It’s anything but certain that the [your city here] Raiders are coming to Las Vegas, but our civic leaders are moving ahead as though it were a done deal. The preferred site for 
a Las Vegas Sands-backed stadium, on Tropicana Avenue, is looking iffier and iffier, especially since it sits uncomfortably close to a busy glide path for McCarran International Airport and the FAA could easily nip that in the bud. Interestingly, two former casino sites have come into play as fallback positions. While the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority (from whom Sands hopes to wrest the plurality of the stadium money) owns the Riviera and is busy tearing it down, LVCVA President Rossi Ralenkotter is suddenly very tractable to the idea of putting a football stadium on the site. Obviously, the value of being right on the Strip cannot be understated.
Also in play are the Rock in Rio festival grounds. Since the first Vegas outing of the festival may have been its last — and because MGM Resorts International wouldn’t be heavily out of pocket to scrap them and the nearby RV park, it has to be viewed as a prime candidate. MGM has a great deal of underutilized real estate up there, including Circus Circus, and the site would be right off I-15. (The fourth site under consideration, Cashman Field, appears to be a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency choice.) As inconceivable as the NFL on the Las Vegas Strip appeared even a year ago, it’s a notion that’s definitely snowballing.
Suspicion that the Pechanga tribe and its allies are out to scuttle a deal, any sort of deal, that would permit Internet poker in California hardened into certainty this week. Pechanga Chairman Mark Macarro released a poll that shows 52% of Californians as being opposed to i-poker. This is difficult to square with the Golden State’s appetite for card rooms and tribal casinos — and it runs contrary to a CalvinAyre.com poll that had two-thirds of Californians favoring cyber poker. No doubt by deploying its poll at this juncture, Pechanga and its allies hope to derail and online-gaming bill that is gaining momentum in the state Assembly. A parallel bill to legalize daily fantasy sports, also the handiwork of Rep. Adam Gray (D), sailed through the Assembly with only one dissenting vote.
* Sheldon Adelson now has a court jester to go with his mouthpiece, the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Assclown Robin Leach will be bringing his cap and bells over from Greenspun Media, and capering for Adelson’s rag, ensuring a steady diet of sycophancy in its pages. If I were one of the R-J‘s three existing entertainment columnists — Doug Elfman, Norm(!) Clarke and the excellent Mike Weatherford — I might be losing sleep, especially Clarke, whose gossip beat would surely be coveted by Jabba the Gutt. Heck, even award-winning film critic Christopher Lawrence might have cause for worry, since work must be found for Leach’s Mini-Me, Don Chareunsy. The Adelson Era has already seen a decimation of the R-J‘s best writers and it would cause for protest if Weatherford, whose Cult Vegas is one of the absolute must-reads on Sin City and who brings a valuable historical perspective to his criticism, were to be a casualty of this latest blunder.
*“In business, if you don’t adjust, you wither away.” Such are the words of Maryland Live President Rob Norton, explaining the decision to invest $200 million in the already-successful casino, in a preemptive strike at MGM National Harbor. In addition to a convention center, Cordish Gaming will be adding a concert hall and a day spa. While Norton is conceding the loss of some novelty-driven business to National Harbor, he’s also 
voicing confidence that he can recapture any strays from Maryland Live fold. The casino has already shrugged off a challenge from Horseshoe Baltimore, but MGM National Harbor may be a different proposition. Casino analyst James Karmel tells the Washington Post, “There’s definitely a significant number of Maryland Live players who are coming from the Washington, D.C., area, the Maryland suburbs and Northern Virginia who will probably find it more convenient to go play at National Harbor when it opens. It is very hard to quantify that. It might be 10 percent, it might be 20 percent.”
Maryland Live prevails in the arms race, with 3,923 slots and 200 table games to MGM’s 3,600 and 140, respectively. However, MGM may have the tactically superior location, to say nothing of a more powerful loyalty program. It’s definitely been staying on message that it’s about a lot more than gambling, a perception difference with which Maryland Live must try to keep pace. Penn National Gaming, meanwhile, has ditched Rosecroft Raceway, which was never much more than a catspaw to try and get a gaming license in Prince George’s County, a race it lost to MGM.
* Although stymied in Florida, the Poarch Band of Creek Indians is on the march. It’s purchased Margaritaville Casino in Bossier City, for an undisclosed sum. The purchase augments the Poarch Band’s lucrative Class II gaming facilities in Alabama. The deal puts veteran casino executive Paul Alanis out of a job, but he put the best face on it, saying, “I am extremely supportive of this transaction as I believe the Poarch Creek will continue our philosophy of quality customer service and their ownership will be of great long term benefit to our employees, our customers and the community.”
Did the RJ hire The Leech’s ghostwriter as well? The guy is a hack and has been for years.
The site of the Riv does make sense for a stadium, as in several cities a stadium is part of a convention center complex. San Diego’s proposed new stadium would be part of a convention center as well. These stadiums can be used as exhibition space as well, which gives those convention centers a leg up on the competition.
The Poarch Band are really putting together a sizable gaming empire. They advertise their Wind Creek properties fairly heavily on TV here in Atlanta (Whereas Caesars and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee have long opted for billboards and many of their promote both Harrah’s properties in North Carolina.). They’re one of the groups that has come out in opposition to casinos in Georgia because they don’t want to lose their honey pot (Although the new Harrah’s Cherokee Valley Casino is probably affecting them since it’s slightly closer to Atlanta and is a Class III casino as opposed to Class II [Although the Poarch Band is trying to get the State of Alabama to negotiate a compact with them that would allow them to operate Class III gaming and also help bail the state out financially.].).