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aleph wrote:I believe you are correct … I believe Vegas has shattered
attendance records in the last few years and its one
of the fastest growing cities in America.
:rolleyes:
As I recall, Las Vegas is one of the fastest – if not the fastest – growing cities in the WORLD.
Mr. Yook mentioned the Philippines – which, believe it or not, might be one of two (or three) countries in Asia where more than 1% would know the name of any one Las Vegas casino – the other two countries being Singapore and Hong Kong. Japan, too, might be above that threshold as they probably send more visitors to Vegas than any other Asian country (but primarily for sightseeing and shopping).
LasVegasLady wrote:OH YES they most certainly do ! !1) I worked in the casino industry for several years.
2) My ex-husband is a casino executive at one of the casinos.
3) I have done a lot of traveling and there are GIANT 6 foot tall posters advertising Las Vegas in most major cities throughout the world.
1) I am a consultant for both online and offline gambling. Furthermore, I have a long background in advertising and marketing.
2) Irrelevant.
3) I beg to disagree. In all my travels through numerous countries, particularly in the last 4-5 years, I have *never* seen a single poster advertising Las Vegas. The most I have seen is the occasional article in a magazine – but never in the form of advertising. These cities include London, Dublin, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul, Singapore, Amsterdam, Manila, Bangkok (duh, I live here), Melbourne, Monte Carlo, Montreal, Toronto – and excludes all US cities for which you will obviously find more Vegas advertising.
Quote:In the European countries everyone is VERY aware of Las Vegas. They always have all kinds of questions about various casinos (which they know by name).Travel agencies over there are FILLED with travel books and brochures regarding vacationing in Las Vegas. It is a very popular vacation destination for people from all over the world.
It sure is a very popular vacation destination – not going to argue that point. It may well be one of the most popular vacation destinations in the world. But it still goes nowhere NEAR 1% of the world’s population, let alone “nearly every person” – and the advertising is not nearly as widespread as you think.
My head hurts after reading all that jibber jabber….
:hitthefan
I think you are all missing the point 80% of online gamblers are from us even if forginers dont find their pages right off americans would surely bring them to the top of any search.
Spearmaster wrote:1) I am a consultant for both online and offline gambling. Furthermore, I have a long background in advertising and marketing.2) Irrelevant.
3) I beg to disagree. In all my travels through numerous countries, particularly in the last 4-5 years, I have *never* seen a single poster advertising Las Vegas. The most I have seen is the occasional article in a magazine – but never in the form of advertising. These cities include London, Dublin, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul, Singapore, Amsterdam, Manila, Bangkok (duh, I live here), Melbourne, Monte Carlo, Montreal, Toronto – and excludes all US cities for which you will obviously find more Vegas advertising. . . .
OK . . Whatever you say . . I’m not going to argue about it.
The point was that you had said .. “The casinos certainly do not advertise worldwide” .. when in actuality, they DO spend a lot of money on International advertising!
. . . and you can call 2) “Irrelevant” if you wish .. but I think he’s a little more in the loop than you may be, since he has been in upper management in the casino industry for 20+ years.
Let’s get back to the point – is the legislation the result of a conspiracy?
Earlier I said that Vegas casinos had all to gain from online gambling, particular with regards to the rejuvenated poker industry.
I haven’t been able to find a table of statistics showing the WSOP results for the past 10 years, but this excerpt from wsop2006.com should suffice for the time being.
Quote:Astounding growth of participants
The growth of the WSOP has been astounding, especially over the last few years. In 1972 when Thomas “Amarillo Slim” Preston won the title and $80,000, the tournament had only 8 participants. In 2000 Chris Ferguson beat 518 opponents to become World Champion. The win gave him $1,500,000 in prize money. In 2004 the number of participants had grown to 2,576 and the first prize was $5,000,000 (Greg Raymer won the tournament). The reining champion Joseph Hachem defeated 5,618 opponents to win $7,500,000.Chris Moneymakers fantastic victory in 2003 is without any doubt one of the main factors behind this amazing development. His entire entry fee to the championship through online poker had been $39 and the win gave him $2,500,000. This gave online poker players around the world hope and lots of people discovered the game.
At WSOP 2006, Jamie Gold beat 8,772 players to win the top prize of $12 million and claim the title of world champion.
As you can see, the “astounding” claim above was nothing compared to what happened this year.
Could this have happened without online poker? Absolutely, positively, no way Jose. Needless to say, Harrahs has directly benefited from the popularity of online poker, even if they do not have an online play-for-real site themselves. And by extrapolation, Vegas casinos have also benefitted from the surge in popularity of poker in general.
How about casino revenue?
Best I can do was the stats from lvcva – Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority – what follows are the revenue numbers from Clark County from 2002-2006:
Quote:2006 est. $10,561,988,571 (up 8.7%)
2005 $9,709,408,000 (up 11.4%)
2004 $8,710,976,000 (up 11.2%)
2003 $7,831,378,000 (up 2.6%)
2002 $7,630,528,000In 2006, based on current numbers through July, the estimated annual revenue for Clark County in 2006 is $10.56 billion. This does not take into account seasonal fluctuations – it’s pretty likely that the actual number in 2006 will be higher.
Now look at the percentage increases in 2004 and 2005 – after Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP in 2003. Again, the word “astounding” is appropriate.
Whether or not the increases were due to the surging popularity in poker, or just a fluke, remains to be seen – but one can easily be tempted to draw the correlation here.
Online poker rejuvenated the poker industry in Las Vegas – and in doing so, sharply increased the annual income growth of the Las Vegas gambling industry – not likely through increased rake alone, but a probable surge in casino activity brought about by a large increase in visitors.
