One of the hottest casinos on the Las Vegas Strip is—believe it or not—Casino Royale. How the humble have risen! The oft-mocked, independent joint was favored by a surprising amount of Sin City customers surveyed by Truist Securities. Out of all the places to stay, 4% said the Margaret Elardi-owned gambling den was their favorite. That’s as many as were partial to Harrah’s Las Vegas, that Strip monument to Stalinist architecture. It also put Casino Royale up there with Bellagio (the choice of 6%) and Caesars Palace (7%), but well behind MGM Grand (11%). Considering that two of those properties are synonymous with price-gouging and bad customer service, you have to wonder if Vegas tourists are masochistic by nature.
It’s no surprise that Caesars is rebranding The Cromwell in the tacky image of Lisa Vanderpump: It was far and away the least-popular property in the survey. Others in the Bottom 10 were (in descending order) Wynn Encore, The Rio (currently experiencing traumatic executive upheaval), Excalibur, Paris-Las Vegas, The Strat, Sahara, Horseshoe Las Vegas, relatively new Fontainebleau Las Vegas (uh-oh) and The Linq, a casino with all the charm of a pententiary.
But the bigger takeaway from the Survey Monkeys poll was that Big Gaming better not be reading it. Why? Because the resounding verdict of the 800 consumers surveyed was, “Yes, please rip me off.” It’s a license to gouge and we have nobody to blame but ourselves, dear readers. Understandably, 88% of those surveyed had a positive view of new all-inclusive hotel packages. But how does one explain the 74% who think Sin City is still a bargain destination? For that matter, what about the two-thirds who think Vegas affordability has improved in recent years? Where have they been staying?
38% of those polled said their Vegas perception was much improve, 26% said it was slightly better, 27% chose “About the same,” 7% said it was “Slightly worse” and 1% chose “Much worse.” Good grief! If that’s the message you’re putting out to the high pajandrums of the casino industry, what makes you expect things actually will improve? Were we in the C-Suite at, oh, MGM or Caesars, we’d read these results and either keep doing the same-old same old or probably gouge people even harder. In other words, you’re saying you are hunky-dory with $25 room-service cutlery and heavily overpriced candy bars.
As Truist analyst Barry Jonas wrote, “Given the recent cycle of negative newsflow on Las Vegas value, this was surprising to us.” You and us both, Barry. But it’s a big vote of confidence for casino ripoff artists, to say nothing of mega-bosses Bill Hornbuckle, Tom Reeg and others of their ilk. Entertainment scored the best for value (56% said it was excellent and 35% said it was good). The most-sensitive price-pressure points were F&B and hotel rooms, not surprisingly. Only 25% cited higher table minimums or that ultimate Vegas ripoff, transportation.
If there was any sign of trouble on the horizon, it came in answer to a question about value. While a complacent 56% said “Las Vegas offers a good value for what I pay,” 37% said “Prices are rising and value is eroding,” while another 7% said prices were rising and they no longer perceived value. Also, while 52% weren’t replacing their Vegas vacation with a visit to a regional casino, the remaining 48% were, to varying degrees. At least high gas prices weren’t deterring Vegas visitors from coming, by their own account, so make of that what you will.
We lived in Sin City for 17 mostly rewarding years. At the beginning, it was definitely a bargain Mecca. But by the end, the handwriting was on the wall that Joe Average consumers weren’t welcome. Then came the Great Post-Pandemic Gouge and it was farewell, pricing sanity. The way Big Gaming does business on the Strip, although they can’t take it with them, they sure act as though they intend to do just that.
Pity the poor American Gaming Association. It suffered two quick body blows this week, both administered by a certain Donald Trump. Big Gaming thought it had played a winning hand in the 2024 election but has been rewarded (tax cuts aside) by one diss after another from the present administration. Legacy media has missed the story but Judd Legum of Popular Information did not: POTUS has repeatedly used his bully pulpit to pimp for Stake, an offshore Internet casino site. Let’s leave aside the dismaying spectacle of the most powerful man in the world descending to the level of a racetrack tout. This is a big “Fuck you!” to the legacy gaming industry. Stake and others of its kind are unlicensed, unregulated and unanswerable to anyone. Put bluntly, if you play on a site like Stake and win money—but the site doesn’t want to pay—you’re shit out of luck, buster. There’s no redress of grievances.
