That, we regret, is top-secret information, apparently. We tackled the very same query back in 2007 when some properties, including what was then the Las Vegas Hilton, explained that it was against company policy to reveal any such statistics. In other instances, our inquiries were either consistently ignored, or else we were teased with the promise of information that was never forthcoming. Still, back then we did manage to elicit data from a number of helpful properties, which we'll reproduce below, in the absence this time around of any up-to-date data being forthcoming from a single casino, with one lone exception.
So, please, raise your glasses, bottles, and steins to Mandalay Bay, who kindly related that in the month of December, 2012, which was a slow month, they sold 185,000 beers (we're not sure if that's just bottles, or if it also includes draft sales, but we're just grateful they shared any information at all).
As far as those few who were helpful back in 2007 are concerned (and to whom we extend our heartfelt thanks, once again), it was still tough getting comprehensive or specific information, since some venues had liquor figures, but not beer, while others knew in terms of cost but not of volume, and so on. But here, for what it's worth, is what we were told back then.
That was the sum total of information we were able to glean when this question ran, but do have one more set of stats to share on the beer front, however, which stemmed from the infamous Ricky Hatton vs. Floyd Mayweather fight that took place on Dec. 8 and generated a different, but related, QoD. The match gained notoriety not for what happened in the ring, but as a result of the shameful behavior of a large contingent of the English fans who descended on Las Vegas that weekend, including booing their host country's national anthem.
The QoD we received was in connection with the events that transpired after the fight, during which a brave but utterly outclassed Hatton was knocked out in the 10th round by the unstoppable Mayweather, and was questioning what was presumed to be an urban myth, namely that the Brits. had literally drunk the MGM Grand dry that night.
We managed to speak with a very helpful beverage manager at the property, who willingly shared the facts, which actually weren't too far from what our inquirer had heard. While the MGM Grand wasn't actually drunk dry, its main warehouse was, necessitating emergency reserves of beer having to be brought in -- not from the local 7-Eleven, as the rumor had it, but from an on-site auxiliary warehouse.
It was at this juncture we finally learned what we'd been unable to ascertain a couple of months prior, namely that on an average Saturday night, the massive green casino at the south end of the Strip goes though approximately 500 cases of beer (about ten times that of Bellagio, in other words).
On that particular fateful Saturday in 2007, however, the resort's clientele drank their way through no less than 4,000 cases of beer -- and that's in spite of the fact that some bars, for the first and only time in the history of Las Vegas (to our knowledge), were actually closed down, either due to the unruliness of the Brits or the lack of beer, or a combination of the two (accounts differ). Whatever the reason, it was certainly not one of the current (British) writer's prouder moments.
So, there's the lowdown, or what little of it we were able to ascertain, regarding casino beer consumption. Now, if you'd asked us about how many eggs they get through, as opposed to the evidently sensitive subject of alcohol (drinking? in Las Vegas? surely not!), now that would have been a whole different story ... but you didn't.
