Las Vegas Sands: casino revenue by property 2019 Statista

EDIT - one week after i posted this, Britain's most successful hedge fund manager Michael Platt has taken a 6.5% stake
tl;dr
At-NAV new SPAC with world-leading expertise in online gambling. Worth a bet on potential to be next DKNG on the hype train

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Hi all - have had a lot of great tips from this sub. Hopefully this pays some of you back. I have been watching and researching this since 23 December when it first filed S1, awaiting the units to be listed - they are available today trading as ADERU
Positions - 500 units @ 10.42 to start. Will be monitoring and building position below $15, especially if attention starts to build ahead of units and warrants splitting and shares coming available to Robinhood.
(My other SPAC positions are OPEN, IPO-E-F, PSTH, FUSE, PIPP, ACTC, CCIV and DMYD, 100 to 1000 shares each mostly around NAV and numerous warrants and options around these.)
As ever, this is not investment advice and do your own research
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26 Capital Acquisition Corp or ADER
is a 240m SPAC with usual terms - 10$ units, 1/2 warrants. Seeking a merger in "gaming and gaming technology, branded consumer, lodging and entertainment, and Internet commerce sectors".
I think this is highly worth a play on the online gambling hype if you can get in at near NAV, based entirely on the management which is unbeatable in its knowledge of the gambling industry

CEO Jason Ader
has held director level positions at Las Vegas Sands Corp. ($42bn one of biggest casino groups in world), IGT (£3.72bn multinational gambling firm specialised in software and slot machines) and Playtech (£1.4bn multinational gambling software firm)
Before starting his own fund in 2013 he was regularly ranked Wall Street's top analyst on the gambling and leisure sector
His fund, Spring Owl Capital, is a small activist fund focused on gambling and leisure. They are probably most famous for ousting the CEO of Viacom in 2016 and a crusade against Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer in 2015.
Ader knows the gambling - and online gambling - industry inside out. He drove bWin to a £1.1bn takeover by gambling giant GVC (now Entain) in 2016, and has been driving similar change and demands for improvement at board level at Playtech
The fund mostly manages money for a select group of wealthy families, which could be a positive sign for the SPAC (although I don't know how much skin in the SPAC the fund has, if any)
Here is a video of Ader from November talking about how he's excited about SPACs. He talks about how he has been advising certain States about legalising sports betting and how to maximise value and liquidity by linking up with European companies in the space (Playtech e.g.??).
Ader is extremely bullish on US legalising online casino and more sports betting options, accelerated by need for revenue because of pandemic

Rafi Ashkenazi
One of the most highly respected names in the online gambling world, including COO and CEO positions at major online gambling firms such as Playtech and Stars Group (a world leader in online poker and casino). At Stars he led the $4.7bn takeover of Sky Betting to create the world's largest publicly listed online betting firm in 2018. Most recently he led the £10bn merger between Flutter (biggest gambling company in world by revenue, market cap £26bn), and Stars Group (Ader also involved). Also has connections into the booming Israel tech space which is interesting

Joseph Kaminkow
Special Advisor to the Chief Product Officer at Aristocrat, a leading gambling software provider and games publisher, previously Vice President of Game Design at Zynga Inc. This guy is a former video game / pinball designer who is credited with revolutionising the slots industry after moving into gambling software from video games in 1999. Regarded as a "legend" and "hall of famer" in this niche. At Zynga he designed so-called 'social casino games' which don't involve real-money gambling but are otherwise basically gambling apps (revenue from microtransactions etc). 130 patents on gambling/gaming design inventions

Greg Lyss
This is a very interesting but extremely low profile person. He was Bill Ackman a.k.a SPACman's right hand man at Gotham Capital. Ackman respected him so much that when Ackman set up a personal hedge fund to invest the Ackman family's money, he put Lyss in charge of it. To repeat - Bill Ackman thinks this guy is such a good investor and trustworthy that he put him in charge of investing his family's money. Don't know anything more about him, but I like this association with Ackman, which suggests to me some integrity around management of this SPAC, especially as the gambling world can be very murky.
The other member of the team is the CFO of SpringOwl with 20+ years' hedge fund experience and not notable (although clearly competent)

Thesis / potential targets
Based on the above experience and many public comments by Ader over the past year, I would be very surprised if ADER is not looking to merge with an online gambling technology provider / existing online betting website / social casino app / possibly a supporting technology provider
They are activist inventors, and specifically say in the IPO prospectus that they could look for businesses that can benefit from turnaround or are not being run well. I speculate that their deep knowledge of the European / global online gambling industry means they have a target in mind that they think would benefit from their expertise and US liberalisation of gambling legislation.

1) Ader believes the listing of UK-listed gambling companies in US is immediately big in terms of market cap because of the premium on online gambling stocks in US. He has pitched DraftKings to takeover Playtech and called on Playtech to spin off non-core business. This makes me wonder if he would spin off some element of Playtech to list in US to cash in on gambling hype.
This might be Finalto.com / TradeTech which is an online financial platform owned by Playtech. Playtech has been trying to sell this for 200 - 240m since August so it fits. This company provides liquidity and trading to brokerages and runs markets.com a trading site. I wouldn't be that excited although apparently the business has been booming during COVID and there could be a decent pop just on fintech hype.

2) This could be a 'picks and shovel' type data/B2B betting software play a la DMYD, or something like e.g. Israel based CRM software Optimove which works with some of biggest online gambling cos and has links to Ashkenazi. This would be interesting but probably not a huge pop

3) Possibly - given Ader's links to Sands - an online gambling tie-up with one of the big Vegas casinos who are desperate to get into the online betting space (see MGM's attempt to buy Entain for $8bn last week). Interestingly, Sands' owner Sheldon Adelson, previously a major opponent of online betting, has just died. Ader predicted a few months ago that Sands would be moving in this direction.

“There’s no stopping online gaming,” Ader said [before Adelson's death]. “(Las Vegas Sands’) initiatives to stop online gaming, at this stage, are largely historic. There hasn’t been a lot of spending recently to do that, especially post-pandemic.”
“I think the company will see the value created by DraftKings and FanDuel and Penn (National) Gaming and others. They’re not foolish,” Ader added. source

4) Ader is very confident that Macau will legalise online gambling in next year or two. Sands is big in Macau, the biggest gambling market in the world. A SaaS-type product positioned to capitalise on Asian gambling would be MASSIVE - at present however, China's attitude to gambling and local regulations mean this is unlikely

5) I also wonder if they might try to take legitimate one of the offshore bookmakers with big customer databases and brand recognition but which have been grey-area/illegal under US gaming legislation. For example, Five Dimes recently announced a settlement with the FBI to attempt to transition into newly legalised US markets. This might have the most hype potential

Potential upside
This is entirely a play on management experience and the meme factor / hype around online gambling in the US. I think if they pick a good target - which given their experience and connections seems likely - and get the right publicity and attention from retail investors looking for the next DKNG this could easily 3x and maybe 5-6x if on DKNG-type hype levels.
There is currently little spotlight on this and it is a good time to get in at NAV

Potential Downside

Ader has been vocal that he thinks US online betting is overvalued and in a bubble - why is he starting his own SPAC in the space then? Does he just want to cash in while the hype is at all-time high or does he have a legitimate business goal?
If he just wants to dump a part of Playtech which he does not like onto retail investors, this is a bad deal.
Other targets could be e.g. hotel industry or other leisure sector which would be zero sexiness to retail. Given Ashkenazi and Kaminkow's background this seems unlikely though
Usual SPAC caveats apply about potential difficulty finding a target, locking up your money for unspecified period of time, and the fact I may have completely misread the potential and my above thesis might be totally wrong

TEKK - Tekkorp Digital Acquisition Corp: Who's Who of Gaming Mgmt Teams!

