"They were still nailing the carpet down," the Nugget's marketing manager, Amy Chasey, said while she flitted around the new addition, where a line formed outside a bathroom even as a worker was installing a toilet.

The workers had good reason to rush.

National Finals Rodeo has grown from a way to fill hotel rooms during the lull between Thanksgiving and Christmas to an event worth nearly $53 million in spending at businesses that rope in the cowboys.

The rodeo, along with today's welterweight title fight featuring Floyd Mayweather Jr., might make this the liveliest Las Vegas weekend before New Year's partying revs up.

There are no citywide occupancy projections for the weekend. But room rates indicate demand is high, especially compared with next weekend's rates, when hotels will be lowering prices dramatically to attract guests.

Rooms in the Riviera are $129 per night this weekend, compared with $69 next weekend, according to the Web site www.i4Vegas.com. The site sold out of rooms for Friday at the Golden Nugget, and customers were paying $189 for a room tonight.

Next Saturday, the site has rooms at the Golden Nugget for $109.

"For December, it is shaping up to be a pretty good weekend," i4Vegas CEO Michael Zalatel said.

Indeed.

The Golden Nugget expansion wasn't open five minutes Thursday before folks in Western wear filled seats at a temporary Western bar that resembles Gilley's, a former cowboy haunt in the bygone New Frontier.

In the minutes before the opening, Golden Nugget workers were stepping over the rope line carrying beer taps, buckets of lime slices, tools and mops.

Chasey said the Nugget's marketing department made signs directing customers to an older part of the hotel in case the new area wasn't completed in time. The signs weren't needed.

"This is much better," Chasey said, even though workers didn't manage to open a new nightclub and restaurant before the weekend began.

Workers at the Golden Nugget weren't the only ones scrambling to accommodate the estimated 42,000 out-of-town visitors for the rodeo.

South Point Casino workers hustled in recent weeks to make sure two new bars and two new restaurants were open in time for the 10-day rodeo.

South Point owner Michael Gaughan also managed to wrangle the rodeo awards ceremony, called the Montana Silversmiths Go-Round Buckle Presentations, from its longtime home at the Gold Coast, an off-Strip casino Gaughan sold to Boyd Gaming.

"We've been planning now for the past year to get everything set," said South Point public relations director Courtney Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald said the focus on rodeo is paying off for the 2-year-old South Point, located at the far southern end of Las Vegas Boulevard, miles from the core of the Strip.

"I have never seen the casino more crowded than it was last night," she said Friday.

"There wasn't a single seat open for anybody to play a table game. It was three-deep around the bars."

Casinos aren't the only ones chasing cowboy cash.

Western stores such as Cowtown Boots on East Flamingo Road beefed up inventory and cut prices to keep the doors swinging.

Cowtown manager Mark Akers said he was pleasantly surprised by the early returns.

"When they come, it is herds," he said, sizing up his opening-day results. "I truly expected less sales this year the way things have gone the past eight months with the economy."

Akers said competition for rodeo customers has intensified over the years. In addition to the Cowboy Christmas show at the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Western gift events have cropped up around town.

"Nowadays, everybody is getting in on the action," Akers said.

Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@reviewjournal.com or (702) 477-3861.