Next week, Las Vegas resort owners will launch a coordinated “Fabulous 5-Day Sale,” with food and drink prices reduced by as much as 25 percent amid a major slowdown in tourism in the city. The trends are so stark that Bill Simmons, whose Sports Guy columns at AOL and ESPN took off in no small part on the back of early viral pieces about his travails in Sin City with his diehard sports fan buddies, spent a good portion of his latest podcast discussing what is going on.
When, as KTNV reports locally, visitors are down more than 10 percent year over year, there is no one simple answer. But Simmons believes that compared with his first visits to the desert oasis 30 years ago, the biggest change — beyond the obviously rising costs — has been the rise of legal sports betting.
“I am in a very small (segment) of giant sports fans, we would go and we really just wanted to gamble,” Simmons explained on his podcast. “But we never cared about the other stuff.”
“People in their 20s and 30s were going for very specific things. It was like, I can gamble on sports here, I can play Blackjack with my friends here, I can play poker, I can play craps.”
Since sports gambling became legal in 2018, Simmons said, people now spend less time at the casino sportsbooks, and companies have made a 180 on their business models. Suddenly, other cities became more hospitable to visitors who wanted to casually play table games and gamble for a few days.
“That’s when they started shifting the odds against (customers),” Simmons added. “It’s 6 to 5 payouts for Blackjack. And I just feel like it’s harder to win, as weird as that sounds. I have much more fun gambling in New Orleans … in Vegas, I feel like I’m just this cog in a machine that’s going to get crushed.”
A 2023 report from ABC News showed that over the previous 15 to 20 years, many Las Vegas casinos gradually moved to a 6 to 5 payout at Blackjack tables instead of the traditional 3 to 2, which most other cities with legal gambling still use.
“I don’t think luck turns that much over 30 years,” Simmons said. “Now it feels like they just want you to lose get money and get you the f*ck out of there.”
Certainly, Simmons’ theory on payouts is demonstrated by local reporting. But what is less clear is whether lower turnout at sportsbooks caused this change. Sports betting is legal in 38 states now, and many of America’s biggest stadiums and hotels now have big, Las Vegas-style books on property. At the same time, there are more ways to be entertained in the city than ever before, including massive musician residences and the recently opened Sphere, which hosts concerts and film screenings.
The legalization of betting is not the only way that sports has changed Las Vegas. Simmons and his guests also pointed to the influx of pro sports teams in the city, starting in 2018 with the NHL’s Golden Knights. The team plays right along the Strip and was followed quickly by the WNBA’s Aces and the NFL’s Raiders. This changed not only the city’s business patterns but its infrastructure.
For many visitors, Las Vegas is geared toward attending live sports events. Anyone there to attend a big game at a shiny new venue is far less likely to spend a day wagering in front of a wall of screens.
In total, Simmons believes the city is trending toward becoming just another American metropolis. Perhaps that means fewer out-of-state travelers in the long run, as well as a far less unique experience on the trip.
The trend clearly has Simmons and many others longing for the old Las Vegas, but after more than a decade of change, the Martin Scorcese version of the Wild West town may never come back.
“I wish I had a better answer for what Vegas should do, but I think they’re so far down the road with what they became, I don’t know if there’s a way to unwind this,” Simmons said.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.