Team has been involved in a substantial number of the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming industries’ most significant merger and acquisition transactions, holding key positions at, and transacting with Scientific Games Corp, Inspired Gaming Group, FOX Bets, Ocean Casino Resort, Resorts International Holdings, PokerStars, DraftKings, Mohegan Sun, Caesars Entertainment Corporation, Harrah’s Entertainment, Tropicana Entertainment, Inc., TSG/Sky Betting & Gaming, Facebook, Inc, Wynn Resorts, Dubai World/MGM Resorts
Here's all the Bios. These guys are stellar! TEKK closed at $10.30 today. Still cheap!
If you don't like to read... you don't like to make money!!!!
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Matthew Davey — Chief Executive Officer and Director
Mr. Davey has over 25 years of experience within the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming ecosystems, as well as experience in the public sector. He is an experienced public company executive officer and board member. He has served in executive management positions across the gaming technology arena. Over the course of Mr. Davey’s career, he oversaw more than ten mergers and acquisitions and over $1.2 billion in debt and equity capital raised to support the companies he has led.
Most recently, Mr. Davey was Chief Executive Officer of SG Digital, the Digital Division of Scientific Games Corp. (“Scientific Games”) (Nasdaq: SGMS). SG Digital was established following the purchase by Scientific Games of NYX Gaming Group Limited (“NYX”) (formerly TSXV: NYX), where Mr. Davey served as Chief Executive Officer and Director. The NYX acquisition provided Scientific Games with a vehicle to significantly accelerate the scale and breadth of its existing digital gaming business, including the strategic expansion into sports betting. In his capacity as Chief Executive Officer of NYX, Mr. Davey developed and implemented a corporate strategy that generated strong revenue growth. Mr. Davey shaped company strategy to focus on digital gaming supplier platforms and content that provided various gaming operators with the underlying gaming and sports betting systems for their online gaming business. In 2014, Mr. Davey oversaw the initial public offering of NYX, and his experience in the digital media, sports, entertainment, leisure and gaming industries helped NYX recognize momentum as a public company. After the public offering, from 2014 to 2018, Mr. Davey oversaw seven acquisitions which helped establish NYX as one of the fastest growing global B2B real-money digital gaming and sports betting platforms. These acquisitions included:
• OpenBet: In 2016, NYX completed the $385 million acquisition of OpenBet. This was one of the more complex and transformative acquisitions that Mr. Davey oversaw at NYX. Through securing co-investments from William Hill (LSE: WMH), Sky Betting & Gaming and The Stars Group (formerly Nasdaq: TSG, TSX: TSGI), Mr. Davey was able to get the acquisition from Vitruvian Partners completed successfully, winning the deal against much larger and well capitalized competitors. By combining two established and proven B2B betting and gaming suppliers, NYX was well positioned to provide customers with exciting player-driven solutions across all major product verticals and distribution channels. This allowed NYX to become the leading B2B omni-channel sportsbook platform in the market and the supplier to over 300 gaming operators globally with an extensive library of desktop and mobile game titles, including more than 700 on NYX platforms and more than 2,000 on the OpenBet platform.
• Cryptologic/Chartwell: In 2015, NYX completed the $119 million acquisition of Cryptologic and Chartwell. The acquisition provided NYX with more than 400 titles of additional leading gaming content, a broader customer base, and direct exposure to PokerStars and Intercasino, part of the Gamesys Group (LSE: GYS) — two of the world’s largest online casino offerings.
• OnGame: In 2014, NYX completed the distressed acquisition of OnGame, a premier poker content, platform and service provider. This acquisition provided NYX with one of the best poker products in the industry, access to several regulated jurisdictions, and a valuable talent pool that was instrumental in the growth of NYX. The addition of OnGame further established a path for NYX to continue its growth in both European and U.S. markets.
These acquisitions, together with meaningful organic growth, increased NYX’s revenue from $24 million in 2014 to $184 million annualized in 2017. During that time, Mr. Davey helped build NYX to have over 200 customers in the global gaming industry and a team of 1,000 employees. Mr. Davey’s success at NYX ultimately led to its sale to Scientific Games for $631 million in 2018.
Mr. Davey joined Next Gen Gaming, the predecessor to NYX, in 2000 as the Vice President of Technology, was appointed as Executive Director in 2003 and named Chief Executive Officer in 2005. Prior to that, he was the Senior Consultant for Access Systems, a company that specializes in the provision of back-end software for licensed online casinos. Prior to joining Access, Mr. Davey worked for the Northern Territory Government specializing in matters pertaining to the internet and e-commerce along with roles in the Department of Racing and Gaming. Mr. Davey received a Bachelor of Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Northern Territory University, Australia (also known as Charles Darwin University).
Robin Chhabra — President
Mr. Chhabra has been at the forefront of corporate acquisition activity within the digital gaming landscape for over a decade. His prior experience includes leading corporate strategy, M&A, and business development at two of the global leaders in the digital gaming industry, The Stars Group (“TSG”) and William Hill, and a leading supplier, Inspired Gaming Group (Nasdaq: INSE). Mr. Chhabra served on the Group Executive Committees of each of these companies. From 2017 to May 2020, Mr. Chhabra served as Chief Corporate Development Officer at TSG and, from 2019 to August 2020, he also served as the Chief Executive Officer of Fox Bet, a leading U.S. online gaming business which is the product of a landmark partnership between TSG and FOX Sports, a transaction which he led. During that period, Mr. Chhabra led several transactions which transformed TSG into the largest publicly listed online gambling operator in the world by both revenue and market capitalization and one of the most diversified from a product and geographic perspective with revenues of over $2.5 billion. Mr. Chhabra’s M&A experience is extensive and covers multiple global geographies across the digital gaming value chain and includes the following:
• TSG/Flutter Entertainment Merger: In 2019, Mr. Chhabra led the TSG M&A team that was responsible for TSG’s $12.2 billion merger with Flutter Entertainment (LSE: FLTR). The merger between TSG and Flutter Entertainment is the largest transaction in the digital gaming industry to date. The combination created the largest publicly listed online gaming company with approximately 13 million active customers and leading product offerings, which include sports betting, online casino, fantasy sports and poker. The combined entity includes some of the world’s most iconic digital gaming brands such as Fanduel, Fox Bet, Sky Bet, PaddyPower, Betfair, PokerStars and SportsBet. TSG/Flutter Entertainment is one of the most geographically diverse digital gaming and media companies with leading positions in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany and Georgia.
• TSG/Sky Betting and Gaming (“SBG”): In 2018, Mr. Chhabra led the acquisition of SBG from CVC Capital Partners and Sky plc, Europe’s largest media company, in a transaction valued at $4.7 billion. At the time of the acquisition SBG was the largest mobile gambling operator in the United Kingdom and one of the fastest growing of the major operators having doubled its online market share in three years. The acquisition of SBG provided TSG with (a) greater revenue diversification, significantly enhanced expertise and exposure to sports betting just ahead of the judicial overturn of The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) by the U.S. Supreme Court, (b) a leading position within the United Kingdom, the world’s largest regulated online gaming market, (c) improved products and technology as a result of the addition of SBG’s innovative casino and sports book offerings and a portfolio of popular mobile apps, and (d) expertise in deeply integrating sports betting with leading sports media companies, positioning TSG to create more engaging content, deliver faster growth and decrease customer acquisition costs.
