Ta-ta, Tropicana

What are the odds?

Bloomberg brought us a superb long read this week, exploring how the business of odds calculation has developed in recent years.

Alongside the global proliferation of sports betting and the growing dominance of live and in-play, the people who come up with the odds have had to become increasingly creative in the face of overwhelming levels of complexity.

“It was no longer enough to offer prematch odds on an English Premier League fixture and wait for punters to walk up or dial in. To meet the voluminous demand for soccer alone, bookmakers had to start plumbing practically every tier of every league in every country in the world,” the article recalls.

And, of course, it hardly stopped there. From football to floorball, kabaddi to “the Finnish baseball variant called pes?pallo,” bookies are now offering bets on any number of sports that your average punter may, or may not, even have heard of.

The article features commentary from several people who understand just how this all works, like the anonymous operator employee who told Bloomberg: “Bookies need to have something live at any point in time, to not have that would be like Amazon not having things to sell during some points of the day.”

Also featured are Sportradar CEO Carsten Koerl, and former Sky Bet trading director, Andy Wright.

The full article takes the reader on a journey from the early days of manual odds calculation to the high-tech industry now supporting bookies all over the world with their pricing.

Hot Copy fans are encouraged to view the article in its entirety, but at close to 5,000 words, it might be smart to make sure there’s plenty of time to get through it, first.

Rapid disassembly

Elsewhere, AP News brought us its report on perhaps the biggest show taking place in Las Vegas this week (sorry, G2E).

“Sin City blew a kiss goodbye to the Tropicana before first light Wednesday,” the article reports, as the highly anticipated demolition – the first to be seen in Vegas for nearly a decade – put its final full stop on the historic property’s story.

Accompanying the demolition with a fireworks display, it seems the Entertainment Capital of the World was keen to live up to its reputation and, in classic Vegas style, turned a simple step in the ongoing cycle of property development into a true spectacle.

According to the article, this now-traditional way of knocking down buildings was first initiated by former Wynn Resorts CEO Steve Wynn who, when demolishing the Dunes to make way for the Bellagio, decided to televise the event.

Wynn also took the ‘entertainment factor’ of the demolition one step further, creating a “fantastical story for the implosion that made it look like pirate ships at his other casino across the street were firing at the Dunes.”

The last time a casino on the Strip got the same treatment was in 2016, when the final tower of the Riviera was brought down for the expansion of a convention centre.

As for the future of the Tropicana’s old home, that space is now set to become a $1.5bn baseball stadium for the relocation of the Oakland Athletics.

Until its closure in April this year, the Tropicana had been the third-oldest casino on the Strip and a regular haunt of Vegas legends the Rat Pack.

According to AP News’ story, the property also “had ties to organised crime, largely through reputed mobster Frank Costello.”

With its destruction, another piece of Vegas’ chequered history is forever consigned to the past, making way for the new Vegas, with its kooky, spherical-screened buildings and new-found passion for all things sports.

While many will mourn the end of an era with the Tropicana’s demolition, sooner or later the old has to make way for the new.

As they say, the show must go on.

A Golden Week in Macau

Finally, the Financial Times reported that “Macau gambling revenues have been blowing the roof off” this month following a week-long public holiday in China, National Day Golden Week.

According to the article, Macau’s casinos represent “one of the more trustable Chinese real-time economic indicators,” as travellers from Hong Kong and China’s mainland to the gambling hub can act as a proxy for their economic activity overall.

While it is not a “clean indicator,” marred as it is by the effects of the Covid lockdowns of recent years, “Chinese GDP tracks fairly well against gross gaming revenue from slot-machine punters, while trends in property markets and luxury goods correlate reasonably with how much high-rollers on junkets are wagering.”

And this Golden Week, the results have been nothing short of impressive. GGR at Macau’s casinos during the first six days of October is estimated to be up 30% year-on-year, at around $810m.

According to additional data from Citigroup, month-to-date mass market GGR has recovered to around 130-140% of pre-Covid levels, showing that the green shoots of recovery are now looking stronger than ever in the special administrative region.

Elsewhere, however, “VIP gambling trends are tracking at about 30-35% of pre-Covid levels and are much trickier to read,” after years of crackdowns on junket operations and currency exchanges.

For the operators of these casinos, though, it looks like business is still booming, with the share prices of firms like Galaxy Entertainment, Wynn Macau and Sands China approaching year-to-date highs this week.

While there’s always room for improvement, it seems this truly has been a Golden Week for the casino operators of Macau.

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