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The biggest compliment you can give Las Vegas as it prepares to host its first Super Bowl is that the week has been pretty much business as usual.
It is unclear whether the International Roofing Convention, the Distressed Investing Conference or any of the other trade shows in town this week were aware that one of the world’s biggest sporting circuses would be here when they booked their Vegas get-togethers, but a city built for huge numbers of visitors has barely even creaked despite the unseasonably cold and wet weather.
Thousands of Canadian visitors here to see the Edmonton Oilers take on the Vegas Golden Knights could be seen shoulder to shoulder with drag acts or sat at the blackjack table, draped in their bright orange ice hockey jerseys. Just another day.
Super Bowl broadcaster CBS has taken over the pavement in front of the Bellagio’s iconic fountains for their set this week, and so the meandering tourists have a little more to fit into their pictures than usual, but otherwise this is Vegas as you know it: bustling, loud and neon, the world’s greatest theme park for grown-ups. Just with added football. And gambling, of course.
The American attitude to gambling remains confused and unclear, almost impossible to paint with a broad brush.
Many column inches this week have been dedicated to this being the logical conclusion of the NFL’s sensational volte-face after a decades-long opposition to anything remotely related to betting, let alone the world’s most famous gambling Mecca. Where players were once forbidden to even set foot in casinos, they now post content at poker tables. It truly is a new world for them, and it is still taking some getting used to.
Once the 2018 Supreme Court ruling overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act and opened up sports betting to the world’s biggest sports economy, the floodgates were opened. Now every one of the country’s major leagues is soaking wet. Ubiquitous television ads during sporting…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/super-bowl-las-vegas-taylor-124202149.html
Author : The Independent
Publish date : 2024-02-09 12:42:02
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