• William Hill (LSE: WMH): At William Hill, from 2010 to 2017, Mr. Chhabra served as Group Director of Strategy and Corporate Development where he led several transactions which contributed to William Hill’s transformation from a land-based gambling operator in the United Kingdom to a leading online-led international business. Mr. Chhabra led William Hill’s entry into the U.S. sports betting and online lottery markets with the acquisition of four businesses, including the simultaneous acquisitions of three U.S. sportsbooks, Cal Neva, American Wagering and Brandywine Bookmaking, in 2011 for an aggregate purchase price of $55 million. These businesses ultimately led William Hill to achieve a leading position in the U.S. sports betting market with a market share of 24% in 2019. Additionally, Mr. Chhabra played a key role in structuring William Hill’s successful joint venture with PlayTech Plc (LSE: PTEC) in 2008. The combined entity created one of the largest online gambling businesses in Europe at the time of its formation and led to William Hill’s buyout of Playtech’s interest for $637 million in 2013. Prior to the transaction, William Hill had struggled in its attempt to establish a strong online gaming platform and a meaningful presence outside the United Kingdom.
Mr. Chhabra has also successfully completed four transactions worth over $1.2 billion in Australia, the world’s second largest regulated online gambling market, and various partnerships in Asia. Additionally, he completed several technology and media related transactions, including William Hill’s investment in NYX, where he worked with Mr. Davey on NYX’s transformational acquisition of OpenBet.
Prior to working in the gaming sector, Mr. Chhabra was an equities analyst and a management consultant. Mr. Chhabra received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Eric Matejevich — Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Matejevich is a seasoned gaming executive with extensive experience in both the online gaming and traditional casino industries. From February to August 2019, he served as Trustee and Interim-Chief Executive Officer of Ocean Casino Resort (“Ocean”) (formerly Revel Casino, which had a construction cost of $2.4 billion) in Atlantic City, where he successfully led the management team through an ownership change and operational turnaround effort. Over the course of seven months, Mr. Matejevich managed to reduce the property’s weekly cash burn of $1.5 million to an annualized cash flow run rate in excess of $20 million.
Prior to Ocean, from 2016 to 2018, Mr. Matejevich served as the Chief Financial Officer of NYX. At NYX, he focused his efforts on integrating the company’s many acquisitions and multiple debt refinancings to simplify its capital structure and provided liquidity for growth initiatives. Additionally, Mr. Matejevich was instrumental to the executive team that sold NYX to Scientific Games for $631 million.
Prior to NYX, from 2004 to 2014, Mr. Matejevich was the Chief Financial Officer of Resorts International Holdings and later, from 2011, also the Chief Operating Officer of the Atlantic Club Casino, a property under the Resorts International Holdings umbrella — a Colony Capital (NYSE: CLNY) entity. As Chief Financial Officer, he provided managerial oversight for all finance functions for a six-property casino company with annual gaming revenue exceeding $1.3 billion, 10,000 gaming positions, 7,000 hotel rooms and over 11,000 staff members during his tenure. Mr. Matejevich led the transition effort to integrate a four-casino, $1.3 billion acquisition from Harrah’s Entertainment and Caesars Entertainment (Nasdaq: CZR). As Chief Operating Officer of Atlantic Club, he lobbied for and was successful in obtaining the first internet gaming legislation passed in the United States. The Atlantic Club was the sole New Jersey casino proponent of the legislation.
Prior to serving in various gaming positions, Mr. Matejevich was a Vice President of High Yield Research for Merrill Lynch, where he managed the corporate bond research effort for the gaming and leisure sectors and marketed high yield and other debt transactions totaling $4.8 billion. Mr. Matejevich received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from The Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.
Our Board of Directors
Morris Bailey — Chairman
Over the past 10 years, Mr. Bailey has been a leader in turning around Atlantic City, as well as being among the first gaming executives to embrace online gaming and sports betting in the United States. In his efforts, Mr. Bailey partnered with two of the largest digital gaming companies in the world, PokerStars, part of the Stars Group, and DraftKings (Nasdaq: DKNG). In 2010, Mr. Bailey bought Resorts Atlantic City (“Resorts”) and initiated a comprehensive renovation which allowed for the property to be rebranded and repositioned. In 2012, Mr. Bailey signed an agreement with Mohegan Sun to manage the day-to-day operations of the casino. In addition to Mohegan Sun’s operational expertise and ability to reduce costs via economies of scale, Resorts gained access to their robust customer database. Soon thereafter, Mr. Bailey and his team focused on bringing online gaming to the property. In 2015, Resorts established a platform to engage in online gaming by partnering with PokerStars, now part of the $24 billion Flutter Entertainment, PLC (LSE: FLTR), to operate an online poker room in Atlantic City. In 2018, Resorts announced deals with DraftKings and SBTech to open a sportsbook on-property and online. For 2020 year-to-date, Resorts has performed in the top quartile in internet gross gaming revenue in New Jersey. Mr. Bailey’s efforts in New Jersey helped set the framework for expansion of online sports and gaming throughout the United States.
In addition to his gaming interests, Mr. Bailey has over 50 years of experience in all facets of real estate development, asset M&A, capital markets and operations and is the founder, Chief Executive Officer and Principal of JEMB Realty, a leading real estate development, investment and management organization. Mr. Bailey has notable investment experience within the energy, finance and telecommunications sectors through investments in the Astoria Energy Plant, Basis Investment Group and Xentris Wireless.
Tony Rodio — Director Nominee
Mr. Rodio has nearly four decades of experience in the gaming industry. Most recently, Mr. Rodio served as the Chief Executive Officer and director of Caesars Entertainment Corporation (“Caesars”) (Nasdaq: CZR), one of the world’s most diversified casino-entertainment providers and the most geographically diverse U.S. casino-entertainment company, from April 2019 until its acquisition by Eldorado Resorts, Inc. in July 2020. Mr. Rodio led Caesars through its $17.3 billion merger with Eldorado Resorts, one of the largest transactions in the gaming industry to date. Additionally, Mr. Rodio was instrumental to Caesars’ expansion into the digital gaming industry and oversaw the implementation of new digital segments such as its Scientific Games powered retail sportsbook solution that now operates in various states throughout the U.S. From October 2018 to May 2019, Mr. Rodio served as Chief Executive Officer of Affinity Gaming. Prior to Affinity Gaming, he served as President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of Tropicana Entertainment, Inc. (“Tropicana”) for over seven years, where he was responsible for the operation of eight casino properties in seven different jurisdictions. During his time at Tropicana, Mr. Rodio oversaw a period of unprecedented growth at the company, improving overall financial results with net revenue that increased more than 50% driven by both operational improvements and expansion across regional markets. Mr. Rodio led major capital projects, including the complete renovation of Tropicana Atlantic City and Tropicana’s move to land-based operations in Evansville, Indiana. Each of these initiatives, among others, generated substantial value for Tropicana. Ultimately, Mr. Rodio’s efforts at Tropicana led to its sale to Eldorado Resorts in 2018 for $1.85 billion. Prior to Tropicana, Mr. Rodio held a succession of executive positions in Atlantic City for casino brands, including Trump Marina Hotel Casino, Harrah’s Entertainment (predecessor to Caesars), the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort and Penn National Gaming. He has also served as a director of several professional and charitable organizations, including Atlantic City Alliance, United Way of Atlantic County, the Casino Associations of New Jersey and Indiana, AtlantiCare Charitable Foundation and the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming Hospitality & Tourism. Mr. Rodio brings extensive knowledge of and experience in the gaming industry, operational expertise, and a demonstrated ability to effectively design and implement company strategy. Mr. Rodio received a Bachelor of Science from Rider University and a Master of Business Administration from Monmouth University.
Marlon Goldstein — Director Nominee
Mr. Goldstein is a licensed attorney with nearly 20 years of experience in the gaming space. He joined The Stars Group (Nasdaq: TSG)(TSX: TSGI) in January 2014 as its Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary until his retirement from the company in July 2020 following the merger of TSG with Flutter Entertainment, PLC (LSE: FLTR). Mr. Goldstein also previously served as the Executive Vice-President, Corporate Development and General Counsel of TSG. Mr. Goldstein was also the senior TSG executive based in the United States and was one of the primary architects of TSG’s strategic vision for its U.S.-facing business. During his tenure, TSG grew from an approximately $500 million market-cap company to an approximately $7 billion market-cap company through a combination of organic growth and strategic mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Goldstein participated in numerous M&A transactions and capital markets offerings at TSG, including several transformational transactions in the digital gaming industry. Notable transactions in which Mr. Goldstein was involved include:
