“This was the most painful Golden Week holiday for Macau.”
—Fong Kin Fu, Macau business leader, on the dismal tourism numbers in the SAR during the October holiday, due to new Covid cases
“You take a step, a foot off the patio, which is 12 inches, and it’s illegal. So there has to be a geofence that cuts off the ability to make a wager from the patio to the street.”
—Brian Vasile, owner, Grand Central, a bar in Washington, D.C. that just got the district’s first Class B sports betting license this month
“If you look at where we put our chips, it’s on those media partnerships, it’s on the investment in our technology, and I think we’ll approach customer acquisition in a very different way, really driving omnichannel.”
—Lee Fenton, Bally’s CEO, on his strategy to enter the sports betting market without “spending $200 million dollars a quarter on above-the-line advertising”
“If you were the person responsible for looking at this over time and you didn’t identify it, it’s one of two things: you’re either incredibly bad at your job, or there’s some other reason that this hasn’t been picked up.”
—Cameron Watts, former financial crime investigator in Australia, on Star Entertainment’s alleged practice of welcoming gamblers with criminal ties, provided they spent a lot of money
“A lot of folks were doing something for years, told they couldn’t do that during Covid, so they went back to school or changed paths. I think there’s a lot of people, as it relates to the face-to-face public services jobs, who frankly just don’t feel comfortable. They aren’t willing to roll that dice.”
—Oliver Cooke, associate economics professor at New Jersey’s Stockton University, on labor shortages in the hospitality industry
“When Steve said, ‘We really want you here,’ we jumped all over that.”
—Steve Hatchell, CEO, National Football Foundation, on working with the LVCVA’s Steve Hill to bring a college football Hall of Fame dinner to Las Vegas
“This is going to be a fun chance for me to talk about the sports I love.”
—Pete Rose, all-time MLB hit leader, on a new sports betting podcast. Rose was banned from baseball for betting on the games
“Last night when we were watching a baseball game, DraftKings was on every single inning down in the right-hand corner. And they pushed it and pushed it and pushed it, every single inning that we watched of the game last night.”
—Brad Hill, Massachusetts Gaming Commission, on the ubiquity of sports betting ads
“Greyhound racing is dead or dying. It’s where cockfighting was a couple decades ago. But the Oregon Racing Commission is propping up this dying industry, and it’s breaking its own rules in the process.”
—Carey Theil, executive director of animal rescue group Grey2K, criticizing the Oregon Racing Commission for allowing dog racing
