Green Christmas; Raiders vindicate oddsmakers, enrage fans

Could the Jon Gruden Era in Las Vegas before almost as soon as it began? Already fans are souring on the celebrity coach, and his guaranteed $100 million contract looks more and more like one of the most expensive mistakes in NFL history. Just as the sports books predicted, the Raiders lost by the narrowest of margins to the upstart Miami Dolphins, snuffing Raider Nation’s slender playoff hopes. With $20 million down the toilet and another $80 million to go, owner Mark Davis may decide, like Macbeth, that he is in blood stepped so far that to return were as tedious to go o’er, but the serial misfortunes of the Raiders continue—and Vegas loves a winner, and has little tolerance for losers. If it’s any consolation, TheLines.com has the Raiders one-point favorites to end the season with a one-point victory over the injury-depleted Denver Broncos. What an accomplishment that would be.

After years of inscrutability, the government of Japan has finally said at least some of what it wants from casino mega resorts but, according to Global Gaming Business, “may not have the political time or muscle to accomplish it.” Could this be the grand fizzle of Shinzo Abe‘s glacial progress toward casino gaming? His successor, Yoshihide Suga, seems more focused on reaching the arbitrary goal of 60 million tourists by 2030 (as Japan continues to put all its eggs in the tourism basket) rather than standing up a viable casino industry. The government has chosen to lead with health-and-safety protocols, of all things. And Suga, who faces reelection in three months, could be long gone by the time the RFP phase crawls over the finish line in April 2022. Some analysts continue to blow sunshine up the industry’s ass by predicting that Nippon will be bigger than Macao but we stopped believing that a long time ago.

Hawaii remains off-limits to casinos but politicians are proposing one for Kapolei. Opposition in the Lege is predicted to be “stiff.” We’ve not heard anything on the subject since the Linda Lingle administration, when the daffy proposal was made for a one-year ‘experimental’ casino, an idea quickly forgotten. Imagine the pile-of-crap casino you’d get if you had to make back all your investment in a single year? Talk about ‘slots in a box’!