• TSG/Flutter Merger: In 2019, TSG merged with Flutter for a $12.2 billion transaction value, the largest transaction in the digital gaming industry to date.
• TSG/Fox Bet Partnership: In 2019, TSG entered into a partnership with FOX Sports to create FOX Bet in the U.S., a leading U.S. online gaming business. Wall Street Research estimates an approximate $1.1 billion valuation for Fox Bet post-partnership with The Stars Group.
• TSG/Sky Betting & Gaming: In 2018, TSG acquired Sky Betting & Gaming, the largest mobile gambling operator in the United Kingdom at the time, for $4.7 billion.
• TSG/CrownBet and William Hill: In 2018, TSG simultaneously acquired CrownBet and William Hill, two Australian operators, for a total of $621 million in a multi-part transaction.
• TSG/PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker: In 2014, TSG acquired The Rational Group, which operated PokerStars and Full Tilt and was the world’s largest poker business, for $4.9 billion.
Through his ability to legally structure large and complex transactions, Mr. Goldstein was integral to TSG’s vision of becoming a full-service online gaming company. Additionally, he assisted in structuring TSG’s capital markets activity, which generated liquidity for acquisitions and strengthened its balance sheet.
Prior to joining TSG, Mr. Goldstein was a principal shareholder in the corporate and securities practice at the international law firm of Greenberg Traurig P.A., where he practiced for almost 13 years. Mr. Goldstein’s practice focused on corporate and securities matters, including mergers and acquisitions, securities offerings, and financing transactions. Additionally, Mr. Goldstein was the founder and co-chair of the firm’s Gaming Practice, a multi-disciplinary team of attorneys representing owners, operators and developers of gaming facilities, manufacturers and suppliers of gaming devices, investment banks and lenders in financing transactions, and Indian tribes in the development and financing of gaming facilities.
Mr. Goldstein brings experience and insight that we believe will be valuable to a potential initial business combination target business. Mr. Goldstein received a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in accounting from Emory University and a Juris Doctorate with highest honors from the University of Florida, College of Law.
Sean Ryan — Director Nominee
Mr. Ryan is a digital media and technology operator with extensive global experience in online payments, e-commerce, marketplaces, mobile ad networks, digital games, enterprise collaboration platforms, blockchain, real money gaming and online music. Since 2014, Mr. Ryan has been serving as Vice President of Business Platform Partnerships at Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) (Nasdaq: FB), where he leads a more than 500 person global organization that manages the Payments, Commerce, Novi/Blockhain, Workplace and Audience Network businesses. Prior to his current role, Mr. Ryan was hired in 2011 as the Director of Games Partnerships to lead and grow the global Games business at Facebook. While the Director of Games Partnerships, Mr. Ryan focused on re-shaping Facebook’s games and monetization strategies to derive more value for Facebook, its users and its partners, including the addition of a Real Money Gaming offering in regulated markets. Mr. Ryan’s team helped accelerate a major trend in engagement through cross-platform games and therefore the opportunity to increase users through establishing games on multiple platforms. Prior to joining Facebook, Mr. Ryan created the new social and mobile games division at News Corp, an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by Rupert Murdoch. While at News Corp, Mr. Ryan led the acquisition of Making Fun, a San Francisco social-game start-up, that created News Corp’s games publishing division.
Before joining News Corp., Mr. Ryan founded multiple digital businesses such as Twofish, Meez, Open Wager and SingShot Media. Mr. Ryan co-founded Twofish in 2009, a virtual goods and services platform that provided developers with data analytics and insights for individual application’s digital economies. Twofish was later sold to online payments provider Live Gamer, where Mr. Ryan served on the board of directors. From 2005 to 2008, Mr. Ryan founded and led Meez.com, a social entertainment service combining avatars, web games and virtual worlds. The white label social casino gaming company Open Wager was spun out of Meez and was later sold to VGW Holdings, Mr. Ryan also co-founded SingShot Media, an online karaoke community, which was sold to Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: EA) and merged into its Sims division.
We believe Mr. Ryan’s experience will be valuable to a potential initial business combination target and would provide an expanded perspective on the digital gaming landscape. Mr. Ryan received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Tom Roche — Director Nominee
Mr. Roche has more than 40 years of experience in the gaming industry as a regulator, advisor and independent auditor. Mr. Roche joined Ernst & Young (“EY”) as a partner in 2003 and opened its Las Vegas office. He was subsequently appointed as the Office Managing Partner and Global Gaming Industry Market Leader. In 2016, Mr. Roche relocated to the EY Hong Kong office to supervise the expansion of the EY Global Gaming Industry practice in the Asia Pacific region. Mr. Roche has been integral to numerous transactions that have shaped the current gaming landscape, including:
• Wynn Resorts (Nasdaq: WYNN) initial public offering: Mr. Roche was the lead partner on Wynn Resort’s initial public offering, which raised $450 million in 2002.
• Harrah’s Entertainment/Apollo Management Group & Texas Pacific Group: Mr. Roche headed the regulatory advisory services on the buyout of Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s largest casino company at the time, for $17.1 billion.
• Dubai World/MGM Resorts: Mr. Roche headed the regulatory and due diligence advisory services to Dubai World in its approximately $5.1 billion investment in MGM. Dubai World bought 28.4 million MGM shares, or 9.5 percent of the casino operator, for $2.4 billion. It then invested $2.7 billion to acquire a 50% stake in MGM’s CityCenter Project, a $7.4 billion 76-acre Las Vegas development of hotels, condos and retail outlets.
• MGM Growth Properties (NYSE: MGP) initial public offering: Mr. Roche provided tax and structural transaction services to MGM Resorts in the creation of MGM Growth Properties, a publicly traded REIT engaged in the acquisition, ownership and leasing of large-scale destination entertainment and leisure resorts. MGM Growth Properties raised $1.05 billion in its 2016 initial public offering.
Mr. Roche also directed EY advisory services to boards and management teams for profit improvement and technology related initiatives. In addition, Mr. Roche provided advisory support to the American Gaming Association on several research projects, including those specifically related to sports betting, the revocation of The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) and anti-money laundering best practices in the gaming industry. Equally, he has assisted government agencies in numerous international locations with enhancing their regulatory approach to governing the industry especially in the online gambling sector.
Prior to joining Ernst & Young, Mr. Roche served as Deloitte’s National Gaming Industry Leader and as the co-head of Andersen’s Gaming Industry Practice in Las Vegas. In 1989, Mr. Roche was appointed by then Governor of the State of Nevada, Robert Miller, to serve as one of three members of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board for a four-year term, where he was directly responsible for the Audit and New Games Lab Divisions. As a board member, he spent a substantial amount of time assisting global jurisdiction regulators enact gaming legislation in the design of their regulatory structure. During his career, Roche has been involved in numerous public and private offerings of equity and debt securities. His background includes providing casino regulatory consulting services to casino licensees and to federal and state agencies including the National Indian Gaming Commission and the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, and industry associations such as the Nevada Resort Association and the American Gaming Association.
We believe Mr. Roche’s highly regarded reputation as a gaming auditor and advisor in the gaming industry will be valuable for us and a potential business combination target. Mr. Roche is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and is licensed by the Nevada State Board of Accountancy and Mississippi State Board of Public Accountancy. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Southern California.

