Gaming and Casino Operations Management Commons^™

“Don’T Blow A Bunch Of Cash On Vegas:” An Event Study Analysis Of President Obama’S Public Statements On Las Vegas, Paul Gift, Michael J. Gift

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

In February of 2009 and 2010, President Obama made what some in the media and gaming industries construed as negative public statements regarding trips to Las Vegas. Some claimed these statements could easily be interpreted as a suggestion that companies and individuals avoid casino areas, thus doing additional harm to their surrounding economies during already tough times. In this paper, we use event study methodology to examine stock market reactions of U.S. casino-related businesses to the president’s statements. We find that President Obama’s statements were followed by significant negative abnormal returns in the segment of companies targeted more towards conventions, …

Frontline Employees’ Informal Learning And Customer Relationship Skills In Macao Casinos: An Empirical Study, Carlos S. Lam

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

This study uses qualitative methods to better understand how the informal learning of frontline employees influenced their customer relationship skills in dealing with patrons at gaming tables, in the hope of achieving positive customer experiences in a competitive environment in Macao. As casino operators need to get their employees to work after limited formal training, they might find that their emphasis on formal training might be insufficient to provide patrons with customized service in Macao. In this context, the concept of informal learning, which is determined and directed by learners themselves to further improve what they have learned from their …

The Effect Of Online Gaming On Commercial Casino Revenue, Kahlil S. Philander

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

This study estimates the effect of the online gaming industry on the commercial casino gaming industry. The findings from this study suggest that during the pre-UIGEA period, online gaming was a moderate substitute good for brick and mortar gaming in the U.S. During this early period in the online gaming market, which was characterized by loose regulation and relatively easy access, online gaming revenue is estimated to have cannibalized commercial casino revenue at a rate of 27 to 30 cents on the dollar. A discussion of this finding’s relevance to the current gaming market and the related policy considerations is …

What Is Intellectual Capital?, Mikael Ahlgren

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

The transformation of Las Vegas from the domestic center of gaming to the future global command center of the gaming industry is an ambitious undertaking. The city of Houston, Texas successfully underwent a similar evolution in the 1980s. Now recognized as a global hub of the energy industry, Houston's stakeholders often credit intellectual capital as a primary driver of their success. This article provides an introduction to intellectual capital theory and offers Las Vegas and its stakeholders some guidance for future examinations of the city's intellectual resources.

Las Vegas And Houston: Global Command Centers In The Sun Belt, Bo J. Bernhard, Mikael Ahlgren

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Apart from their notoriously hot summers, Las Vegas, Nevada and Houston, Texas appear to have little in common. Upon further scrutiny, however, the two cities have followed strikingly parallel trajectories. As a hub of commercial gaming today, Las Vegas faces challenges comparable to the obstacles Houston encountered in the 1970s and 1980s as a hub of oil and energy. The story of Houston since this downtime reflects a stunning transformation into a modern-day international city, and one that both parallels and portends a new Las Vegas. In this article, we argue that Houston provides a viable model for Las Vegas …

The World City Of Gaming, Robert E. Lang, Christina Nicholas

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

There are many routes to world city status. Most places get there by being financial, trade, or manufacturing hubs, or as is the case with the biggest and most connected world cities, a concentration of all three. Las Vegas took a different path. It achieved world city status via one key sector—gaming.

Introduction To “Las Vegas As Command Center” Special Section, Donald Snyder

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

No abstract provided.

Regulating Gaming In The New South Africa, Baby Tyawa

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

No abstract provided.

The Boomerang Effect: Asia's Casino Industry Growth Can "Fly Back" To Benefit Las Vegas, Jonathan Galaviz

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Boomerangs are an interesting invention. These remarkable devices can be thrown into the sky, for long distances, and then they do something amazing: they fly back to the thrower. Metaphorically speaking, the Las Vegas-based casino resort industry has thrown its "boomerang" to places like Singapore, Macau, and many other casino markets throughout the world over the last decade, with great success. Of course, many question whether this "boomerang" will indeed fly back to the thrower in the form of economic benefits. In this paper, I will lay out some key strategic concepts that argue that Las Vegas is indeed benefitting …

Cultural Indicators Of Internet Sports Betting Policy, Brett L. Abarbanel

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

No abstract provided.

