Berman returns; All-star New Year’s Eve

Don’t say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Lyle Berman, 77, who was once in on the ground floor of tribal gaming is now purchasing two companies with the purpose of merging them to form an e-sports major league. Why would Berman set out to be the Pete Rozelle of e-sports? “By everybody’s prediction are more people who will be watching it in a few years than watch the NFL, NBA and baseball combined,” Berman told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, estimating the eventual size of the industry at $11 billion/year. “There are hundreds of millions of people who play e-sports on a regular basis throughout the world. We think that it is an emerging industry that has really got incredible growth potential and we are kind of in on the ground floor.” I don’t think many would dispute him. He likens the current state of e-sports to tribal gaming in the early Nineties. If that is the case, $11 billion may be a conservative estimate.

* To the great good fortune of Las Vegas, New Year’s Eve is falling on a Monday, making for a much-needed three-day weekend. Not only that, this could be the most star-studded ushering in of the New Year in Vegas history — and you know we don’t go out on a limb for such things. But Sin City is rolling out all the big guns: Lady Gaga at Park MGM, Celine Dion at Caesars Palace, Gwen Stefani at Planet Hollywood, Bruno Mars at wherever nose candy is to be found. Twelve bands will play the Fremont Street Experience and top DJs like Calvin Harris will work the club scene. One thing that may be different this year is the high-level security presence. Unfortunately, as recent history has taught us at Mandalay Bay (site of a Maroon 5 concert), where there are large groups of people there will almost certainly be those bent on making trouble.

* Some trailing economic indicators show why November was such a spectacular month (+10%) for gambling revenue on the Las Vegas Strip. Yes, visitation was higher than 2017 (+5.5%) but convention attendance was on a pogo stick, up 15.5%. Some of that resulted from juggling of the convention calendar, with 49,000-attendee Amazon Web Services pushed forward from December. These numbers drove hotel occupancy skywards, with room rates 8.5% higher ($138 on average, with 90% occupancy) and revenue per available room up by 14%. We think the casino companies will take those numbers and gladly.

* Genting Group says it will “strenuously defend” the design of its Resorts World Las Vegas. No shit, Sherlock: There’s $7.5 billion on the line. However, the combination of Wynn Resorts‘ lawsuit against Genting and the latter’s litigation against the Fox consortium over a disputed theme park in Malaysia have been a one-two punch on Genting stock. GGR Asia says Genting might bring Resorts World LV in at $4 billion. For the sake of breaking even, we certainly hope so.

* There’s a promotional partnership for everything these days. PokerStars is now the “official poker partner” of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Does this mean disputed hands will be settled with no-holds-barred fisticuffs? We rather hope so. It would improve televised poker. “UFC and PokerStars have a lot in common,” said a Stars Interactive executive, calling PokerStars “the heavyweight of online poker.” Perhaps it should have a weigh-in with its competitors, just to make sure. After all, PokerStars is absent from Nevada and California, two states that know a lot about heavyweight fighting.