MGM Resorts - is now a good time to buy a resort?

The next Detroit: The catastrophic collapse of Atlantic City

7 Things I Learned Bootstrapping from BROKE AF to Millions in Revenue (And Profits)

What up peeps!
Over the years I have had companies that were funded and companies that were bootstrapped.
I strongly prefer the latter. Let's go over why.

1. BEING BROKE AT SOME POINT IN YOUR LIFE CAN MAKE STARTING A BUSINESS EASIER

Everyone loves a good rags to riches story. John Paul Dejoria went from brief homelessness to 4 billion dollars, and Guy Laliberté turned a one man street circus in Quebec to Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas.
However, there is very little that is glamorous about being broke, even in hindsight.
But you learn things.
Perhaps the most important thing you learn when you don’t have enough money is how to do more with less. This trait is literally the essence of entrepreneurship. In fact, the word ‘entrepreneur’ itself was originally coined by Jean-Baptiste Say, a french economist, as ‘moving lower yield resources into an area of higher yield.’
I believe 2pac put it more eloquently when he said, “I’m tryna make a dolla out of fifteen cents.”
Anyway, when you’re broke but you need to make things happen, you become resourceful out of necessity. You start to ask for things you wouldn’t dare consider asking for previously.
When I originally started Companion Maids, I searched around for a good Wordpress theme to build my site on quickly and efficiently. I wanted to try out a few different themes, but they were $50+ dollars each. I ended up going halfsies with another guy that was interested in the same theme, and we were able to work with the themes we wanted for half the cost. (Yes, $25 meant that much to me at the time. DO NOT let money be your barrier)
Working out a deal with him was a simple decision that legitimately made a difference for me.

2. YOU DON’T NEED EVERYTHING RIGHT AWAY

A lot of business owners are anxious. Indeed, there is a lot of anxiety surrounding the launch of a product or service. Even if you are pretty flush with cash, it’s better to consider the cost/benefit scenario for every decision you make. If you can launch quickly with an MVP (minimum viable product) you could utilize pre-sales or early client revenue to fund a more comprehensive offering. In this scenario, you learn what matters, what doesn’t, and you can use that information to move forward in a more efficient, effective way.
With each of my ventures, I was often wrong about how I visualized the business would progress. By launching with only what was necessary, I was able to avoid committing unnecessary time, resources or money to ideas or features that wouldn’t have worked out.

3. YOU WON’T GROW AS FAST, BUT THAT CAN BE A GOOD THING

Unless you hit the entrepreneurial jackpot by seeing your business go ‘viral,’ a minimum viable product with a limited marketing budget and small staff isn’t going to grow as fast as a well-funded operation. Again, this can be a good thing. I firmly believe that it takes a certain amount of time to assess a situation and determine a course of action, rather than riding a wave and seeing where you end up.
I think Homejoy is a great example of how not do things. Homejoy launched in 2012 and expanded to close to 10,000 contractors in 35 cities on 40 million dollars in funding in the space of 3 years. There were two big issues with Homejoy.

They didn’t charge enough money to make a profit, and to keep costs low, they used contractors instead of employees.
They burned so much money that they became far too dependent on the next round of funding, and after not securing it, they were forced to shutdown.

Thousands of people lost their jobs overnight. I had people that previously worked for HomeJoy that were current applying to Companion Maids, UrbaHome (another maid company I used to run) and any other maid company they could find. A mess.
Zirtual, a virtual assistant company launched in 2011 was NEARLY an even more colossal failure. Maren Kate Donovan, the founder, literally fired her entire 400+ workforce with an abrupt email at 1:30 in the morning. It seems as though she found an acquirer a few days later, but with a class action lawsuit on the horizon, Zirtual is dealing with a PR nightmare, very disgruntled staff that didn't want to come back, and a less than confident clientele.
Again, this company grew extremely quickly and depended on additional funding to keep things going. A funding deal that she was counting on fell through, and with a $400,000/month budget deficit, Maren didn’t have a choice.
Neither Zirtual or HomeJoy would have grown nearly as fast, if at all, without funding. But these companies needed just a few too many things to go right without having a proper game plan.
Which brings me to an important point...

REVENUE DOES NOT EQUAL SUCCESS, AND NO ONE IS ENTITLED TO FUNDING.

Be careful with your growth, or you might find your businesses going bankrupt more times than Donald Trump.

4. YOU’RE FORCED TO KEEP THE WEIGHT OFF

At this point, it may seem that most bootstrapping decisions are purely financial. This is not the case.
I’ll say this again, with every important decision in your business, you need to take the proper time to look at the cost/benefit scenario. Anyone can make financial decisions with some quick, accurate number crunching. However, managing metrics such as employee morale, client and employee retention and quality of product concerns are more complex problems that deserve more thought.
Some decisions, even obvious ones, will be incredibly tough pills to swallow in the short term, but the long term prospects of the company will depend on it. From the start, my early companies forced me to make many difficult decisions early on, and our ability to continue to grow quickly depended on our willingness to pull the trigger.

5. YOU LEARN HOW TO DO EVERYTHING

When you bootstrap a company without a bunch of money, you don’t have the money to hire specialists for the stuff you don’t know how to do. As a consequence, being a founder in the early stages of a company is often about wearing every hat necessary, even foreign ones, to get the job done. You may notice a lot of founder bios that say “Chief coder, event planner and janitor” at ABC company. There is a lot of truth to this.

YOU WILL MOST LIKELY DO MANY THINGS YOU HAVE NEVER DONE BEFORE, WHILE APPEARING TO KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING.

Setting up the booking form for Companion Maids in 2013 was my first time ever trying to figure out a way to take credit cards, and I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how I was going to follow up with customers after they booked. I didn’t have a team hired before I got my first client.
But we did it anyway, and it worked. The fact that I took action mattered more than finding ‘experts’ to come in and save the day.

6. YOU WILL MOST LIKELY HAVE A MORE LOYAL CORE

Behind every successful company is an awesome staff. It’s beneficial to have seasoned pros, but the ‘established’ pros aren’t loyal, and you don’t need them to launch a company. You are not likely to win the salary war without funding, so your early staff will be intrigued by perks such as advancement opportunity and the vision of the company. People like to be a part of something, and the people that will grow with you are the ones that see that vision.
This may seem a little corny, but it’s true. People like to be a part of something because it allows them to make a difference. ANYONE can be loyal if you pay above a certain amount of money. True loyalty comes from people that are able to grow in ways that are not purely financial, and it’s incredibly important to acknowledge and reward your top talent as often and as richly as you can.