In public-policy terms, this terminates any hope that the AGA had of the Department of Justice going after offshore casinos. Merrick Garland didn’t do squat, neither did Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche just had a presidential warning shot fired across his bow. However, Stake has provided a roadmap for other Internet gambling providers (legal and otherwise) to gain White House favor. Its Truth Social megaphone was bought with a $1 million contribution to MAGA Inc. by Stake co-founder Bijan Tehrani, currently cooling his heels in Australia. We have the receipt, literally:
Stake may be blocked in 17 U.S. states but it’s got a pitchman at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue now. Companies like BetMGM or Flutter Entertainment, and other law-abiding iGaming providers no longer need to ask what they need to do for such sweetheart treatment. The bidding starts at $1 million.
The other screw-you coming from the White House was also delivered by way of Truth Social and seemed to come in direct response to AGA President Bill Miller calling Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig “a joke.” (Which he is.) In characteristically bombastic fashion, Trump bloviated that “It is “critically important that the CFTC’s exclusive authority over prediction markets is maintained.” Why? Because Selig is “setting the Gold Standard” on event contracts. (More like no standard whatsoever, but there you have it.)
Never mind that prediction markets are being banned everywhere from Spain and the Netherlands to New Zealand and Indonesia—quite a coalition—Trump bellowed that “other countries are after this new form of financial market, and we want to remain at the top.” Yes, a nation where people bet on the death of Nancy Guthrie and the possibility someone will drop The Big One on Iran. What a fine aspiration. Exiting with an unintentional laugh line, Trump claimed that the wormy Selig, who apparently perjured himself before Congress, is “respected by all.” HA! Tell us another one.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D, above) was duly unimpressed. He made the on-point observation that Trump “wants to make sure states like ours can’t regulate prediction markets so his family and administration can keep profiting.” We break with Pritzker on his counterproductive tax policies but we’re behind him on this one. As for the AGA, having joined with legacy operators to draw a line in the sand against prediction markets, it finds itself in quite a pickle. State regulators have made it abundantly clear that gambling companies that go into event contracts could lose their (highly valuable) licenses. This whole kerfuffle is heading for a battle royal before SCOTUS, a brawl that should make the Fourth of July UFC cage match at the White House look like a gentlemanly disagreement.
It’s clear that there’s no love lost between Trump, who flunked out of the casino industry (four bankruptcies, two Atlantic City casinos demolished and two more rebranded under new ownership) and Big Gaming. At least not on the presidential side of the dispute. The question is, will the industry continue to bend over and grab its ankles or will it fight back? We’re betting on the former.
Speaking of fighting, at least somebody is taking the threat posed by offshore books seriously. That would be Hawaii Sen. Ben Schatz (D). He’s backing a bill that would empower the Federal Trade Commission to go after offshore gambling sites. If passed it would give the FTC “the authority to investigate and penalize companies that knowingly facilitate illegal offshore gambling.” In Schatz’s own words, “if you empower the FTC to go after the payment processors, then they would have a perfect right to go and say, ‘You may not work with these offshore shops if they are not complying with federal law having to do with micro prop bets.’” The senator’s concern, as stated, is proposition betting and the discouragement thereof, mainly to cut down on match-fixing. But someone is finally doing something about offshore betting and, if the DOJ is going to have its thumb up its butt on the issue, Schatz should be encouraged.
Depressingly, many of his fellow lawmakers are openly on the take. They include senatorial aspirant Rep. Angie Craig (D), along with Sen. Kristin Gillibrand (D), Rep. Jim Jordan (R) and Rep. Brian Steil (R), all of whom are raking in prediction-market cash. Ironically, three come from states that are trying to extirpate those sleazy ‘event contracts’ from the premises. It’s not quite risen to the level of a scandal … yet. If it does, Democrats will face the worst of it and deservedly so. It’s hard to strike a high, moral tone when you’re accepting money from douchebags like Tarek Mansour and his fellow, pimply faced tech bros, who know no morality whatsoever. (Craig’s tribal constituents will be singularly unamused, whilst Rep. Kristen McDonald [D] won’t let her employees bet in the prediction markets … but is happy to take the markets’ filthy lucre.) For shame.
Uff da! That’s enough for today, although there’s plenty of other (comparably sleazy) news out there. We’ll do our best to keep you up to date.