Never say never, but this looks like a ticket that’s all but impossible to land.
For starters, although the Thomas & Mack arena on the campus of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas holds 18,000, many of the seats will go unused. Of the available seats, most will be taken up by the hordes of invited media that will be attending (and that’s no easy play either, as you’ll see below). Some of the tickets go to the debate participants to distribute to their vast entourages and the rest are controlled by the college. (In an article in the LV Review-Journal today, John Katsilometes writes that more than 7,000 media credentials have been issued and about 100 tickets will be distributed to students via a lottery). Left out of the equation completely is the general public.
That said, as is the way in Vegas, there’s a path in for the well-connected -- casino owners, big-time donors, high-ranking politicos, and such (we’re gonna go out on a limb and predict that Steve Wynn will be there). But there’s no chance at all of finding even high-priced tickets on the street and that makes total sense, given the security consideration. Think about it: Even if tickets were available, there’s no way they’d be put in the hands of scalpers, where just anyone off the street could gain admission. Here’s some confirmation on that.
Last week, Anthony Curtis and HP author Annie Duke were contacted by the Washington Post to be part of a panel of experts the newspaper was assembling to analyze the candidates’ performances. (Trust us, A.C. wasn’t invited for his political acumen, but rather for his experience as a gambler in reading situations and opponents, which the Post thought would be interesting, given that the debate is in Las Vegas.) Anthony was stoked.
"Will we be in the debate hall?"
"Are you kidding? That place is under total lockdown. We’ll be in a room at MGM, watching on TV like everyone else."
And that’s the Washington Post, folks. (In the end, they decided to go with an all-female panel and Annie had a prior commitment in Philadelphia. Accordingly, there’ll be no LVA representation this time.)
So, no. There’s no way to crash this party. There may be some last-second casino-promo tie-ins –- e.g., Rampart held a watch party for debate #2 –- but we haven’t heard of anything yet (we’ll post in "Today’s News" if we do).
Regardless, this is an absolutely huge event for Las Vegas. According to media accounts, the price tag for hosting the debate has doubled from original estimates to $8 million (the majority of the funds are used for security and police involvement), but only the Olympics and the Super Bowl attract more viewers than a presidential debate, and this one might surpass those, bringing in upwards of $100 million in publicity value to the city.
Finally, in an interesting aside, the offshore sports books are having a field day, hanging more props on the debates than anything but the Super Bowl, with YES/NO bets on the utterance of dozens of words and phrases, including "subpoena," "Wikileaks," "liar," "crooked Hillary," and "tiny hands." Check "Today’s News" tomorrow for a list of props that you can listen for.
As we head in, Hillary Clinton is a -630 favorite to win the presidency at offshore books. Donald Trump is +475.
