Bitcoin Forum

In case any of the "bitcoinaires" that populate this forum are interested, the iconic casino "The Venetian" is being sold. (https://apnews.com/article/venetian-casino-sold-las-vegas-645b6166fb6fa2b2fe7ce8925773345f#:~:text=Las%20Vegas%20Sands%20is%20selling,and%20just%20about%20everywhere%20else.) The owner group Vegas Sands is going to concentrate on the Asian casinos as they think the winds are not good for navigating in the old Strip.

Even if not mentioned, this cannot be unrelated to the hardship in finances from COVID that is driving betting to a 10 year jump ahead into the online options.

Times have certainly changed, to adapt most people shifted their offline casinos to online ones and at the same time some disagreed on that and because of that their whole business did shut down.
1. COVID policies are hard enough
2. The taxation is not something that is relaxed at this moment also
3. They have to pay extra everyday to keep up with everything since maintenance fees are also not low for big casinos
4. People are naturally moving towards the online casinos since they do have a better bonus system, security, pricing, options.
5. We just have second or third wave of coronavirus at many places therefore it is impossible to open them up right now.
What they could have done was :
1. Make agreements with online casinos which are already famous that would have helped them start their business online with their name tag without any investment
2. They could have gone online for a fractions of time and added cryptocurrencies also this would've given them more options.
3. Accepted bets over web
Many things could have been done but this is inevitable.

Macau presumably? I wonder if the US government will step in to prop up Vegas if people start to think it's only #2 behind China?

I always thought the ultimate Vegas casino would be a 'Las Vegas', which is a perfect scale model of all the other casinos, so that if say someone builds a new 50 storey Volcano casino, the 'Las Vegas' will immediately start work on its own 5 storey version. I hope the money isn't drying up out there, otherwise this dream may never come true.

If the reason is because of the finances, I think it is normal to see a gambling owner sell their casino and expand to other places that can be profitable.
The Covid gives them a strong punch to limiting their business and some of them close their business for an unknown time.
But it is not easy to manage a casino with a good reputation because a gambler who visits that place will not think much about the owner's changing.
I am curious who will buy that casino as I thought that the price would be very expensive since I guess a casino is a popular place in that city.

They already have the buyer based from the OP's link above.

"Under the two-part deal announced Wednesday, VICI Properties will buy the casino and resort and all assets associated with the Venetian Resort Las Vegas and the Sands Expo for $4 billion. And Apollo Global Management will acquire the operations of the Venetian for $2.25 billion."

It is only a matter of time, and their operations will be back to normal. They can easily get back their billion-dollar investments once covid vaccine has rolled out  in most of its population. Maybe, even after couple of years, and we will see that they are  fully back in operations again.

That's quite a nice price. Imagine if all the bitcoin community would pool together their coins and go for the casino as a joint venture. All of us here could go for cheap vacations then to Vegas. I think Apollo is a private equity firm that usually invests only short term in companies. So they will likely make a lot of changes in the next 5 years and plan to sell it again.

The bitcoiner that is going to be interested on this casino is going to under a lot of pressure and scrutiny because the money that they might use to buy the casino is definitely in bitcoins and I think they have to explain how they got that money if I am right. Vegas Sands is definitely on to something because I believe that their move of concentrating on Asian casinos is going to successful because Asians love gambling and they have almost 59% of the world population as their customer if they were to go global.

I guess the question is why Las Vegas in general is taking such a big hit. It may be related to better opportunities in China due to the idiosyncrasy of the people, it could be for the on-line trends and the general legalisation of gambling in many jurisdictions, but overall, I think the new generations just do not connect with the old slogans and the "family entertainment" which is also big is being looked for elsewere.

I think the pandemic is the main reason that Vegas is taking a big hit, the lockdowns and social distancing and discouraging of tourist travels is a bad thing for the economy of Vegas that relies on tourists and businesses like casinos to generate profit and taxes.