The Evf Model: A Novel Framework For Understanding Gambling And, By Extension, Poker, Arthur S. Reber

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

There are several senses in which the term gambling is used. All have liabilities, problems that have muddied the waters in scientific research, generated conflicting legal decisions, compromised debates over ethical and moral issues, and have led to uneven legislation. Here, a novel framework for the term is offered, based on two continuous variables: a) the Expected Value (EV) of any arbitrary game and, b) the inherent Flexibility (F) of that game. This EVF model produces a classification system for all the enterprises that can or have been called gambling. It is one that allows for more measured decisions to …

Pennsylvania Casinos’ Cannibalization Of Regional Gambling Revenues, Simon Condliffe

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Gambling opportunities are expanding rapidly in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic area. Fifteen gambling venues have opened since 1996. The introduction of these venues has the potential to shift the balance of gambling activity away from New Jersey, which had enjoyed a monopoly position in the area for decades. Delaware and, more recently, Pennsylvania have entered the marketplace, raising the question of whether aggregate gambling activity has increased in the area, and whether all states have benefited. Contrary to previous research, a multivariate analysis reveals that aggregate gambling revenue among the three states has not increased with the introduction of Pennsylvania gambling …

Clustering High Dimensional Sparse Casino Player Tracking Datasets, Ross Iaci, Ashok K. Singh

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

In this article, we propose an iterative procedure for clustering sparse high dimensional transaction datasets, specifically two casino player tracking datasets. a common problem in clustering sparse datasets with very large dimensions is that in addition to classical techniques of clustering being unable to provide useful results, latent variable methods used for clustering often do not lead to sufficient data reduction to yield useful and informative results either. initially, we propose a straightforward resorting of the full dataset and then define an information based sparsity index to subset the sorted data. this new dimension reduced dataset is less sparse, and …

The Market For Online Poker, Ingo Fiedler, Ann-Christin Wilcke

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

The recent events of the “Black Friday” – the biggest online poker networks in the USA were shut down – demonstrated the necessity to make decisions about the regulation of online poker. But although online poker is a gold mine of data, until now nobody knows where the players and their money come from. It seems that the knowledge about the online poker market has not been able to keep up with the speed of its evolution in the past years. This paper is the first to shed light on this matter. We use data of 4,591,298 poker identities from …

Casino Hosting: Back To The Basics, Jessica L. Hobbs

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The heart and soul of Las Vegas has always been the casino industry. People from all over the world have traveled many miles to put their money on the line in the hopes of hitting the jackpot or just to see the “adult playground” so many have spoken of and viewed in multiple movies. In the 21st century the Las Vegas casino industry has competition popping up across the country and all over the world. These new casinos put intense pressure on Las Vegas to attract the “whales” and high rollers to the casinos on the Las Vegas strip. Many …

Perfecting The Table Games Dealer: Improving Initial Table Games Dealer Training Curriculum To Create More Versatile Gaming Employees, Bama Varsanyi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Casinos are hospitality operations in which a gaming experience is offered to guests in addition to general hospitality services. To create stable, high-quality guest services while generating satisfactory guest experiences, casinos rely significantly on the skills of their front-line employees. The initial training before employees begin to work in a live-gaming casino environment is crucial. It gives them the basic knowledge to be able to perform their tasks proficiently and deliver the required guest-service standards to all patrons during live gaming sessions. Table games dealers are the primary front-line employees in a table game operation, they receive majority of their …

The Shifting Of The Las Vegas Tourism Industry: A Historical Perspective On Management And Resort Revenues, Eden Mccallister

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Las Vegas has been internationally recognized as the entertainment capital of the world. Whether it is top dollar luxury, world class fine dining, or vibrant night life that one seeks, Las Vegas certainly has something for everyone. The latter half of the 20th century has shown the city unprecedented arenas of success, but with intense global competition on the rise, it is clear that Las Vegas is no longer the only major player in the game. The turn of the 21st century has brought a new wave of economic challenges, and though Las Vegas has adapted over the years with …

The Internet Gaming Industry For Newbies, Cory Nebel

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The United States internet gaming industry is one which, while many people are aware of its existence, very few fully understand. There remains a tremendous amount of confusion amongst the American public regarding whether or not gambling online in the U.S. is a legal activity. While most would claim to have heard reports that U.S. internet gambling is against the law, just as many people are able to quickly reference both friends and family who regularly gamble online. Through the use of secondary research, this paper will explore a wide range of pre-existing literature on both the internet gaming industry …

The Effect Of Casino Tax Policy On Short-Run Gaming Development, Kahlil Philander

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examines the effect of casino tax rate structure on investment by casino operators. Using a panel data set consisting of all states with legal commercial casino gambling from 1998 to 2009, a fixed-effect model with two-stage least squares is estimated to examine the effect of gambling taxes on firms' short-run behavior. The study finds that maximum casino tax rates decrease casino employment, with an estimated average elasticity of -0.5. This result is noted to be robust to several different model specifications and data subsets. No robust relationship is found between maximum tax rates and casino wages. No significant …

Maintaining The Profitability Of Gaming’S Premium Players, Maxwell J.H. Olson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Purpose: This paper does not seek to condemn the use of incentives for high-end casino players. Rather, it is intended to illuminate common policies and practices that might require more measurement and consideration prior to being distributed. This paper also explores and examines existing literature and findings regarding the profitability of high-end casino players and offers guidelines for evaluating profitability.

Statement of Objective: This paper targets existing policies and practices in the contemporary Las Vegas casino gaming business, separately examining the profitability of each incentive program or common practice. As a consolidated examination of such practices, this paper can serve …