7. YOU DON’T HAVE TO EXIT

This is perhaps the most beautiful realization I had after spending time in the VC world. Practically every company in that space is built with an eventual exit in mind, with many founders sprinting to an exit, much to the detriment of the company. If any of us are being honest, who wouldn’t want to go from launch to 8-9 figure exit within 5 years?
If you’re funded by outside investors, ESPECIALLY a venture capital firm, you HAVE to have an exit in mind. Of course, there are exceptions, but if you do well enough, investors are going to want to see their investments pay out around the 7-10 year mark.
Markus Persson Is Feeling Some Type Of Way
He sold for 2.5 Billion dollars. The sadness of selling!
Now, Markus’s frustration aside, he is a newly minted billionaire. Therefore, he can do whatever the heck he wants now, but this is the proverbial JACKPOT of starting a business. It is extremely rare to be in this situation, and I certainly wouldn’t base my business career on trying to hit 1 billion dollars.
When you bootstrap, you can make enough to set yourself up for a pretty damn good life, with a significantly smaller company.
The beauty of bootstrapping is that once you’re established (and you’ve fully delegated your job duties profitably,) you can do whatever the hell you want.
Vicky Virtual, my largest success, never took in a dollar of funding, which gave us full control over the direction of the company. When you’re new and still figuring things out, this can be a good tool to have. We can either build and exit, like I did, or perhaps build a company, slowly, over the course of 5-15 years, into a multiple million dollar company with profits that put you in the top 1%.
Certainly enough to live on, right?
I hope you have learned something from this post, and thanks for reading!

From Plumbers Apprentice to $100 Million - 26 Business Lessons from an Expert Marketer (Conor McGregor)

Conor McGregor went from plumbers apprentice to making $100 Million. This is not all that surprising given he is a sports superstar.
What is surprising is that he did this in MMA, a sport that notoriously doesn't pay this kind of money.
In fact, McGregor's net worth is at least 3X that of his TOP peers in the sport. And if you look at the Top 15 highest-paid fighters in the UFC, three are only there because they fought McGregor.
Conor McGregor is surely a controversial character, but there are surely some business lessons to learn from his rise to fame. After studying his career and countless hours of video, here are 26 lessons I've learned from the man himself.

Lesson 1 - Find a Need in the Market that Needs Fulfilling

When Conor moved to a new suburb, he lost his group of friends and had to start over. As the new guy, he got in his share of fights. Without a group of friends to back him up, he needed to learn to fight so he could protect himself. With boxing training, any potential attackers might find themselves getting more than they’ve bargained for and decide to pick on an easier target.
Crumlin Boxing Club fulfilled that need for Conor, and initiated his journey to superstardom.
In business, you need to find a need with your particular audience. Fulfill that need and buyers will come to you.
Let’s take boxing gyms as an example.
In a rough neighborhood, you’ll find “real” boxing gyms. The boxers here come to learn how to truly fight and even compete.
In “upper-class” neighborhoods, you’ll find more cardio based boxing gyms. The goal at these gyms are more for exercise than actual fighting. You won’t see too many sparring sessions at these gyms.
Both models are successful. Understand your market.

Lesson 2 - Find Your Passion. Try new things

McGregor and Tom Egan, while opposites, met in high school both enjoyed MMA. They watched UFC broadcasts on weekends together. It was Egan who sparked Conor’s interest in MMA.
Conor started dabbling in both MMA and boxing, and eventually, left boxing for his true love of MMA. With this focus, Conor went on to dominate the MMA scene.
In business, even the best entrepreneurs can get burnt out. If you look at Elon Musk, Richard Branson, or Steve Jobs, they are all extremely passionate about what they do.
They can and do put in the hours to become the best in their niches. When they speak, you hear the passion and feel drawn to their cause.
It’s hard to be tremendously successful if you hate what you do.

Lesson 3 - Find a Mentor to Increase the Likelihood and Decrease the Time to Success

Although they were around the same age, Tom Egan made it to the UFC first. Conor saw his pal in the UFC, and knew that he had a chance too. The impossible became possible and no longer just a dream.
In business, you need to find a mentor who is ahead of you. Mentors can help you avoid big mistakes.
More importantly, mentors show you what is possible and can create a complete level change in your game.

Lesson 4 - Surround Yourself with People That Want You to Succeed & Will Support You. Stay Loyal to Them.

Dee Devlin has been by Conor’s side since the beginning. She supported him when he was a nobody.
She believed in him.
Dee experienced all of the ups and downs on the path to fame. They grew together.
When you become rich and famous, people try to take advantage of you. It becomes harder to find true friends and romantic partners. Conor avoided this and married the girl who helped him get to where he is now.
Let’s face it, some successful entrepreneurs did not have this support system. They were doubted, laughed at even. This doubt fueled their desire to succeed.
Even so, these entrepreneurs eventually built teams which were so inspired by the entrepreneur’s vision, they eventually do build these supportive relationships.
If you do have this support system, remember who was there supporting you from the beginning. True friendships are an important foundation for happiness as you become more successful.

Lesson 5 - Intense Focus on Your Craft | Decide on What You Want and Put 100% Focus Into It

Not only did Dee Devlin give Conor emotional and moral support, she financially supported him as well. She waited tables so that Conor could focus 100% on his training. She helped him buy healthier foods to fuel his body.
Conor was naturally talented. Adding in 100% focus to his training allowed him to accelerate his skills much quicker.
Most people are juggling too many things. Spending hours playing Call of Duty, late nights drinking, dreaming instead of doing, are taking time away from honing your craft.
The best of the best are practicing. They are making sales calls. In the studio.
With 100% focus and persistence, you will eventually make it.

Lesson 6 - The Law of Attraction | Visualizing Yourself to Greatness

Conor attributes the use of visualization and the Law of Attraction to manifest his way to becoming a champion.
This all sounds kind of crazy, but the same technique has been cited by Jon Jones and Ronda Rousey, plus dozens of athletes and mega celebrities including, Kobe Bryant, Cristiano Ronaldo, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lindsey Vonn, Tony Robbins, Beyonce, Katy Perry, Will Smith, Lady Gaga, and Kanye West,.
What is the Law of Attraction?
The Law of Attraction is a belief that a person’s thoughts and focus bring positive or negative experiences into the person’s life.
Conor’s sister Erin, a bodybuilder and fitness model, recommended he read The Secret, a book on the Law of Attraction. He opted for the DVD version.
"Even when I first watched it, I was like, this is bulls--t," McGregor told Bleacher Report in 2015.
But after watching it, something clicked. Conor and Dee started using it to visualize little things, like getting the front parking spots. After seeing it work, he went on to visualize himself as a champion. In fact, his family credits the moment he watched The Secret, as the birth of Conor McGregor, the superstar.
Stop thinking small. Dream big!

Lesson 7 - Fight IQ | Get a Deep Understanding of Your Competition

In his first UFC post fight interview, he clearly said that he thought Brimmage was emotional and would overthrow his shots. Conor fully understands there is the game before the game.
McGregor’s fight IQ is off the charts.
All fighters watch films of previous fights. Try to find subtle tells. They begin each fight carefully, trying to figure out distance and timing.
Watching Conor, it almost looks intuitive. It seems that he knows his opponents better than they know themselves.
This is most evident after the Aldo fight. Video is released of McGregor practicing the exact sequence that dispatched the 10-year winning streak of the champion.
After the fight, Conor said he saw a subtle tell before the bell rang. Aldo’s right hand was twitching. He knew Aldo was going to unload a big right hand that would set up his left hand knockout punch. Seriously, watch the video below. Mystic Mac believes in the power of visualization.
Know your competition. You can outsmart them. Be faster. Have better customer service. Be good where they suck.

Lesson 8 - Be an entertainer. Stand for Something. Be Polarizing. People Will Love You or Hate You & That’s Not Bad.

