Las Vegas officials say hosting the 2024 NFL Super Bowl will cost the county and city as much as $60 million, but it will be money well spent.

The NFL announced this week that Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders, will play host for Super Bowl LVIII on February 11, 2024. Applied Analysis, the go-to advisory services firm for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), believes the roughly $60 million investment will deliver Southern Nevada a large economic return.

The research firm projects that the big game weekend in 2024 will generate more than half of a billion-dollar economic win for Las Vegas.

It is a huge event for Las Vegas to have it in the city,” said Steve Hill, LVCVA president and CEO. “That doesn’t even value all the eyes of the sporting world on Las Vegas.”

Las Vegas casinos will benefit greatly from the massive influx of visitors during the Super Bowl weekend. Nightly rates are expected to be the costliest of 2024.

In Tampa, host of this year’s past Super Bowl, the average nightly rate for a four-star hotel room was $512. In Miami, which hosted the big game the year prior, average overnight rates went for nearly $2,300.

Las Vegas Sports Entry

For decades, Las Vegas has been known as the casino capital of the country. But today, Sin City is also a major sports destination that is home to an NFL, NHL, and WNBA franchise. Las Vegas could soon add an MLB team with the Oakland A’s mulling a decision to follow their former Bay Area sister team to Nevada.

No event in the US is bigger than the Super Bowl, and Vegas has landed the NFL championship game less than a year and a half after Allegiant’s opening.

“It does kind of feel like the summit,” Hill added. “We went from a conversation from maybe having a stadium, to obviously having one, to hoping we would be able to get a Super Bowl in Las Vegas.”

Raiders Benefiting Economy

Hill says having the Raiders call Las Vegas home has been a major economic boost for the region and its casinos. Gaming revenue in Nevada is outperforming 2019 levels, statewide casino win topping $1 billion in each of the past eight months.

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) said during the NFL press event announcing the 2024 Super Bowl that Allegiant Stadium has been “an economic engine” for the state. The governor hopes the 2024 event is a smashing success and prompts the NFL into placing Las Vegas into its Super Bowl rotation.

Miami has hosted the most Super Bowls at 11. New Orleans has hosted 10, and is slated to host again in 2025. No other US city has hosted 10 or more Super Bowls.

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CHICAGO – Residents in the Windy City got a chance Thursday to hear directly from the development teams behind the five projects vying for Chicago’s casino license.

The public presentations at the Isadore and Sadie Dorin Forum at the University of Illinois at Chicago are part of the selection process that city leaders are using to determine a finalist and present that project to the Illinois Gaming Board for licensure.

The city tried for years to get a casino and finally secured a license when the Illinois legislature passed an expanded gaming bill in 2019. Tax revenues generated by the Chicago casino resort will be used to pay down the city’s public pension liability.

But the city has faced some challenges just to get to this point. After the 2019 bill was passed, there were serious concerns about the effective tax rate not being feasible. That was amended through additional legislation, but there were worries that the request for proposal the city released in April would not attract bidders. City officials opted to extend the deadline by more than two months to Oct. 29 and encouraged gaming companies to contact them about the opportunity.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot, in her opening remarks for the six-hour-plus session Thursday, thanked the gaming companies and development teams for betting on the city.

“We are not going to waste this opportunity,” she said. “We are going to maximize it for the benefit of our residents to make sure that we secure our financial future.”

Three gaming operators – Bally’s Corp., Hard Rock International, and Rush Street Gaming – ended up submitting proposals, with Bally’s and Rush Street offering the city two proposals each.

Diversity and Inclusion Key Topics for Discussion

Among the topics the development teams discussed during their presentations was their commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Jim Reynolds, founder, chairman, and CEO of Loop Capital, is a partner in the Hard Rock proposal at ONE Central, said that a key to providing more opportunities for minority communities is by having an ownership interest in the project.

Equity is the key,” he said. “If you’re not in the equity chair, you don’t drive those decision to say, ‘We’re going to focus on that group of folks. We’re going to spend the money on that group of folks.’

“In our project, I’m at the table.”

2025 Target Opening Date for Chicago Casino

Lightfoot has said she wants the Chicago casino’s permanent facility to open by 2025. A temporary casino would be allowed to operate for up to two years as the resort is constructed. Lightfoot and the city hope to have a finalist picked in the first half of 2022.

