{"id":920034,"date":"2026-07-15T08:12:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T15:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/?p=920034"},"modified":"2026-07-15T08:12:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T15:12:27","slug":"how-much-is-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blog\/how-much-is-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Is Enough?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Having failed to kill<\/strong> the golden goose that is sports betting, the Illinois<\/strong> government is threatening to throttle it some more. Sports wagering has been very good for the Land of Lincoln, generating $1 billion over the past three years<\/a>. That would include the lucre from Gov. J.B. Pritzker<\/strong>‘s egregious per-bet fee ($219 million captured), which gets passed on to hapless consumers. It’s also had the effect of driving down the number of bets placed in Illinois, quite understandably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The moral would seem to be obvious: Remove the per-bet tax. But Pritzker and lawmakers seem bent on pursuing the downward spiral. Another tax increase<\/a> is said to be on the way. More commendably, the state seeks to regulate and tax prediction markets like Kalshi<\/strong>. The latter are presently running amuck, unregulated at any level and untaxed at the state stratum. Illinois has passed a 15% levy on gross revenue. Bravo! Kalshi, of course, is shrieking like a stuck pig and taking the state to court. Prediction markets are a good place to look for new tax revenue. Shrinking, regulated sports betting is not. We’ll keep you posted.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Failing upward.<\/strong> Stagnation and shrinkage in Las Vegas<\/strong> characterized 2025. The negative economic impact has been quantified at $4.3 billion. Ouch! How come? Visitor spending was stagnant, not higher, and visitation plummeted 8%. International tourism suffered particularly<\/a>, falling 7.5%. (So much for the “Foreigners, who needs them?” school of thinking.) July, June and February of 2025 were particularly bleak, with double-digit plunges in each month. Even perpetual optimist Jeremy Aguero<\/strong> of Applied Analysis<\/strong> was sounding gloomy. According to Buck Wargo<\/strong>, he “warned [the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority<\/strong>] a year ago that the stress being put on consumers had the potential to put downward pressure on tourism, not only in Las Vegas, but throughout the U.S.<\/em>” Did the LVCVA listen? Probably not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of props held Sin City upright. One was a record amount of spending on gambling, led by locals casinos. Another was continued strength in the convention sector, which to some degree shored up the weakness in tourism. Retail spending sagged, as did sightseeing. Spending on sports was up, not surprisingly, as was the money made by paid attractions (think the Sphere<\/strong>). Reported Aguero, \u201cConsumers are feeling squeezed a bit and we\u2019re seeing the impact associated with that. People aren\u2019t going to stop traveling. They\u2019re going to look for ways to do it and get value out of it.<\/em>” Aguero also downplayed all the bushwa about the southern Nevada economy being “diversified,” saying tourism still essentially drives the economic bus (except he said it more diplomatically).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Hill: Will shill for dollars<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Faced with this data, what did the LVCVA do? It flung still more taxpayer dollars at LVCVA prexy Steven Hill<\/strong>, along with a $240,000 bonus. It’s obscene that Hill is making that kind of money<\/a>, especially during a grave economic downturn. It’s typical of the insular, Marie Antoinette<\/strong> mentality that governs the LVCVA. (If the Las Vegas Review-Journal <\/em>wanted to perform a public service, it would investigate the self-dealing and crony capitalism that characterize the LVCVA.) We sure hope Hill can scrape by on $566,755.11 a year, plus bonuses. It’s also deeply illogical, as Hill himself admitted that 2025 was “pretty tough” with room revenues and tourism on the decline. The agency is essentially rewarding failure. This is hardly the time to be bellying up to the trough … but one has to come expect no better from the LVCVA.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Unfortunately, there’s not much<\/strong> in the way of good news to report today (and we scan 150 headlines daily, so we know from experience). For instance, there is the sad case of 82-year-old Army veteran Robert Joost<\/strong>, whom the Everett, Massachusetts<\/strong> police and overzealous Encore Boston Harbor<\/strong> security thugs took to be a clear and present danger. How come? Joost has metal rods implanted in one hip, the offshoot of broken bones. These triggered Encore’s metal detectors (a laudable precaution in and of itself), leading to what bordered upon police brutality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Joost, he’s visited Encore scores, nay, hundreds of times. Sounds like a valuable patron you’d want to help, right? Not if you’re Wynn Resorts<\/strong>. Encore’s goons surrounded him, along with Everett police with too much time on their hands. Joost was briefly detained, had his driver’s license taken (and eventually returned), but was forbidden from boarding a casino shuttle in order to leave … as anyone would be highly inclined to do, under the appalling circumstances. Instead, the elderly man “was forced to walk roughly a mile in poor weather to reach Sullivan Square<\/strong> station. He says the encounter left him humiliated, anxious and emotionally distressed.<\/em>” What a bunch of jerks. Wynn should apologize to Joost, fire the people responsible and scold the Everett constabulary for its overreaction. But they’ll probably get raises and promotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For his part, Joost wants $1.25 million in compensatory and punitive damages, plus a jury trial. We hope he gets all of it. A routine visit to a casino should not be the occasion for a de facto<\/em> arrest. Shame on Wynn and shame on the Everett police force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having failed to kill the golden goose that is sports betting, the Illinois government is threatening to throttle it some more. Sports wagering has been very good for the Land of Lincoln, generating $1 billion over the past three years. That would include the lucre from Gov. J.B. Pritzker‘s egregious per-bet fee ($219 million captured), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83928,"featured_media":896873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1728],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Pritzker.jpg?fit=224%2C224&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83928"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":920041,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920034\/revisions\/920041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/896873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}