This week’s gambling news comes from Sin City, where there is talk of closing the Las Vegas Strip to cars, trucks, taxis, and buses… at least a few times each week. And believe it or not, they’ve already tried it and tourists loved it! Plus we speak to poker pro Mark Seif about amateurs playing at the WSOP for the experience… and maybe more!
Hello friends! J.Todd coming to you from the Las Vegas Strip. I’m standing in front of Bally’s… soon to be the Horseshoe. I’m down here to get some b-roll shots of The Strip itself… film with some pretty girls… and cover some of what’s going on at the World Series of Poker from an amateur’s vantage point. What better place than the Las Vegas Strip to talk about what’s going on in Atlantic City New Jersey?
You know Vegas has been killing it with gambling revenue for the past several months, but finally Atlantic City has gone back above their pre-pandemic earning levels. In April they brought in about $420 million, which was a 20% increase year on year. Now what’s peculiar about this is that it was casinos, horse tracks, and online gambling… not sports betting! I mean, sports betting has been exploding all across the country for the past three four years now. But sports betting in New Jersey was actually down. So think how good that market’s gonna be once sports betting there gets their shit together!
All right, closing the Las Vegas Strip? Well, yes and no. Believe it or not it’s already happened. It happened for a few days during the NFL Draft. They apparently closed the Strip to vehicles and let people just walk and ride bikes and jog up and down the Strip… and people loved it! I gotta say the the thought of actually riding a bike, or just walking across the strip without all this traffic, is kind of appealing.
So, one of these politicians put together a bill that they’re going to actually try, if it gets passed, closing the Strip at various times throughout the week to let pedestrians just enjoy it. Something akin to say Fremont Street, although on a much larger scale. And if that goes well, they might do it all the time. Of course, it’ll create a lot of logistical problems with a lot of these properties. I don’t know how they’d solve that, but that’s not my job. My job’s just to tell you about it! So, I’m gonna get off the Las Vegas Strip, and head inside to the World Series of Poker.