NEWS & NOTES

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has rolled out a new multimedia advertising campaign with the slogan “Vegas Changes Everything.” Highlighted by a pair of TV commercials, the ads are airing currently in Phoenix, San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles and include broadcast and digital radio and social media spots. • The Las Vegas Bowl, a regional fixture of the college football post-season, will expand in 2020 to include teams from the SEC and Big Ten conferences in rotating matchups against its resident guest from the PAC-12 Conference. The expanded lineup, which will debut at the city’s new 65,000-seat domed stadium, is expected to nearly double attendance and generate an economic impact of around $50 million. Last year’s game, a 31-20 Fresno State victory over Arizona State, attracted 37,146 fans to the city’s Sam Boyd Stadium. • New York’s Oneida Indian Nation is renovating its Yellowbrick Road Casino in Chittenango with new bars, restaurants, a sport book and fresh décor. Management expects the upgrades to be completed by the end of the summer. • Madison Square Garden Co. has selected AECOM as the general contractor for the MSG Sphere it’s developing in Las Vegas in partnership with gaming giant Las Vegas Sands. The high-tech, bubble-shaped 17,500-seat arena is slated to debut in 2021 on 18 acres on Sands Avenue just behind the Strip and adjoining LVS’ Venetian/Palazzo resort complex AECOM is best known locally as the general contractor for the Strip’s T-Mobile Arena and also built Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which hosted the 2019 Super Bowl. • Downtown Las Vegas’ Plaza Hotel & Casino said it expects to complete a renovation of four floors of its north tower—a total of 112 rooms—this summer. The $15 million project includes a longer-term plan spread across the next two to three years to replace all the tower’s elevators.   • Las Vegas Sands has entered a partnership with power provider NV Energy to offset 100 percent of the electricity consumed annually by The Venetian Resort Las Vegas and the Sands Expo & Convention Center through the purchase of renewable energy credits. • Wynn Resorts has closed the Intrigue nightclub at the company’s Wynn Las Vegas casino hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. The company said the 14,000-square-foot venue will be used as private event space that can accommodate up to 750 people. • A record number of lawmakers are expected to attend the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States July12-14 in Minneapolis at the Radisson Blu Downtown. This year that number will be 38. According to NCLGS President William P. Coley II, a senator in Ohio, “While the gaming industry holds numerous conferences each year, the NCLGS meetings are the only ones where the key legislative decision-makers meet to discuss the critical public policy matters,” he said. “Gaming issues are of growing importance in every statehouse. That’s why we are setting legislator attendance records for the third meeting in a row.” • The Wildwood Casino in Cripple Creek, Colorado, June 6 broke ground on the world’s highest elevation hotel, the 104-room Wildland Hotel. $14 million project is looking at opening the summer or fall of 2020. It will be located at 9,593 feet above sea level. It won’t hold that distinction for long as Bronco Billy’s Casino and Triple Crown Casinos have announced similar hotel plans. • The Czech Republic has announced it will increase the tax on some forms of gaming beginning in January. Current rates are 23 percent for table games and 35 percent for slots. The new rates will be 30 percent for live games and bingo (up from 23 percent), and 25 percent for fixed odds betting, up from 23 percent. The Ministry of Finance plans to use the funds to fight problem gambling. • The Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida held a job fair on June 4. The casino was looking to file jobs in banquets, beverage, cash operations, culinary, front desk, housekeeping, poker, pool operations, restaurant outlets, security, slot operations, stewarding and public space. The casino plans several such job fairs this summer. • Casino Del Sol near Tucson, Arizona, has completed a 9,600 square foot expansion to its existing conference center and its sister property Casino of the Sun, has opened a new event center, the 11,000 SF Sunset Room, which can accommodate 750 guests. The conference center was already one of the largest in the state, but the expansion added a second ballroom and additional breakout rooms, which allows it to host more than 3,000 guests. The twin casinos have also added a new RV park, 151-room hotel, both due to open later this year. • The Arizona Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday announced that it had come to a $1 million settlement with New Jersey-based Betson Coin-Op Distributing Company, a merchandiser game machine company, for allegedly altering its machines to make contestants lose. The consent judgement concluded that the company’s Sega Key Master Prize Redemption Machines were equipped with an “auto-percentaging” system, which could be set to ensure a certain number of players lost before the machine paid a prize. As part of the settlement, Betson agreed not to sell, lease or finance any Key Master or merchandiser game machines with auto-percentaging systems in Arizona. • The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced it will miss its latest 2020 target for a new $20 bill by eight years. The news gave a bit of a breather to producers of slot machine bill validators such as JCM Global and MEI, which must adapt to new currency issues immediately by altering their software; and of the slot manufacturers, which must incorporate the new software codes from validators into their machines.