Vegas Is Changing, and Diehards Won't Like It

Las Vegas is having a rough year, with "practically every conceivable indicator tracking tourism ... flashing warning signs," writes Luke Winkie at Slate. Well, except for one indicator. Casino revenues keep rising, suggesting the city is making more money from fewer people. Winkie sets out to understand what's going on by visiting the city, playing at its tables, and talking to experts and tourists alike. He finds that Vegas isn't the same place it was even a decade ago, when he visited and had a blast for $200 worth of chips. "What's ailing Vegas might be harder to quantify than any material factor—closer to spiritual rot than pure economic tumult," writes Winkie. The lore of Vegas being a "mecca of cheap, dirty pleasures," where you always seemed to get your money's worth even if you lost at the casinos, is withering.

For one thing, tables that once offered relatively friendly odds now lean heavily toward the house: triple-zero roulette wheels that bump up the casino's edge, blackjack payouts shaved from the traditional 3-to-2 down to 6-to-5, and minimum bets raised from $5 to $25 or more. Essentially, cheap games that let modest bankrolls last for hours have largely vanished from the Strip. Layer on endless hotel and booking fees, and it's easy to see why some visitors feel less like guests and more like revenue streams. You might think that a city that has long relied on budget travelers might go in the opposite direction, but, alas, "like so many other pleasures of modern life, Las Vegas is increasingly becoming a city financed by private equity," writes Winkie.

As one industry watcher puts it, the "casinos on the Strip are no longer being driven by personalities at leadership." It's all about "corporate politics" now, says Andrew Woods of the Center for Business and Economic Research at UNLV. "Why wouldn't the resort industry find a way to maximize shareholder value by nickel-and-diming their consumers?" Read the full story, in which Winkie surprises even himself by turning his former $200 stake into $900.