Las Vegas Festival Grounds is a 33acre open-air venue located on the Las Vegas Strip, north of the MGM-owned Circus Circus Hotel and Casino in Winchester, Nevada.HistoryFrom 1941 to 1960 the El Rancho Vegas once occupied the land.The venue was developed by MGM Resorts International, Cirque du Soleil, and Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Companies, primarily to serve as the site of the biannual music festival Rock in Rio USA, which held its inaugural edition in 2015. MGM has positioned the grounds as a site for festivals, concerts, and sporting events (such as boxing, mixed martial arts, and soccer) as a compliment to its other venues in the area.The site was initially referred to as the City of Rock, named after its equivalent in Rio de Janeiro for the Brazilian version of the Rock in Rio festival. In October 2015, the MGM Resorts branding was dropped and the site was renamed to simply Las Vegas Festival Grounds. The renaming was part of an effort to downplay MGM's role in the venue to improve its marketability for third-party events, and to brand the site as being part of Las Vegas's "community".