The five projects range in size of investment from $1.3 billion to $2 billion. The number of slot machines vary from 2,600 at the two Rush Street projects to 3,400 at Hard Rock and the two Bally’s bids. Rush Street is proposing to offer 190 table games, compared to 173 for Bally’s and 166 for Hard Rock.

Four of the five projects would include hotels. The only one that does not is Rush Street’s Rivers Chicago at McCormick. That development would utilize the 2,900 hotel rooms in the vicinity of McCormick Place, the city’s convention center. Rivers Chicago, though, could expand and add 250 hotel rooms, if the demand was there.

This weekend, Casino.org will publish articles about each of the presentations and the impact they would have in Chicago.

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Philippines casinos across the Southeast Asia country will be limited to operating at 50 percent capacity through the end of the year.

The Philippines government announced this week that its national COVID-19 Alert Level 2 will remain in place until at least 2022. Such a pandemic response stage allows casinos to operate, but only at a maximum of 50 percent capacity of their resort’s fire code.

The Philippines lowered the nationwide alert level from three to two on November 5. That was the result of the Philippines seemingly being able to get its spike of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations under control in late September.

iGaming Lifeline

COVID-19 rendered Manila’s four commercial integrated resort casinos lifeless for much of 2020 and through this year. City of Dreams, Okada, Solaire, and Resorts World have struggled to occupy their gaming floors because of government-ordered operating restrictions and international travel limitations.

PAGCOR is both a gaming regulator and operator. In addition to collecting taxes on commercial gross gaming revenue, the corporation owns and operates its own brick-and-mortar casinos under the Casino Filipino brand.

The permitting of internet casino operations has allowed GGR in Entertainment City to climb from a little more than $1.1 billion through three quarters of 2020 to $1.23 during the same nine months in 2021.

Casinos in the Philippines were subject to longer government-ordered shutdowns in 2021 than they were in 2020. This year, the country was, at times, unable to contain COVID-19 outbreaks in the Manila capital region.

Duterte, who is barred from seeking a second presidential term, ended his Philippines Senate campaign this week. He said he will instead retire once his presidency expires in June.

Clark Casino Expansion

The Clark Freeport Zone welcomed a new commercial casino this week with the opening of the Hann Casino and Resort. The casino offers 800 slot machines, more than 100 table games, and sports betting.

Daesik Han, CEO of the casino resort, told Asian gaming media outlet GGRAsia that over 5,000 guests visited the gaming destination over its first four hours in operation.

The Hann Resort comes with 620 guestrooms, as well as golf — an amenity Han claims makes its Clark destination more attractive than the four larger integrated resorts in Manila. The resort executive says the premium mass market from South Korea is heavily interested in playing premier golf while on gaming excursions to the Philippines.

The Hann Casino and Resort is an expansion and rebranding of the Widus Hotel and Casino. Han says his family company spent 12 billion Philippine pesos (US$286 million) on the overhaul.

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MGA Games of Barcelona continues its release of specialized games for local markets with a new Spanish Celebrities slot, Pocholo. Like all of their specialized releases around the globe in Spanish-speaking markets, this game was crafted just for the Spanish national public.

Pocholo is José María Martínez Bordiú, 18th Baron of Gotor, a Spanish celebrity imbued in culture, sensitivity, gentlemanliness, and the Bohemian hippie scene of Ibiza where the nights never end. The iconic Spaniard not only agreed to allow MGA Games to use his imagery but also consented to add voice-overs and other content exclusively for his namesake game, Pocholo.

“¿Dónde está mi mochila”?

Myriad Spanish television viewers will instantly recognize the name, the face, the environs and trappings and may recall his signature catchphrase from Hotel Glam, “¿Dónde está mi mochila”? (Where is my backpack?). Pocholo now sells his own line of backpacks called Pochilas and Popacks – you can even get one for a canine friend if your companion would wear a Canpopack!

MGA Games’ newest slot is a three-reel game with five mini-games that are triggered at random when certain prize lines are activated. Each of the mini-games focuses on elements of Pocholo’s current life in Ibiza. Whichever bonus game is triggered, his trusty signature backpack will be part of the scene – on a motorcycle, simply traveling, in his home on wheels, or doing his DJ work.

