because of her romance with Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and the fact that she’s performed in Tokyo Saturday night before the game. Offshore betting sites have posted odds on whether she will make it to Las Vegas for the game.

Even though locals and fans attending the game may not catch a glimpse of Swift, studies indicate her presence at Super Bowl 58 could increase television viewership and Las Vegas will catch ripples of the wave. A study by LendingTree said 75% of Americans plan to watch the Super Bowl this year and 24% of Gen Zers and 20% of millennials have an increased interest in football because of Swift’s influence.

An estimated 31% of the Gen Z generation said they would root for the Chiefs because of Swift.

Poynter reported it’s already been proven that Swift’s attendance at games has lifted television ratings. When she attended a Sunday night game in October, the game on NBC drew 27 million viewers — the most for a Sunday game since last season’s Super Bowl. At the time, viewership among teen girls in particular jumped 53% for “Sunday Night Football.”

In addition, ratings among women ages 18-24 went up 24%, while viewership for women over the age of 35 increased 34%, according to Poynter.

Because the game is in Las Vegas, the city will catch some of that love. The fact that so many care about Swift’s itinerary spotlights how much entertainment and sports have converged for Las Vegas.

Entertainment is definitely a hook for the Las Vegas game as well as celebrity appearances in and around the city in the days leading up to the game. A-list performers will be all over the city this week, from performers in ongoing residencies to one-off shows planned at dozens of parties scheduled up and down the resort corridor.

Virtually every musical genre is covered to satisfy the eclectic tastes of the estimated 330,000 fans expected to be in the city spending between $600 million to $800 million, according to local economists’ estimates.

Big business

While the Las Vegas Super Bowl celebration may sound like all fun and games, the event also is boosting business and spotlighting charitable causes across the valley.

More than 200 companies participated in a yearlong program designed to bring Super Bowl-related contract, professional development and networking opportunities to local diverse businesses in Southern Nevada. Workshops helped women-, minority-, LGBTQ- and veteran-owned companies bid for Super Bowl 2024 contracts and jobs ranging from catering and transportation to decor, staging and set construction.

Traditional gaming and tourism businesses are expected to flourish. Hotel room prices haven’t wavered much during the past few weeks with some Strip rates coming down and downtown Las Vegas and off-Strip properties going up to take advantage of demand.

Because hotel rates are maintaining their value and tickets to the game are the highest in history, it’s expected that visitors will be bringing money — gobs of it. The least expensive game ticket on the secondary market is running between $8,000 and $10,000.

“This is by far the most expensive (Super Bowl on record),” said Matt Ferrel, vice president-head of growth at TickPick. “When you look at 2021, when it was at 33% capacity because of COVID, you see an average ticket price around a little over $7,000, and we’re sitting at a little over $10,000 this year.”

Sports wagering

The Super Bowl also is expected to be one of the biggest gambling days of the year, with a debate over whether the state’s 179 sportsbooks will surpass the record handle of $179.8 million from 2022’s game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals, or last year’s $153.2 million in bets on the game between the Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.

Last year, books won $11.3 million on the game, a hold of 7.4%.

As usual, the biggest sportsbooks in the state are counting on bettors wagering heavily on popular Super Bowl proposition bets that feature wagers on everything from who scores the first touchdown to whether heads or tails will come up on the opening coin toss.

Some analysts believe the 2024 game could produce record wagering.

“The fact that the Super Bowl is in Vegas will take what is already a busy Sunday for the city and make it even busier and bigger and better,” said Josh Swissman, founding partner and managing director Las Vegas-based GMA Consulting.

He reasons that because most of the people coming to Las Vegas won’t be attending the game, they’ll see it at other places — casino watch parties, where betting kiosks are usually set up, in sportsbooks and at bars that also have bar top slot machines.

Amanda Belarmino, an assistant professor at UNLV’s William F. Harrah College of Hospitality, isn’t as certain.

“I will be interested to see what happens in terms of gaming win,” she said. “We will have more media than normal and other visitors not coming to gamble, so it may or may not be a record win for the city. It will be particularly interesting to see how the off-Strip hotels and restaurants do. I think downtown will have a record weekend, and I think we may see more trickle into other parts of the city than we did for (Formula One)”