This is not necessarily conclusive evidence – but it is not just circumstantial, either. The land-based casino industry in Las Vegas has almost certainly benefitted greatly from the popularity of online gambling.
Now – any exec in Vegas – and most of them are damn sharp – would clearly have seen this data and reached a similar conclusion. Thus, it makes little sense that they would want to support a prohibition of online gambling.
Add this to the likelihood that a US-based online gambler, suddenly given a choice of playing at mgmonlinecasino or goldenpalace.com, is almost surely going to choose mgmonlinecasino ANYHOW… why in the world would Vegas land-based operators need to worry about the presence of the online operators, who are surely helping them to increase their land-based revenues?
LasVegasLady wrote:OK . . Whatever you say . . I’m not going to argue about it.The point was that you had said .. “The casinos certainly do not advertise worldwide” .. when in actuality, they DO spend a lot of money on International advertising!
. . . and you can call 2) “Irrelevant” if you wish .. but I think he’s a little more in the loop than you may be, since he has been in upper management in the casino industry for 20+ years.
They may be spending money – like any other good tourism location – but I can assure you that it is not worldwide by any stretch of the imagination – and being present in a guide or brochure does not in my opinion constitute “advertising” per se.
As for irrelevant, the point is that having an ex-husband in the industry for 20+ years may make HIM more knowledgeable about the Las Vegas market, but it does not make YOU more knowledgeable – if, however, you can get him to actually say what you are claiming, I might be more inclined to believe it – why don’t you ask him if what you are claiming is true?
Anyhow, that’s all beside the point – we are on the same side here – the point I am trying to make is that the concept of a conspiracy is not very likely given the information which I have provided above and also based on my own personal knowledge of the overseas markets.
SpearMaster –
I posted the article that one of our writers, Larry Rutherford, wrote about the internet gambling conspiracy theory to start this thread. I think its important to note in order to defend Larry that it is just a theory, maybe not actually what he believes, its just a possibility to encourage thought from all angles and to promote the idea that perhaps there are alterior motives to peoples actions, especially to people in gov’t.
Also, he did not say the Vegas casinos supported an online gambling ban because they wanted internet gambling banned, he said they wanted it banned because it was the best shot they had at it ever being legalized in the future.
OK .. I have a question and have been trying to figure out which thread to post it in.
Since online gamblers are no longer allowed to take money on their VS, MC, AX or whatever to gamble in the online casinos … shouldn’t the land based casinos be forbidden to have ATM’s around every corner ?
Why is it OK for people to take money on their credit card to gamble at these casinos?
(if there is a more appropriate place for this question, please move it)
Spearmaster wrote:ANYHOW… why in the world would Vegas land-based operators need to worry about the presence of the online operators, who are surely helping them to increase their land-based revenues?They don’t need to worry about them, but that is different than them deciding they’d like to take over the market. With such a large number of gamblers in the US, they’d have a nice opportunity to do that… and it’s better to make that move while the US comprises so much of the market.
I don’t think this general scenerio is likely, either. I do think the motive is there… I just don’t think things could be orchestrated that well… with the internet being a series of tubes and all – according to US lawmakers.
Professor wrote:I heard there is a small tribe on Borneo that actually worships Wayne Newton as a god…haha, with hair like that – I should too!
Wayne Newton exists only because his hair is there,
Wayne Newtons hair makes Wayne Newton exist,
not Wayne Newton existing to make Wayne Newtons hair exist.*all hail Wayne Newtons hair*
Oneguy2nv wrote:They don’t need to worry about them, but that is different than them deciding they’d like to take over the market. With such a large number of gamblers in the US, they’d have a nice opportunity to do that… and it’s better to make that move while the US comprises so much of the market.I don’t think this general scenerio is likely, either. I do think the motive is there… I just don’t think things could be orchestrated that well… with the internet being a series of tubes and all – according to US lawmakers.
You don’t think that the possibility of one day online
casinos buying out land based casinos (only possible if
they treat their affiliates well) is a strong enough motive ?
:tooconfus
CGW wrote:SpearMaster –I posted the article that one of our writers, Larry Rutherford, wrote about the internet gambling conspiracy theory to start this thread. I think its important to note in order to defend Larry that it is just a theory, maybe not actually what he believes, its just a possibility to encourage thought from all angles and to promote the idea that perhaps there are alterior motives to peoples actions, especially to people in gov’t.
It doesn’t really matter where the theory or belief came from – it is, however, important to consider the reasons why said theory or belief is likely or unlikely.
Absolutely, there are ulterior motives involved. But it is my firm, personal opinion that “conspiracy” is not likely.
Quote:Also, he did not say the Vegas casinos supported an online gambling ban because they wanted internet gambling banned, he said they wanted it banned because it was the best shot they had at it ever being legalized in the future.This, too, makes little sense, in that legalization must encompass all forms of online gambling, not just those forms provided by existing gambling entities within the US. The AGA itself has come out firmly in support of a study to determine whether or not online gambling should be legalized, a large reversal from its stance in the early part of the decade where they were firmly against online gambling because they were ostensibly worried about “illegal, fly-by-night” operations impacting their bottom line and their huge investments.
Obviously, not only was that proven false, if anything it increased their bottom lines. Legalization would benefit them even more because the combined presence of all operations would simply enlarge the user base that might subsequently be attracted to Vegas. It would be a pretty big stretch to believe that any online operator would be strong enough to decrease the potential profits of any well-branded land-based operation entering the online market.
LasVegasLady wrote:Why is it OK for people to take money on their credit card to gamble at these casinos?Because that money is going into their pockets and not to someone in costa rica etc.
