The house that the late Kerry Packer built continues to go from bad to worse to downright awful under the all-thumbs leadership of heir James Packer. During the first half of this year Crown Resorts lost $191 million (on a 33% revenue decline), not to mention getting its Sydney casino license shelved, sparking a flurry of other investigations. Now Oaktree Capital is abandoning its $2.3 billion attempt to buy out Packer’s share, which is a dire turn of events, as authorities will continue to frown upon Crown as long as the younger Packer is around to screw things up. As Reuters put it, “The loss, which Crown had already flagged, and the failure of the Oaktree deal show the extent to which its future is being shaped by regulatory scrutiny as it struggles to rebuild its image amid multiple Royal Commission enquiries.”

Caesars Entertainment must have decided it was poor optics to be hosting a convention of anti-vaxxers at brand-new Caesars Forum as Coronavirus cases spike. Or maybe it blanched at the potential deep-cleaning costs after the event. Either way, QAnon-espousing “Patriot Double Down” will have to find somewhere else if it wants to play Vegas this October. (Have they called the Fertitta Brothers?) Event organizers must be scrambling for a new venue to infect, er, book. The Associated Press reported that it was presently unclear if the show “would be moved, postponed or canceled. Event officials did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages.” But with a top ticket of $3,000, we don’t expect Double Down to just fold its hand. There’s money to be made! Given QAnon followers’ eschatology, we’re frankly surprised they’d choose Sin City for their “Great Awakening” but so be it. (Good luck getting them to comply with mask mandates.) We’re talking about a city where Las Vegas Raiders fans would rather forfeit their tickets than get vaccinated. Nor does it seem like one can hold a public meeting in Clark County without being inundated with screaming anti-vaxxers. Las Vegas has so many already it scarcely needs to import more. Meanwhile, the number of Sin City vaccination mandates continues to grow, a laudable trend.

What will sports-betting advertising be like once football season starts? Our prediction is for overkill, followed by backlash. As though to prove our point, FanDuel is unleashing a national ad blitz with a minute-long TV spot called “Anthem.” It’s so over the top, so relentlessly in your face that a certain amount of revulsion is all but inevitable. Judge for yourself:

Shades of the inescapable DraftKings/FanDuel DFS commercials of a few years back. Fortunately, the market will probably be self-regulating, or at least heavily filtered. The first layer of filtration is sports leagues themselves. The NFL has already limited sports-betting puffery to six spots per game. Consumer reaction will also play a role and, if that and other forces don’t keep things to a reasonable level, state regulators can make their displeasure known. In Europe and the United Kingdom, sports leagues have seen governmental intervention when gambling advertisements were felt to have gone too far and become too ubiquitous. Nobody wants a repeat of that scenario stateside, least of all betting providers.

Gulf Coast casinos are currently weathering Hurricane Ida and can be optimistic—at least in Mississippi—that it will not be a replay of Hurricane Katrina, now that all the coastal casinos are onshore. However, garages are flooding and casino doors are being sandbagged and reinforced, so this isn’t being taken lately. Most Biloxi-area casinos were proactive about shutting down on Saturday afternoon, although tardy responses from Golden Nugget and Island View Casino are to be noted. We’ll provide further news as it arrives but Ida’s bark appears to have been worse than her bite, thank God.

Two sports betting licenses remain up for grabs in Arizona. But the full tribal complement of 10 has been issued by Gov. Doug Ducey (R). Winners include WynnBET (San Carlos Apache Tribe), Westgate Las Vegas (Fort Mojave Indian Tribe), Golden Nugget (Hualapai Tribe), Tonto Apache (Churchill Downs), two tribes going with no-name outfits and four tribes—including the doughty Tohono O’odham nation, flying solo. Sports teams dealt in included the Arizona Cardinals (BetMGM), the Arizona Diamondbacks (William Hill), the Phoenix Suns (FanDuel), the Phoenix Mercury (Bally’s Corp.), TPC Scottsdale (DraftKings), Phoenix Speedway (Penn National Gaming), the Arizona Rattlers (Rush Street Interactive) and the presently unaffiliated Phoenix Coyotes. Left out in the cold is the Gila River Indian Nation, which partnered with BetMGM but to no avail.