Sheldon Adelson is feeling bullish on the Las Vegas market these days. Undeterred by the debut of T-Mobile Arena, he is proposing a 17,500-seat concert venue, to be built on 
underutilized land behind Venelazzo. Adelson has formed a consortium with Live Nation Entertainment, Madison Square Garden Co. and other partners to build the arena, which is as yet undesigned and unbudgeted. The concert hall, which would be Las Vegas’ third-largest, behind T-Mobile and the Thomas & Mack Center, would hew to the classic horseshoe design, with the goal of providing everyone with an unimpeded view of the stage. In addition to musical performances, boxing matches and MMA brawls would be staged there, although team sports have been explicitly ruled out.
“At a time when significant conversations are taking place about the city’s future tourism needs, a state-of-the-art venue designed, built and exclusively dedicated to bringing the world’s greatest musical and entertainment acts to Las Vegas is the type of development we should all be excited about,” said Adelson.
He already has three theaters and they would all comfortably fit into the newly proposed one (with room left over for lounges and clubs), as they hold an aggregate of 4,755 souls. Give special credit to columnist Norm(!) Clarke who was onto this story months ago, although Adelson’s ongoing stadium proposal deked at least some 
of us, like myself, into thinking that was the big enchilada to which Clarke referred. I still think Adelson is going to try to lure a Republican National Convention here and if he has two potential venues instead of one, that’s twice the drawing power. Explicitly targeted are the Grammy Awards, iHeart Radio, the Academy of Country Music Awards and the Billboard Music Awards — a direct thrust at MGM Resorts International‘s arenas, in other words. Adelson’s Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that MSG is looking to having programming on all three weekend nights all year ’round, with the possibility of expanding to five nights. The top echelon of customers would enjoy ‘bunker suites,’ described as “premium seating that has exclusive entrances, private restrooms and access to menus prepared by signature chefs and top sommeliers.” In other words, Adelson is telling MGM that he’s seeing T-Mobile Arena and raising the ante.
* Targeting the hypocrisy of the NFL toward sports betting (and putting its shoulder to the push to move the [your city here] Raiders to Las Vegas), the American Gaming Association fired a double-barreled blast of press releases today. In one, it pointed out that six teams (including the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns) play within a mile of the nearest casino, a number that jumps to 10 teams when the radius is expanded to five miles. Enlarge that radius further, to 35 miles, and 25 NFL teams are in casino territory. (Odd men out, the reigning champion Denver Broncos are 36 miles from the nearest slot machine.) The AGA added, although it almost goes without saying, that every pro football team is located in immediate proximity to illegal online gambling — and several in close reach of legal Internet gambling, including the New York Giants and New York Jets.
The AGA’s shot across the NFL’s bow was inspired by a fearmongering Mike Florio column, in which he speculated that moving the Raiders to Vegas “could result in Raiders players losing plenty of money and thus needing money and, in turn, becoming more tempted to, for example, provide inside information to gamblers for money.” As though they couldn’t do that already in California! Florio speculated that “what starts as providing inside information about the true nature and extent of injuries plus other factors that may influence a given player’s or team’s performance could, in theory, become an arrangement that deviates toward the attempted shaving of points or fixing of games.” Devolving into pure silliness, Florio fretted that players might be gambling when they should be studying their gamebooks — as though, say, Cincinnati Bengals players couldn’t succumb to that temptation today.
(If the Raiders’ proposal is dicey, it’s not because of gambling but in part to the financing being contingent upon the league loaning the Raiders $300 million to move to Las Vegas, which would be the fifth-smallest market in the NFL … albeit bolstered by heavy tourism, even though the team downplays the latter as “icing on the cake.” “It’s a virgin market, so to speak, which is a funny way to describe Las Vegas,” said Raiders owner Mark Davis.)
The AGA provided a handy chart that broke down the proximity of NFL football to casinos. The Los Angeles Rams will be closest to a gambling venue (Hollywood Park Casino), a mere tenth of a mile away. Rivers Casino is also not much more than a stone’s throw from Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. And so it goes. Only six teams are more than an hour’s drive from a casino, ranging from the Dallas Cowboys (83.7 miles) to the woeful Tennessee Titans (287 miles), who have bigger problems than casino gambling. Lastly, the AGA pointed out the league is only too eager to play games in London, where bookmaking and online gambling are rampant.
Discharging the other barrel of its rhetorical shotgun, the AGA disseminated an ESPN interview with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, explaining his stance in favor of “legal … regulated … transparent” sports betting.
All in all, it’s a win-win day for AGA President Geoff Freeman.
* Yesterday’s 61st birthday of the Moulin Rouge provided the impetus for a ceremonial groundbreaking for a new, $150 million iteration of the Moulin Rouge. We’re pulling for this project, although we don’t think $100 million-$150 million buys you much of a locals casino anymore (just ask Frank Fertitta III). However, given the litany of revivals announced for the Moulin Rouge site over the decades, we’ll believe this is the real deal when we see it. At least the choice of Ed Vance as architect is a step in the right direction.
* Somebody pulled a heist at the Hooters Hotel Casino sports book late Monday. I’m less surprised by the nature of the crime than the choice of venue: Who would expect the sports book at Hooters to yield more than an empty box of dust?
