Are online casinos and legalized sports betting killing Vegas?

Is the House still winning? The news about Las Vegas tourism has not been stellar as of late, with the city recording drops in visitors, hotel room occupancy, and convention bookings in September compared to the same month last year. Is the downswing due to Trump policies driving away foreign tourists, inflated prices for coffee and cocktails, or a public gravitating to online gambling and sports betting?

We spoke to Alan Feldman, the Director of Strategic Initiatives for UNLV's International Gaming Institute, about what’s going on. Feldman, a veteran of the gambling industry who works on responsible gaming initiatives, believes the slump is a blip, explaining that the third quarter is typically slow for Sin City. While he acknowledges the sobering statistics, he sees them as not exclusive to Vegas. Feldman also views the growth of online casinos and the increasing legalization of sports betting as a boon, not a threat, to the city — here's why:

Online gaming now accounts for 30 percent of all commercial gaming revenue, up from 13 percent in 2021. Lately, there’s been lots of talk about the softening Vegas economy — is online gaming contributing to that?

The "softening in the economy" is cyclical, annual, and not at all unusual. July, August, the third quarter generally is always the softest quarters of the year. There was a downturn in tourism across the country, frankly, every market was hit, and Las Vegas was not any greater than any of the others. 

That said, the impact of sports betting around the country has had absolutely zero impact in Las Vegas other than there are some people, now that sports betting is legal in their home state, thinking, Let’s go to Vegas. And the companies here are some of the bigger participants in it; MGM is probably the biggest, Caesars is also involved, Penn is involved. With their sports betting apps, they’re also getting a chance to market their properties not just in Vegas, but anywhere. So [the growth of legal online gaming and sports betting] has been at worst, neutral; it hasn’t been an uptick for every single company, but now we have FanDuel sportsbooks and DraftKing sportsbooks in some of the independent hotels. 

I would challenge anyone who starts talking about the incredible growth of sports gambling, because the only thing you can measure since 2018 is the incredible growth of legalized sports gambling. We don’t know if [Vegas has] 20 percent of the sports gambling market or 80 percent. It certainly isn’t 100 [percent]. There are still people absolutely accustomed to calling a bookie. Plus, an unknown amount of gambling activity simply goes on between friends. Sports betting has been everywhere; you just haven’t seen it. I’m not suggesting we ignore it. It does make a difference — we’re now validating behavior that has gone on for decades, and actually, more than a century [in the U.S.]. The Mayans were engaged in sporting activities that people were wagering on thousands of years ago.

Do you see a difference between the growth of legalized sports gaming and people playing blackjack or poker in an online casino?

Yes, I think they’re different. I don’t know if they’re always the exact same customer in the sense that sports bettors tend to gamble on more than one type of activity; they’re probably more likely to play poker online or with friends. It wouldn’t be surprising to learn that they occasionally go to an online casino. The folks interested in online casinos may or may not be sports bettors, and I haven’t yet seen a deep analysis into the interrelationships.

I imagine companies in the online gaming space prefer in-person gamblers so they can also spend money on food, entertainment, and hotel rooms.

I don’t think they look at it quite that way, as in whether they prefer one or the other. I think they prefer access to both; to not to get cut out of activity in a given market. MGM’s CEO has discussed seeing a measurable increase in visitors to Las Vegas who became interested in the destination after being introduced to it through online gaming. And MGM, specifically, is doing something now that I think is fascinating; they have a TV studio at the MGM Grand, and they are broadcasting gambling into foreign markets where it’s legal. These are folks in other countries trying to capture a bit of the Vegas experience and when they next travel, I think Vegas is going to be on their list. It’s not an automatic thing, but it’s a nice way of introducing them to the idea [of in-person gaming].

The investment in the studios — is that part of the reason why big casino operators like MGM and Caesars don’t allow YouTubers to record at their properties?

We’ve been doing some work here, looking at slot influencers and what impact they are having. I have a student who, through a grant from ESPN, is going to look at online sports betting influencers — who are they, how do we look at them, should we group them in a particular way, how do we understand the kind of information they’re offering their viewers, and what impact it’s having. The jury’s out a bit. I also suspect there are some compliance questions about having someone promote your casino from within. I suspect there are also some regulatory issues that a company like MGM wants to be absolutely certain, Caesars the same, that they're completely [abiding by].

So, casino operators aren’t threatened by the growth of legalized sports gambling?

I have long believed, and experienced in my professional life, that if you put five gaming company CEOs in a room and ask a question, you’re going to get six different answers, including whether the sun is going to come up tomorrow. There is no possible way I could tell you all gaming companies aren’t concerned about this. The ones that are engaged in a broader business model than simply gambling revenue, they see online gambling, whether it’s sports-only or online casino, as a means of extending that experience for someone at home. [Online players] will have amassed points on a loyalty program and now they’re going to come [to Vegas to use them]. For those companies, I think you’ll find not only broad acceptance but enthusiastic acceptance. If I were in Reno, you’d hear a completely different story.

Why is that?

[Casino operators in Reno] feel attacked on all sides. The growth of tribal gaming in California and the growth of online gaming that they don’t have anything to do with. These are smaller operations, and anything that, in their minds, prevents folks from driving or flying to Reno, they don’t like.

I don’t know what the current breakdown is, but pre-COVID, if you looked at a company like Caesars or MGM properties on the [Vegas] Strip, 65-70 percent of their revenue was non-gaming. That’s very different than the MGM Grand Detroit, for example; in those markets, gambling is going to be a larger percentage, but [in Vegas] it’s part of a larger whole. 

What would prevent small casino operators from getting into online casinos or online sportsbooks? Is it too big an investment for smaller properties?

Almost certainly. For a property like the El Cortez [casino in downtown Las Vegas], they'd have to partner with someone to get into online gaming, even if it’s a company that’s providing white label back-of-the-house stuff; the systems that underlie these things are very involved. Those states [that allow online gaming] almost always require the servers to be in those states, so there’s a level of investment that happens with every one of these states where the technology and the workers that support that technology are there. This gets very expensive, very quickly.

Whatever impact online gaming has, positive and negative, is going to be felt differently by different companies. I suppose it’s a negative if someone else is benefiting and you’re not, which may not mean you’re being harmed, but rather that you’re not directly benefiting from that activity. For some folks, that alone can lead them to oppose [online gaming].

I wouldn’t ignore the fact that companies like Caesars and MGM, they’re taking a lot of the revenue they’re generating in other parts of the country and world [through online gaming and sports betting] and it shows up here in investment; it shows up in new restaurants and clubs and shows. It does benefit Nevada, it’s just indirect. Has anything been harmed in southern Nevada because of [online gaming]? Quite the contrary. This is an industry that has talked about the normalization of gambling for decades, and I think it’s happening faster and faster.

If you or someone you know is struggling with gambling, help is available 24/7 through the National Problem Gambling Helpline. Connect with a trained professional who can guide you to local resources by calling 1-800-522-4700, texting 800GAM, or chatting online at https://www.ncpgambling.org/chat.