Dana White knew Conor McGregor was going to be a star the very first time they met. Why?
Dana said it was his personality. His laugh.
What else is underneath this?
Conor McGregor had a clear focus to become UFC Champion and become rich and famous. He had an outlandish personality. He was witty. He would entertain the masses.
I’ve never met Conor McGregor in person, but from most reports from fans and casuals alike, McGregor is a completely different person outside of the ring.
A nice and pleasant guy.
Is the UFC Conor McGregor just a persona?
Who else had success in the UFC with an outlandish and polarizing personality?

Brock Lesnar
Chael Sonnen
Michael Bisping
The Diaz Brothers

The WWE has perfected this character. They call them the heel. Conor McGregor may or may not be the heel, but he definitely is polarizing, and he is very much like a WWE character.
Love him or hate him, every MMA and boxing fan knows Conor McGregor.
Like the greatest before him, McGregor knows that almost any attention is good attention.
Step into the MMA forums or a Facebook discussion, and you will see the Conor McGregor haters out in full force.
But guess what, his haters still buy his PPV fights - to see him lose!
If you want to be a public figure, amplify your message. Take who you are, and multiply that by 3X or 10X.
Sure, you want to be authentic. Don’t be someone you’re not. But take it up a notch.
Be exciting. Be an entertainer.

Lesson 9 - Find Your 1000 True Fans | Cater to Your Base

In his first UFC fight, Conor is seen with an Irish flag draped over his shoulders as he walks to the ring. Before he was a worldwide superstar, Conor worked to become the ambassador of Irish MMA.
In fact, as his stardom grew, it seemed half of Ireland would travel to his fights.
The UFC, having dominated the American MMA market, was ready to move into Europe, and Conor McGregor would carry the entirety of Ireland.
Kevin Kelly, editor at Wired magazine, wrote an essay called “1,000 True Fans.” The essay, a must read, states that all it takes to earn a living as creator is 1,000 true fans who will buy your work.
For McGregor, his fanbase started with his countrymen. As his stardom grew, so did his base of fans.
In business, you have to find your core supporters. The people who will buy your product. The people who will share your content. The people that love your product or service so much they have to tell their friends about it.
Find your Ireland and grow from there.

Lesson 10 - Fighting is a Mind Game | Discover Your Opponent’s Weaknesses

Conor McGregor is a master of getting inside his opponent’s head. Often, his opponents become emotional and abandon their game plan or overextend their shots.f
Many fighters talk trash. Many fighters try to intimidate their opponents. They may even come close to actually fighting during staredowns. But - they don’t completely destroy 8 weeks of game planning the way Conor does.
Before the fight with Dustin Poirier, McGregor said:
Just as he says, he defeats Poirier by KO in the first round. Mystic Mac is born.
Dustin Poirier is an amazing fighter. As a fellow Louisiana boy, he’s one of my favorites.
I don’t believe that Dustin was beat in the ring. He was beaten before the fight.
McGregor baited him. Made him angry. Dustin Poirer didn’t follow his game plan.
Conor’s remarks that this is just a game really sums it all up. After the Dustin Poirier fight, we see McGregor take his head games up a notch. The best example is the fight with Aldo.
Aldo went 10 years without a defeat. Fighters were afraid of him.
After defeating Dennis Siver, McGregor jumps the Octagon fence and goes straight for Aldo, showing he has no fear of the champion.
The pre-fight insults from McGregor are being hurled at unprecedented speed - expletives, racist comments, attacking the entire Brazilian nation. But when McGregor steals Aldo's belt, there is one moment when you see the look of defeat on the Brazilian's face.
McGregor raises his hands as if he already knows he’s the champion. Aldo, unable to do anything in the moment, mentally breaks. Maybe it was just a seed of doubt, but McGregor was in his head.
As a small brand, sometimes going after the big guys can be tough. Study your competitor. Find out what they do well and where they are lacking.
No one is perfect. Focus on your competitor's weaknesses. Fill those gaps. Be nimble. Slowly take market share by doing what they cannot.

Lesson 11 - Differentiation - Discover What Sets You Apart from the Crowd

Conor had big dreams. He was already visualizing himself as a massive star. A rich, popular, double champ at that.
How would the double champ act? What would he look like? How would he speak?
Rumors were going around that McGregor was getting easy fights. Maybe it was true. The UFC was investing in his brand to grow the European market. They didn’t want their golden boy to lose yet.
I cannot confirm this through any research, but I’m sure Conor was aware of the UFC’s plans and his role in them.
Instead of denying the matchmaking, McGregor doubles down and talks about his relationship with Lorenzo (one of the owner’s of the UFC). In fact, they even have a tradition of toasting a shot of whiskey after McGregor’s wins.
McGregor has gone from plumber’s apprentice to UFC star. His Lorenzo comments are positioning him as the employee who is winning and dining with the CEO. Isn’t this the dream of all employees?
Go back to the beginning of Conor’s Instagram. It quickly goes from typical fighter to businessman and luxury everything - clothes, cars, private jets.
He dons his trademark suits.
Conor is no longer just a fighter. He’s the guy from the rough neighborhood that made it.
He’s transcended fighter status. He’s different.
In business, marketing and positioning are the key to market domination.
Your brand, your image, your packaging, your customer service. Are they aligned with your target market?

Lesson 12 - Understand the Machine that Drives Your Industry

McGregor worked hard to build his personal brand. He built his profile, entertaining the masses and winning in spectacular fashion.
Winning fights gets better fights. But have you noticed that some fighters keep winning but aren’t given a main event? Maybe they are passed over for a title shot?
Why?
McGregor understood the game. He dove into the machine head on, realizing that putting up big numbers gets you bigger opportunities.
More than anything, the UFC organization is a promotion and hype machine. The UFC’s job is to sell fights, build storylines, and develop fighters.
Conor understands this. He has fully leveraged the UFC’s marketing powers to 10X his brand. He layers his own marketing on top of the UFC’s efforts.
McGregor took chances. He talked smack. He manufactured beef / rivalry. He won his fights in spectacular fashion, and he built his social media empire to engage his fans.
The UFC brass see this. They know his popularity is growing, so they put even more dollars behind him to promote him. He coaches on the Ultimate Fighter Season 22 against Urijah Faber (another very popular fighter). He gets more popular. He pulls bigger numbers. It’s a never ending cycle for now.
With fame and celebrity comes opportunities. Big names pull big money. Bigger purses. Bigger sponsorship deals. And other opportunities outside the ring.
What is the machine behind your industry? Determine how the big boys in your industry are winning.
Is it their sales team? Is it paid ads? Is it media coverage?
Deconstruct the winners and find your way in.

Lesson 13 - When Opportunity Presents Itself, Take Your Shot

When Aldo was injured, Mendes stepped in on 3 week’s notice to fight for the interim title.
Both McGregor and Mendes saw the opportunity, McGregor, an interim belt and Mendes the belt plus a McGregor payday,
While this happens all the time, it is a risk. McGregor was preparing for a different fighter. Mendes didn’t have a full training camp.
In business, opportunities can present themselves at any time. It is up to you to see them and capitalize on them.
“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes - then learn how to do it later.” - Richard Branson

Lesson 14 - Precision Beats Power, Timing Beats Speed

A fighter studies their opponent to understand their movement, any tells, and potential holes in their game. Conor does this exceptionally well.
In my first few sparring sessions, my biggest surprise was how fast the more advanced fighter's were. Not their hand speed. It was how fast their mind worked. They saw my punches coming almost before I threw them. They were able to move out of the way and counter with ease. They saw something I didn't see.
A fighter with a high fight IQ has:

Precision
Timing
Efficiency
Defense

So far, Conor's only hole is his ground game. Standing up, he has the upper hand. After the Aldo fight, he said this:
This quote is a great way to think about business.
Precision beats power. Oftentimes, you are competing with the big boys, the entrenched competitors, or the huge multinational corporation. They have power.
A smaller business can compete with precision. You can serve the customer better. You can offer a more personalized service. You can serve in a profitable capacity, that the big boys are ignoring because it is too small for them. Be precise.
Timing beats speed. Being first to market can help you get first crack at market share, maybe even give you time to build a moat. Yet, timing beats speed. Sometimes it is better to let the first mover establish a market before moving in. You’ll save all the cost of developing the market, and you can learn from their mistakes. Time the market.

