Staying with the curve, Macao is going after the e-sports phenomenon. Sociedade de Jogos de Macau held the protectorate’s first e-sports tournament, at Grand Lisboa. Nine 
international teams competed for a $300K pot. “E-Sports is an emerging industry with huge growth potential and global viewership. Macau is put in the limelight with this major e-Sports tournament, which we believe will further benefit the development of the city’s tourism and leisure business,” said SJM CEO Ambrose So in a prepared statement. SJM has been following developments on the mainland, where a 2016 tournament drew 43 million TV viewers. Smaller-scale events have been held at Studio City and at Galaxy Entertainment casinos. (In other Galaxy news the company is currently eyeing the Philippines.) Said Alisports General Manager Wang Guan, “After 2019 e-sports will become part of the normal life.”
Integrating e-sports into the casino panoply of games will involve coping with a generation gap, particularly with Baby Boomers and older patrons. “There is still a generation that doesn’t know anything about video games,” said Electronic Sports League‘s Ralf Reichert. “Twenty years ago that was a majority, now it’s 50-50, and in the future there will be less people that don’t understand it.”
* Getting ahead of the curve, Westgate Las Vegas is testing something called Patscan Cognitive Microwave Radar. Reports Wired, “the Patscan CMR combines short-range radar with machine learning algorithms to scan individual guests for guns, knives, and bombs in real time.” The units can be embedded in door frame and elevator banks. The 
question of how to confront a weapon-bearing patron remains begged but this a step in the right direction. The scanners are meant to be a strong proactive measure without being so overt as to kill anyone’s Vegas buzz.
Says Westgate COO Mark Waltrip, “I believe in people’s right to bear arms … But, you know, on our properties, we want to maintain a safe environment and we don’t need guests bringing weapons on site. We really don’t want that kind of surprise.” “We have the great advantage here of having access to a lot of weapons we can’t get anywhere else,” adds PatriotOne CEO Martin Cronin, whose company makes the detectors. Westgate workers will be guinea pigs, with the PatriotOne technology tested at their entrance. If it works there, it will be rolled out to at least four or five chokepoints in the resort, maybe more. Make no mistake, this is the future of Vegas.
* Taking a page from Steve Wynn‘s book and rewriting it a little, Donald Trump is prompting his Labor Department to reverse a longstanding precedent, reaffirmed 
during the Barack Obama administration (therein lies the rub) that makes tips the sole property of the restaurant and bar employees who receive them. Per Trump, these would now go to management, which could keep the money or pool it and dole it out to workers — even Trump’s own — as it sees fit. In the past, Las Vegas casinos have stood with employees when it came to treating tips as taxable income, staving off virtual raids from the IRS. It will be interesting to see whose side they come down upon this time. If you’re a cocktail waitress and you’re reading this, contact your congressmen and senators pronto.
* Essence Henderson is rolling out the big guns to promote its cannabis dispensary. Today it welcomes Cheech Marin to puff his specially blended “Cheech’s Private Stash.” So if you see a heavy haze over Henderson, you’ll know the cause. Casino executives must be grinding their teeth over being unable to get a piece of Nevada‘s new cash crop.
