Swept up in a swarm of concertgoers inching along a pedestrian bridge out of Sphere Las Vegas, there was nothing to do but join in the rollicking “I Want It That Way” singalong. The minute that opening night of the Backstreet Boys’ Into the Millennium spectacle ended, it was like Sphere unleashed a roaring wave of white-outfitted fans, which gathered speed and decibels before crashing into The Venetian Resort, where “Larger Than Life” blared across the casino and two pals singing BSB outside the restrooms promptly evolved into a crowd of hundreds.

“Vegas is dying,” TikTokers meanwhile declared as reports showed the town’s biggest visitor decline since the pandemic. “Vegas is dead,” others insisted on Instagram.

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“Well,” I thought, while riding the wave of white back to The Venetian. “If Vegas is dead, at least it’s spawned my kind of ‘90s heaven. There’s even a heavenly dress code.”

“It was funny seeing those, ‘Vegas is dead,’ posts because we went, ‘Did you film that at 4:30 a.m.? That’s not the Vegas we’re seeing,’” says Kate Wik, chief marketing officer at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. “There was sensationalization because shock-and-awe headlines drive engagement.”

“Those posts are designed to spark conversation,” agrees Andi Naka, a local blogger. “They start with a question like, ‘Is Las Vegas dead?’ because it gets people interacting with the content, but it’s an exaggeration.”

Visitor numbers dropped by 7.5 percent from 2024 to 2025, but the city still welcomed 38.5 million people. When I returned weeks later for another trip up the BSB stairway to Sphereven, Vegas still didn’t feel dead. Nor did it feel dead when I danced “Step by Step” into New Kids on the Block’s “The Right Stuff” residency over at Park MGM in June, or stayed out until “3AM” after Matchbox Twenty frontman Rob Thomas’ Fontainebleau Las Vegas gig in September.

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