Yes, this is the ultimate reason why it is being sold now, the maintenance cost and there is no money coming in because of the covid-19. Although I've seen some casino's already open but not in full capacity. It's interesting to note that they are looking at Asia as the prime hub for gambling now.

Perhaps majority of the whales today are from Asia, specially Chinese magnate and billionaires.

The pandemic really hurts businesses big or small, until businesses don’t operate normally over time it could incur heavy losses. These times is challenging businesses on how to survive and casinos are not exempted, the struggle continues as long as the health threat is still present in general no businesses is safe to operate these uncertain times.

I believe online world made it close to impossible for these huge places to make money as well, Las Vegas is a good place to gamble and all, but when you can do that in your underwear at home that means that you may not profit as much as you imagine.

Plus, it requires billions of dollars just to stay there in case people gamble, there are laws about that and depending on how much you allow people to gamble you have to have certain amount of money in your vaults to pay that right away if the person wins it. Hence at the end of the day, we are going to see less and less of these places and they will worth less and less, obviously it worths a lot because even without casino part we are talking about a huge hotel in the middle of one of the worlds most known places, and on top of that it is a very well known casino, it still worths something, but not as much as it used to if you ask me.

Maybe the recent pandemic shutdowns affected the business? Physical casinos might be losing ground to online gambling and crypto gambling is taking a large share of that as well.
This might be the perfect time to sell. With over $200 million a year, the buyer will need a sound business plan and a lot of money to risk. If I had 200m, I wouldn't consider it at current state of events. 

definitely, the pandemic contributed to their decision to sell this casino. as businesses are just starting to open, it would take time to recover from this crisis. and it would take years to fully recover from losses. so they decided to sell this and focus their business to other branches to cut further losses.
as many people are still not comfortable going outside, this family entertainment business will still not be a profitable one.
and i guess, the company that will buy this casino will have long years before they can see their profits. but they will get it. people love entertainment and gambling after all.

Yes, it really affected every sector, every businesses, specially those physical casino's who's really making money from gambling costumers. Just one day of not operating will cost them millions or not billions of dollars, so imagine almost a whole year. Either the owner itself shoulder the money, but I doubt it, so to cut losses, needs to offload his casino and then look for better options in this pandemic.

its so sad seeing old iconic casinos are being sold out but i think we can feel happy somehow because they are considering to transfer online  .

if they want is to continue earning more money then they are going to do the right choice because gamblers now are turning thier heads into online gambling but im not really sure if there are buyers with their old casino but if there are those buyers wont care for the money but just be glad to add the iconic casino in thier collections .

That's a pretty big name even I've heard of it. I think Vegas will soon turn to crypto and online, and they should. Leave a physical presence but make that the icon and use the real business online to drive the brand up.

Of course I know this is easier said than done but wow, didn't realize covid affects even gambling. I thought Vegas already opened up?

It is their fault too, these big businesses didn't put any money for situations like this, they put it all to expand and pay their investors so in the end their business will die. I think they could've survived the pandemic if they did what the sports league did to continue their matches which is creating a bubble, this could've attracted a lot of big money players because this means that they get to stay at the casino for a long time, or at the least tried to operate online with some of their games. Chinese businessmen are the best businessmen in my opinion.

Maybe their physical casino will not close, but they spread their business by having an online casino with the same brand as their local casino. It can help them to grow the business and reach more members to play on their site. Maybe they can add specific gambling games to their casino to have many gambling games that they can play. While their physical casino is not making a big profit as before, they will have another income source from the online casino.

There's still a lot of older people who want to feel the thrill of playing in a crowded place again. It reminds them of their youth, when in the 60s and 70s Vegas was booming place, filled with lights and sounds of slot machines. Therefore, I don't believe physical casinos will close in the next few years, but they'll keep losing money to their online counterparts and eventually more than 50% of all gambling around the world will be done online.

