In this week’s Green Felt Journal, I take up bowling, which seems to be heading towards a renaissance in Las Vegas. Las Vegas’ first casino bowling alley opened in 1959 when the off-Strip Showboat added lanes as part of its successful effort to refocus on locals, driving growth at the property for the next 20 […]
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Vegas SevenFor this week’s Green Felt Journal, I offer you an 800-word version of the 10,000-word paper I presented at the International Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking. It’s my attempt to assess whether the mid-decade spate of mergers was good for anyone…and from what I’ve discovered, it looks like the answer is “not really.” From Vegas
Casino Concentration and the Logic of Empire | Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenBusy week, so I’m just posting this week’s Green Felt Journal about the EB-5 program, which is changing Las Vegas: “Invest In Your American Dream,” reads the text next to a photo of the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. The words are quickly replaced by “LAS VEGAS EB5 IMMIGRATION CENTER IS YOUR BEST CHOICE,”
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Vegas SevenI’ve been wanting to write more about Macau, which is such a huge gambling story, for a while, and when given a feature slot for Vegas Seven, jumped on the chance to talk about Macau’s impact on Las Vegas. The result is this week’s cover story: Back in the early days—2006 or so—American executives signing
The History of Our Future | Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenLast Sunday, on a short deadline for my Green Felt Journal, I suddenly got inspired. I recalled that Caribbean Stud Poker no longer had a separate line item in the monthly Gaming Revenue Report (these things apparently stick in my head), and figured, that’s got to be worth a column. Some digging for numbers and
One Game’s Wild Ride | Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenIn addition to the two features (Light and space) in this week’s Vegas Seven, I have a Green Felt Journal, which talks about the probably impact of MGM’s proposed Park development: How about getting back to urban basics and creating a worthwhile street-level experience? That’s what MGM did on April 18 with the formal announcement
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Vegas SevenI already shared one feature I had in this week’s Vegas Seven: my piece on space tourism and Vegas with a sidebar on Zero-G, which currently flies out of McCarran. I also wrote a feature on the evolution of nightclubs, as seen in the soon-to-open Light at Mandalay Bay: With all that success, it’s no
Anatomy of a Nightclub | Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenA few weeks back I got an email about an event connected to the launch of Virgin America’s thrice-daily LAX-LAS flights. I usually don’t go to those kinds of events–there’s not too much to “cover” outside of photo ops. But I got thinking…wouldn’t it be fun to ask Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson how Vegas
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Vegas SevenIn this week’s Green Felt Journal, I take a look at how a British invasion has changed Las Vegas nightlife: The two biggest demographics in Las Vegas these days seem to be nightclubbers and international visitors. As a bit of anecdotal evidence of the trend, the casinos in development that have stoked the imagination plan
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Vegas SevenI’ve got a little resort fee reverie in Vegas Seven this week: Resort fees—those mandatory per-night add-ons of between $3 and $25 that include charges for services guests may or may not use during their stay—migrated to Las Vegas in the early 2000s, but have recently gotten a second wind. Caesars Entertainment had for years
Resort Fees Costing Casinos Goodwill in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenIn this week’s Green Felt Journal, I take a look at how the proposed Resorts World Las Vegas differs from the project it replaced: When Resorts World Las Vegas rises from the abandoned husk of Echelon on the north Strip, it will be very different from what Echelon would have been. And the differences tell
With Resorts World, Macau Comes to Vegas in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenIn this week’s Green Felt Journal, I take a look at how the Strip’s original boutique hotel is keeping up with the competition: But the original boutique hotel-within-a-hotel on the Strip, the Four Seasons, is generating some buzz of its own with a two-phase renovation that’s just started its second half. Sharing the Mandalay Bay
Keeping a Season Ahead in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenIn this week’s Vegas Seven, I consider the bigger impact of the attention focused on problem gambling due to the case of Maureen O’Connor: The recent revelation that former San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor had reportedly embezzled more than $2 million from a charitable foundation to feed her gambling addiction has focused attention on pathological
Defining a Dark Allure in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenThis is one of the most emotionally-difficult pieces I’ve had to write for Vegas Seven–a look at the career and legacy of my friend and mentor Bill Eadington, who passed away last week: Within five years of his 1969 arrival at the University of Nevada, Reno as an assistant professor, Eadington had made the case
A Game-Changing Scholar in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenThis week in Vegas Seven, I also consider the Mob Museum’s first year: But the Mob Museum—together with the 2012 openings of The Smith Center and the Neon Museum—signaled a new era for Las Vegas’ cultural institutions, and a commitment to Downtown. These institutions have deeper local roots, and it seems more likely that they’ll
Mobbing the Mob Museum in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenThis week in Vegas Seven, my “Seven Questions” interview with Tom Breitling is running: Tom Breitling’s career started humbly enough: In the early 1990s, he was a sportscaster and weatherman for a TV station … in Barstow. By decade’s end, Breitling had surfed the dot-com boom to a multimillion-dollar payout, which came in 2000 when
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Vegas Seven, writingThis week, I’ve got four pieces in Vegas Seven magazine. The first is the Green Felt Journal, where I take a look at whether nightclubs are reaching a saturation point: If there’s a proven moneymaker on the Las Vegas Strip today, it’s a top-flight nightclub. With tremendous margins on bottle service and measureless lines of
Does Las Vegas Have a Nightclub Bubble? in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas Seven, writingIn this week’s Green Felt Journal, I take a look at what lies ahead for Las Vegas in 2013. Seem like the right time: The New Year has its restorative elements—the celebrations, the resolutions, the fresh hopes. But, against the background of the Great Recession, it’s also another occasion to fret about what lies ahead
The Strip in 2013: Recovery and Retrenchment in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenVegas Seven’s nightclub issue is out today! And what better topic for the Green Felt Journal than…casinos without nightclubs: If you’ve been on the Strip in the past five years, you know that nightclubs are front-and-center at most big resorts. Which begs the question: What’s a Vegas casino look like today when you subtract the
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Vegas SevenToday’s Green Felt Journal in Vegas Seven is a look back at 2012: The people who run Las Vegas casinos were expecting a lot in 2012: a return to prosperity on the Strip, a revival downtown and a federal framework for online poker. They didn’t get everything they wanted, but at the end of the
The Year of Hope and Holding Steady in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas Seven, writing