Bugsy Siegel
Washington, DC
Male, 36
I worked for over two years in Las Vegas as a Director of Marketing for one of the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, and in that time acquired a bit of knowledge about how casinos have finely honed the art of parting you from your dollars, especially if you're a gambling degenerate. I know a little bit about how the entertainment and F&B side work as well, and how casinos assess gamblers.
Great question. I'm not a slot expert, so take this with a grain of salt. I believe that the slots companies, like Bally Technologies, work with the owners of the rights of those companies to license the likeness/images of those pop culture icons. I believe that the manufacturers also typically work with the rights owners to design the game to be consistent with the theme - so for example, with a Star Trek slot machine might have spaceships and the voice of cast members from the show.
I also believe that some games are way more in demand than others. Years ago when I worked there, a "Wheel of Fortune" game was extremely popular. Ironically, it was initially rejected by the casinos because it was HUGE (it had a large "wheel" in the middle of like, five seats facing the wheel, so it took up a huge amount of space to only seat around 10 people when they could have put twice as many regular slot machines in its place). However, it proved extremely popular, and so every casino was scrambling to get one of them in.
I believe most casinos prefer to pay for slot machines outright and keep all the profits from the machines, but in this case, I believe the WoF slot machine it was so popular that the manufacturer could demand a portion of revenues from the machine. It's possible that the licensor got a piece of that too, depending on how the slot manufacturer negotiated the deal.
I'm sorry that you had a bad experience like this, as you appear quite upset. As I'm not a lawyer I don't know if you have grounds to take action against the casino. However, as a businessperson, you probably have a bit more sway. If you are a big customer of the casino, you could certainly threaten to take your business elsewhere. Another thing that businesses hate is bad PR. If the act was particularly egregious, it is possible that you could try to bring negative attention to the casino through the press. However, without knowing the nature of the action or what is provable, it's difficult to say.
I'm not a lawyer so I can't tell you what the statutes are exactly - but based on http://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/state-laws/nevada.aspx, I don't believe that government statutes explicitly prohibit bringing guns into casinos - but I would suspect that those with guns aren't welcome into the casinos. Security at casinos often aren't armed, and I can't imagine that guests who have guns are welcome - they're likely to make other guests extremely uncomfortable, so in the interest of not scaring away customers, I'd expect that casinos will bar guests with guns from the premises.
Sooooo...I feel like Vegas is one of those places where you can pretty much get whatever you want if you have the money. I worked at casinos that were a little more blue collar, so I don't have any personal stories that I can allude to of particular extravagance...I did work on one special promotion one time where we were giving gifts away to casino guests based on their gaming play. One guest gambled enough that we gave him a BMW 3 Series. Imagine what kind of money you have to lose in order to be comped a BMW.
One of my favorite restaurants in Vegas is at Mandalay Bay, Hubert Keller's Fleur. One of the most absurdly extravagant options is a $5000 burger constructed with Kobe Beef, foie gras and truffles, plus 1995 bottle of Petrus (worth about $2500 according to this article: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/01/08/is-this-burger-worth-5000/). That's just crazy!
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If your special keyboard lets you type 200+ words per minute, why doesn't everyone use them?I'd say you're about 50/50. While typically in an LV casino most of the money is made on slots, but some of the biggest gamblers are table games players. Slot machines are great because they don't complain, and casinos know exactly what you put in and take out of them. They are generally extremely reliable. Table games are less reliable - you have to estimate how much someone is gambling, and estimate how much they won/lost with you. I would say that if anything is a "courtesy" the closest thing would be poker tables, which don't really make much money for the casino and take up a lot of space, but draw gamblers who hopefully play other things.
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