Will Vegas continue to have sports betting in casinos?

If I owned a casino/hotel, I would put self-betting kiosks everywhere I could, I would also give my guests the opportunity (as does the South Coast), the ability to establish a phone account and make bets from their suites while watching the games and the horses. I would market the hell out of the monopoly that I have in the United States and offer 5% rebates, in the form of food/entertainment comps, for all sports bets and 10% rebates in the form of comps for racing bets. I would have a customer service betting area to answer questions and help "school" the guests in betting knowledge.....My sportsbook would not have any writers, only hdtv's for sports and racing.

That's Part 1 to my answer...what I would do. Part 2 is a much tougher assignment....For the most part, Vegas is run by people that are not terribly bright....forgive me Mr Loveman....they are afraid of making decisions (which can be excrutiating)....None, with the possible exception (in the future) of Cantor Gaming/Cantor Fitzgerald see the brilliance in what Vegas/Nevada has to offer the entrepreneur. I'll give this much more thought and come back another time.

Sharpstick...

Much like a high-limit room at Mandalay or a private poker room upstairs at Bellagio, the hotel has many ways to cater to their limit sports bettors....My idea, actually, would allow them to service these bettors without the bettor having to go into the sportsbook at all.....Internal phone accounts, booked to the room, are quite easy....the cage has all the knowledge it needs to see to it that these bettors are taken care of.

My point about eliminating the physical sportsbook allows the hotel to bring sportsbetting to a much more sophisticated, technical level. The sportsbook, itself, is useless. As I have said a number of times in this forum...I go into a sportsbook to make my bets, not to watch the games....horse racing aside....and then I find where I want to watch the games with good booze and, perhaps, some food....and great tv's.

Tater...

I mis-typed earlier...I was using the South Point as an example....If you are a guest of the hotel, you can set up a phone account from your room for betting on the races...then all the racetracks are piped into your room....I can't see why this cannot be done with sports also...

HOWEVER...my point was that watching the games is better done anywhere else BUT the sportsbook....Even Aria with it's 130+ tvs doesn't do it for me....

The number of bets...especially on football...would drastically INCREASE if people could make their football bets from kiosks placed all over the hotel/casino, from their rooms, or internally from phones in the hotel. The bets get charged to the room using a pre-determined betting limit and a private pin code.

There are slot machines now that can make dinner reservations for you while you play and perform a myriad of other services for the guest...WHILE PLAYING THAT SLOT MACHINE...It would be fairly easy to add programming to the slot machine that allows the bettor to make sports bets from those machines also.

Rounder...

Mandalay Bay at March Madness and Las Vegas Hilton at Super Bowl...those are your two anomalies...

I'm not certain what you mean by "live environment".....a sportsbar with a betting kiosk (Leroy's has a number of them..especially at Buffalo Wild Wings) to me, is a "live environment"....

I really think that if you give someone the opportunity to make a sports bet and be comfortable knowing that they will collect their cash as soon as the game is over, they will choose that option over offshore betting.

The more that Vegas gets involved in online gambling...it will come...the more offshore will lose business. Cantor Gaming is, immediately upon approval of its online license, going to go after the estimated 2.5 billion that leaves this state for offshore accounts.

"Even though the books don't make nearly as much money as slot and table games for the casino".....

Rounders....They make less than 2% of what the casino makes....That's a helluva lot less than "nearly as much money"...

Vegas is incapable of marketing their sports betting monopoly....Have you EVER seen a commercial about Vegas with sports betting in the commercial?....NEVER...

The ONLY way that Vegas can increase its business in sports betting is by going more technical....The "personal" touch is so far down on the food chain that no one really cares about it....Just look at some of the negativity in this forum about the writers in the sportsbook, or the lack of free booze flowing 24/7 to those that bet.... 

VG:

I agree 100% that if you give someone the opportunity to make a sports bet knowing they will collect right away is absolutely better than offshore that is what makes the good Vegas books great.  I believe more and more people are going back to locals because offshore it is getting harder and harder getting money in and out of offshore.  I don't know about you but for some strange reason I have a hell of a lot more fun in Bellagio and Hilton books than I do on my couch or at a local bar or restaurant.   I definitely agree that the books don't make as much as slots or table games, but Vegas doesn't need any more of those because casino's can't barely fill 20% of Slot Machines and 50-75% of table games anymore.  It is tuff to beat the environment in a Vegas book on a College Football or Basketball Saturday or even NFL on Sundays.  I hope they don't ever get rid of the books.

VG

I agree books make nothing for casino comparatively speaking, but they do attract people to Vegas who spend their money not just in books while they are their.

The free booze issue is a joke like you said.  People betting $5 on one game and expecting free drinks all day.  Vegas should however in my opinion offer free booze to everyone that wagers a minimum of $500 on any given day.  Not just give out one free drink ticket like at Ceasars.  That is why most people in these forums are going to Bellagio and Hilton Books because to my knowledge they are the only strip locations that still offer free drinks plus tip of course. 

The casino is that a casino.   The casinos have poker rooms but they do not generate much revenue.  They have restaurants they do not generate a lot of money.  The tables do not always have a strong hold.  Its a business and every aspect of the Casino generates money.  A lot of times money goes from one place to another.  So we can say the sportsbook generate a small percentage of money.  But whats not to say that a majority of people who win at the sportsbook will go lose it in the machines or at the tables.   The more people for sportsbetting or concerts or whatever it might be the people are more apt to spend there money somewhere else in the casino.  They just want to attract as much people as possible to set foot in the door.   I often times see guys playing blackjack big then go bet on games.  If they win they just go lose it right back at the slots or tables.  When people lose they pull out more money and lose.  There is a lot more to a casino that meets the eye.   Like rubber said every penny counts.  If you did have the live sportsbook there nobody would come watch the games.

The Director of Cantor Gaming disagrees strongly with you...

"...the day of 25,000 square foot sportsbooks is over..."....

More and more you will see technology replace live people.....you can put tv's anywhere and you can put betting kiosks anywhere...you can bet from your smartphone or your laptop....or from a device given to you by a customer service rep at the "sportsbook"....

If that guy at the blackjack table can use his hand-held monitor to place a sportsbet while watching it on a 36" hdtv at the blackjack table....he will be quite happy.....

...and that day is coming a lot sooner than anyone on this website understands....

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