Don’t hold your water but lawmakers in California have gone so far as to hold an actual, living, breathing, preliminary hearing (emphasis on “preliminary”) on the issue of sports betting. The endgame here is not to legalize sports betting via the Lege but to use the latter to craft a ballot 
initiative and put it up to November’s electorate. “We will likely approach a total of 30 states with some form of legal sports betting by the end of 2020,” Eilers & Krejcik Gaming Managing Director Chris Grove told Fox Business. He didn’t include California in the 30 if only because, when it comes to gaming, the political system always manages to tie its shoelaces together. In addition to the ballot initiative being crafted by state Rep. Adam Gray (D, below) and state Sen. Bill Dodd (D), 18 tribes and the state’s horse racing industry have agreed on an initiative of their own, which will be opposed by still other tribes and the state’s dysfunction card-room industry. Things could get pretty ugly.
With 40 million residents and seemingly as many sports franchises, California really could be the Golden State for sports betting. But we’ve not run across anybody who’s waiting for that with bated breath. The 
Nevada market seems same for the time being. “Large states suffer from this dynamic in general. The states are large, meaning the potential market is large and the relevant stakeholders are many and diverse,” said Grove. “Given the size of the prize at stake, those stakeholders are more willing to dig in and less willing to compromise on their preferred vision for legal sports betting. That’s a recipe for legislative stasis.” Gray’s bill, which would include mobile wagering, would be more lucrative. The tribal one, which makes no provision for mobile wagering, has a potentially huge campaign war chest from which to draw. Gray also has more hurdles to jump, needing not just an electoral majority but supermajorities in both houses of the Lege. We wish him luck.
* Back in the early days of The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, strong food-and-beverage sales propped up the swooning casino. Bloomberg has an inside look at the “b” side of F&B posts some remarkable statistics. For example, the Cosmo sold $75 million in liquor in 2018 and that number is certain to be even higher this year. Also, January sees a doubling in 
beverage sales along the Strip, a phenomenon explained in three little letters: CES. Need to drink an $850 margarita? Aria‘s High Limit Lounge can oblige you, although it’s considered the sort of drink that only sells if somebody just won big on the green felt. You can order a cocktail in a smoke-filled box at the Cosmo’s Vesper Lounge but it will set you back $1,200. Maybe Station Casinos can redeem the bath it’s been taking on the Palms with some of those $4,000 Macallan Fine & Rare scotches. (At least they let you keep the souvenir crystal glass.) At Bellagio, former Hyde Lounge has given way to genteel Mayfair Supper Club, where Macallan is also on the drink menu, albeit at an almost-affordable $395. Bottoms up!
* NagaCorp has a monopoly on the Phnom Penh market and may be exploiting it. Workers are going on strike, complaining of substandard pay and abusive working conditions. “We can’t go to the toilet if there is no one to fill in for us,” Chan Maiya Mouy told Reuters. “When gamblers lose, they curse us and throw water bottles at us.” Casino-floor workers make all of $250 a month and back-of-the-house employees get a dingy $125. The strikers are demanding a 100% pay increase, which might seem outrageous were they not salaried so little—and were not NagaCorp juiced into tidy control of Phnom Penh. It’s high time NagaCorp shared the wealth.
Jottings: Congratulations to Steven Witkoff, who was licensed to operate The Drew. Maybe this will make financing easier to come by … Andi Kraja‘s fat-shaming jury verdict against Bellagio—$500,000—got tossed after it was determined that he had forged photographic “evidence.” Bellagio shouldn’t be too quick to celebrate: It will have to undergo a second jury trial and pay Kraja’s court costs for the first, having been too lazy to perform due diligence on the discredited photos during the discovery process … It’s jobs out, automated beverage dispensers in at Encore Boston Harbor as “rightsizing.” “Should any employee become displaced, we do everything we can to provide alternate job opportunities for them within our organization,” said Wynn Resorts. However, opportunities appear to be few.
