Question of the Day - 09 May 2023

Sport of Kings was a two-story race and sports book at the corner of Paradise Road and Convention Center Drive across from the Convention Center.

The building went up in 1973-1974, originally planned to open as the DeVille Casino, but the owners couldn't get a gaming license. After that, it stood vacant for many years. Then, the two British bookmaker brothers who conceived of Sport of Kings were denied gambling licenses, so the operation had to go public to raise funds. 

Sport of Kings spent a fair amount of money renovating the building and it was, as we recall, quite elegant, with expensive finishes and 13-inch TV monitors, each featuring 25 channels, situated at each race-book seat. The upper floor was reserved for high rollers, offering an extensive microfiche library of Daily Racing Form charts, a video-replay center, and the fancy Turf Club restaurant.

Unfortunately, the business had fallen short in its quest for funding and with the investment in infrastructure and amenities, when it opened in October 1993, Sport of Kings was undercapitalized, a bad start for any business, but especially a bookmaking one. 

In addition, one big attraction for horse bettors was the fixed-odds wagering on select races every day, rather than the pari-mutuel standard common to horse-race gambling; bettors could play the horses at a designated price, as they might with English bookmakers without having to worry about the fluctuations of the tote board. Second, the maximum bets Sport of Kings booked were very generous, if there were maximums at all. 

The whole concept was seriously flawed from the outset, a not-uncommon occurrence when outsiders naively assume that they can 1) buck the procedures of established Las Vegas operators; and 2) pick the pockets of the smart money. Before Sport of Kings even opened, the manager of one of the city's major race books said, "I guarantee they'll wind up doing business like all the rest of us." And no less a local light than oddsmaker Roxy Roxborough declared, "If the best strategy for a bookmaker is to take all the bets, don't you think someone would have thought of it before now?"

Of course, because it was a standalone book, it didn't have the fallback position of the sure-fire moneymakers of slot machines, crap tables, and hotel rooms. 

In short, Sport of Kings was low-hanging fruit for the local sharps, who started cashing tickets like there was no tomorrow. Five-figure losses on single horses weren't uncommon and bettors jumped on the inevitable mistakes, such as posting a horse at 30-1 that should've gone off at 4-1. It was reported at the time that the book lost $1 million in the first month and not just on race bets, but also on uninformed football lines (it was the middle of the season) and way too generous futures odds. 

To add insult to injuty, Sport of Kings attracted some staff who also knew ripe pickings when they saw them and the scuttlebutt at the time was that the book wasn't losing only to the wiseguys, but also to insiders. 

Ultimately, Sport of Kings did revert to the pari-mutuel way of doing horse-race business, like "all the rest of" the Vegas books, as predicted early on. But then it was no different than all the casino race books, so the customer base evaporated. 

We couldn't find an exact date that Sport of Kings went out of business, but as we recall, it lasted for barely a year. We do know that the next business to occupy the building was the Beach, a popular nightclub that opened in 1995 and sustained a good long run (in terms of the standard for the building) of nearly a decade, closing just before Christmas 2006. 

To see a 30-second ad for Sport of Kings from the early optimistic days, click here. 

Coincidentally, the Nevada Gaming Control Board last week approved yet another temporary gaming license at the site of The Beach and Sport of Kings. Marriott, which owns the land, wants to maintain the property's non-restricted gaming license. It has put up a so-called Trailer Station every 18 months or so since it bought the acreage; Marriott operates around 1,000 rooms at five hotels in the vicinity and one day might consolidate them and include a casino or lease or sell the land to a casino company.