They didn't mentioned but the timing is obvious, casino business are affected by the pandemic, even how popular a casino is but as the protocol is strictly implemented, that would result to a limited income and probably that is the reason for selling.

That is really the source of my curiousness with these Bitcoin millionaires. How would they be able to cash out all these Bitcoins and get away with scrutiny from the US government? Definitely there would be prying eyes that is out to haunt these millionaires. I think you have to cash out a few at a time and just deposit that on several banks. Very very risky I would say. You might be a millionaire but you are living a difficult life in hiding.

There's no doubt about this contributing factor - the pandemic. Even if things are slowly going back to operations, still not enough to cover their expenditures. We don't know when will we ever get back to normal again. And that I believe, is their consideration also. Family entertainment and casinos will not be the same again, at least for years. They decided to leave this venture and go to a more profitable one like in the Asian countries.

popularity of a casino cant stand a chance to the pandemic caused by covid because it was more stronger .
 businesses can decide to stay with a limited income or move on to another areas with lesser restriction to stay profitable .
if they close and sell the casino the casino can remain the best in the hearts of the gamblers that play on this casino before .
memories was was the only thing that the covid pandemic can delete to the peoples mind

That's what I was getting at what they should do:) Keep the physical casino. Spread the business, if not even make the main focus on the online offering. Give people a visual of what they can get there, port their stuff all online. Get the revenue from there. Keep the physical location just there because it's a great great brand and everyone knows it if they go to Vegas I think.

The old people will like to play on the real casino than use the online casino because they can remind their history in that casino. I am sure the owner will not think about searching for new people because they already have their old members who stay with them for a long time. It is good to have more people or members who always come to their place, whether it is a real casino or online casino because that can increase their income. In the future, when all people familiar with the internet and they can use the internet in all places without a place, the physical casino will be closed and the gambler will play on the online casino.

The familiarity always goes with old people since some of them are not techy enough to know on how to play on online casinos and some other are skeptical about the fairness of the game that's why its not a surprise that they will choose the traditional over the online. But I doubt that they didn't need new costumers since in the first place the success of casino will be base on the costumer who comes to them to play and if they will not search for new players well maybe they will be left behind by their competitor who do some good marketing just to attract more player.

I fully agree, in todays world every casino should also switch to an online setup. Without offering their games online they are losing out on a lot of customers. It might be a bit expensive at first to get the software out and keep improving it, but especially during a pandemic as we have it right now, we notice how important the internet has become to remain profitable. For smaller casinos this might be difficult but they could make a joint venture with other casinos. And once travelling is allowed again the casinos will go back to being very profitable.

Maybe the owner understands that the current situation could be the normal situation or it will take time before we will be able to recover from this pandemic. And despite the vaccines are already available but we will not gonna go back to our old life easily.

This is a big business, lots of money needed to invest for the buyer, but if the future potential is not good, I think it's better if they will just invest in online casinos and join the crypto community.

The old people will feel difficult to play online casinos, even if they can play the gambling games everywhere they want. The old people want to meet their friends and play together in the real casino while also talking to each other about the past or anything. Maybe that is different between the old and young people who want to play gambling games or doing something by mobile.

Searching for new customers will be the casino's concern because that is the thing that can make their business grow and have a large number of members who will play in their places.

Does the market also gets worry now that one of the famous if existing this means there could be many others in line who might be just on the same path and may end up in this year on a selling note. It could affect the gambling industry big way because they would just switch the business as by closing the gambling section and turning into something else and let gambling just be move to online rather than physical casinos.

Honestly, they should probably diversify into online operations as opposed to overinvesting into Asian physical operations.

The trend is clear. Players, including whales/highrollers, are moving online to faster, more convenient, and more discreet/anonymous options as opposed to going to physical places.

When this crypto generation enters their prime years, this process will continue to accelerate.

This will be a losing bet for whoever buying the casino. The maintenance and admin costs are simply far too large to sustain over the long run - and yes, the Vegas Strip is dying as well location-wise.