See the game on Youtube here – ¡Nuevo juego: Pocholo!

The icons on the spinning reels are meant to evoke feelings of time in Ibiza with trucks, airplanes, and motorcycles on the reels in the upper game along with disco balls, backpacks, and “pochos” appearing in the lower game. The graphics are colorful and vibrant, reflecting a nice summer vibe on the Mediterranean island.

Follows Other Recent Localized Releases

The game launches in the Spanish market Monday, December 13th, and follows other localized releases from the company at the end of November. In that release, players in Portugal found a slot themed after local celebrity Diego Miranda, while players in Colombia were treated to DJ In Session, a slot with Colombian graphics and phrases. The rest of the world who were not already under her thrall was introduced to a game titled B Jones In Session with samples of her passionate talent.

MGA Games has been in the gambling entertainment business for over 20 years and now has a portfolio exceeding 100 titles for markets in Europe and Latin America. Their titles are available at the sites of more than 40 operators all around the world. In Spain, their games can be found at bet365, 888, PokerStars, William Hill, and Botemania. Additional countries with operators carrying their games include Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Portugal, France, Ukraine, and Russia.

Source: Pocholo, the latest in MGA Games’ Spanish Celebrities, comes to online casinos in Spain, MGA Games, December 12, 2021

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This week iconic American singer and songwriter, Jimmy Buffet’s dreams of Margaritaville took on a new luster with the company he fronts for announcing a novel offshore casino resort experience with the unveiling of Margaritaville at Sea – a new line of casino cruise ships.

On April 20, 2021, the first ship, Margaritaville Paradise, will depart from the Port of Palm Beach Florida, and chart a course for Grand Bahama Island giving ocean goers a chance to experience the ultimate in escapism entertainment made famous in Buffet’s Bahama-imbued songs that still resonate with fun seekers today.

Adding to the company’s announcement was Buffet himself. The performer of such songs as Wasting Away Again in Margaritaville, Cheeseburger in Paradise, and Come Monday said: “To me, the only thing better than being on a beach by the ocean, is to be on the ocean. Now you can follow in our wake,”

Ten Decks with 658 Cabins

The company’s flagship Margaritaville Paradise was formerly known as Grand Classica, prior to its rebranding from Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line and multi-million dollar refurbishment. The vessel will feature 658 cabins spread over 10 passenger decks with various stateroom tiers, all accoutered in the casual-luxe style the brand has become famous for with colors influenced by her environment of sand, sea, and sky accented with subtle nautical details to differentiate it and create an entirely new experience for those who take a sort of home comfort in the land-based resort iterations of Buffet’s living meme.

John Cohlan, CEO of Margaritaville said: “Margaritaville at Sea will be a new, exciting, and fun way for guests to escape and vacation in Margaritaville.

“From oceans to lakes, Margaritaville has an organic tie to the water and with Margaritaville at Sea, we’re able to put our iconic lifestyle, resort experiences, and elevated service directly on the sea. We look forward to seeing guests on, and in, Paradise.”

Iconic Margaritaville Amenities

In-transit experiences will include a host of gourmet comestibles and beverage options. Yes, the Port of Indecision Buffet will feature prominently but JWB Prime Steak & Seafood, a LandShark Sports Bar, Frank and Lola’s Pizzeria, and the morning staple Margaritaville Coffee & Pastry Shop present other options.

For drinks and entertainment, travelers will find 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar along with Euphoria Lounge, and Sunset Bar.

In addition to the Par-A-Dice Casino, entertainment and leisure will be offered at Stars on the Water Theater, swimming pools, a St. Somewhere Spa, and Fins Up! Fitness Center, along with a retail shop, and other places to spend casino winnings if desired.

The Margaritaville brand comprises more than two dozen resorts and hotels; two casino gaming properties; RV resorts, and over 60 food and beverage venues in addition to vacation clubs, real estate communities, and several lifestyle products. Readers can learn more about Margaritaville at Sea, by visiting margaritavilleatsea.com.

Source: Margaritaville sets sail with Margaritaville at Sea, Margaritaville Blog, December 8, 2021

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