Lesson 15 - See the Opportunity & Ask for What You Want

At this point, Conor McGregor basically gets whatever fight he wants. However, Lesson 15 flips the script. This isn’t about McGregor. It is about Nate Diaz.
After Nate Diaz defeated Michael Johnson at UFC Fox 17, he stepped up to the mic and called out Conor McGregor in an expletive filled rant.
This takes us back to another infamous McGregor press conference with reference to “Red Panty Night.”
Conor McGregor brings in huge paydays, and he says a fight with him is cause for celebration. Fighters will make more fighting him than any other fighter on the roster.
Diaz understood this. He saw the opportunity. And he asked for it.
Diaz’s first fight with Conor McGregor earned him 4X what he made for his previous second highest grossing fight.
The second fight went on to earn him more in one night than he made his entire UFC career.
Then, his rise in popularity has earned him a noticeable bump in his post McGregor fights.
What can we learn from this? Too many people can spot the opportunity, but don’t have the balls to go for it.
Ask for the meeting.
Ask for the sale.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. - Wayne Gretzky

Lesson 16 - Rivalries are Opportunities

Nate Diaz was no match for Conor McGregor’s verbal sparring as seen in several pre-fight interviews. But Nate Diaz has his own Stockton “Gangsta” style of dealing with rivalries that fans love.
After Conor shows up 30 minutes late, Diaz walks out. Diaz’s team throws a water bottle. Things get out of hand.
Rivalries can be great marketing opportunities. This clash no doubt sold more PPV’s.
Take a look at Wendy’s taking a shot at McDonald’s on Twitter.
Look at the number of Retweets. Holy crap.
Have some fun. Maybe a rivalry is just the PR stunt you need.

Lesson 17 - Do Not Succumb to Failure. Learn from Your Mistakes. Pivot.

Mcgregor lost to Diaz in their first matchup by submission. Conor analyzed his mistakes in training and particularly his diet.
He put these learnings to use in their second matchup.
Conor came back and won their second fight by decision, in a grueling 5 round matchup.
In business, we experience failures just like in life. Markets change, regulations change, and unprecedented events such as Covid can derail our plans.
You need to be okay with failure. But don’t let a failure go to waste.
Analyze it. See what when wrong. Find out how you could have changed things. Make a plan not to make that mistake again.
Maybe you need to pivot. Maybe you just need to make some tweaks. Either way, a failure can make your business stronger, if you implement the changes necessary to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

Lesson 18 - Make History | Change the Game

In the lead up to the fight with Alvarez, a promo is released, and we hear Conor Mcgregor say:
There has not been a UFC champion in two weight classes at the same time. McGregor was gunning to go down as the first in the UFC record books.
At the same time, he would make history as headlining the first MMA fight in Madison Square Gardens. It was truly a historic moment in the world of MMA.
Riches, fame. It means nothing in the end.
But, history?
And just like the story of Roger Bannister and the four-minute mile, Conor opened up the door for other champ champs - Daniel Cormier, Amanda Nunes, and Henry Cejudo.
Too many entrepreneurs are doing “me-too” business. Chasing successful businesses in hopes of making some cash.
The true game changers are going big. Trying to change history.
Truly think about what you can do to change the industry, to innovate, to do the impossible.

Lesson 19 - Leverage Other People’s Audiences

Back in 2015, Conor McGregor and Urijah Faber were announced as coaches on the Ultimate Fighter reality show contest.
The same year, video surfaced of a sparring session between Game of Throne’s “The Mountain”
Each of these appearances allowed Conor to utilize other people’s audiences (OPA) to gain additional fans outside of his current fan base.
The UFC’s Ultimate Fighter series brought in the series’ fans plus fans of Urijah that may not have been fans of Conor and gave them a chance to get to know him over multiple exposures (episodes).
The playful sparring session with The Mountain allowed Conor to gain exposure to the Game of Throne’s audience who followed Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson. He’s appeared on the cover of GQ and appeared on the cover of Call of Duty Infinite Warfare.,
McGregor has also had appearances on Conan O’brien’s Late Night and has sung pub songs with Jimmy Fallon.
Speaking of Conan, did you know 23 celebrities own shares in the UFC? Here they are:

Ben Affleck
Michael Bay
Tom Brady
Rob Dyrdek
Guy Fieri
Flea
Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye
Calvin Harris
Anthony Kiedis
Jimmy Kimmel
Robert Kraft
Adam Levine
Li Na
LL Cool J
Cam Newton
Conan O’Brien
Trey Parker
Tyler Perry
Maria Sharapova
Sylvester Stallone
Mark Wahlberg
Serena Williams
Venus Williams

Now this is a genius move by the UFC. By allowing celebrities to own a piece of the UFC, the UFC knows that they will promote the business to their following, bringing in additional fans that would not normally be watching.
McGregor’s biggest example of leveraging other people’s audiences is his crossover fight with Mayweather. Mayweather is boxing’s greatest fighter ever. Not only does Mayweather have a huge audience, this fight would introduce Conor McGregor to the entire boxing audience.
No matter your industry, you need to know where your customers are. Who has a similar pool of leads in their audience?
Partner with another complimentary company that shares your audience.
Get a story written about you and your company in your industry’s magazine.
Go where the fish are, but fish with dynamite.

Lesson 20 - Know Your Numbers | What is the Most Profitable Thing in Your Business?

At this point, Conor McGregor is the highest paid fighter in UFC history.
Yet, he is making peanuts compared to the big names in boxing.
Conor realizes this and guns for the biggest name in boxing, Floyd Mayweather. If he can make this happen, it will be the biggest payday in his career.
Similarly, you need to understand your own numbers. Where is the money?
What product lines are the most profitable? What are the least?
Make decisions based on numbers.

Lesson 21 - Negotiating Like a Pro | Keep it Win-Win, and Give to Get

How do you get the biggest name in boxing, arguably the best boxer to ever step into the ring, to agree to a fight with an MMA fighter who has never professionally boxed?
You need to understand what the other party wants. Not just on the surface. What they truly want.
What would Mayweather possibly want?

Money - Mayweather likes to spend money and is rumored to have financial troubles.
Vanity - Mayweather wants to keep his undefeated record untarnished.
Cash Flow - Mayweather wants big fights. At 43, the window of opportunity is slowly closing.

When Mayweather fought Pacquiao, the purse was split $180 million for Mayweather and $120 million for Pacquiao, according to Kurt Badenhausen.
Big number for sure. What could Conor offer? He has a big name, but he’s not Manny Pacquiao.
Money: Conor offers a better split of revenues. Reportedly, Mayweather took in $500 million with Conor only taking $100 million.
Vanity: On paper, this fight should be the least risk for Mayweather. Sure, Conor has a monster left hand, but he’s not a professional boxer. Mayweather believes he will retain his record.
Cash Flow: McGregor offers to promote the hell out of this fight. With Mayweather believing he has no chance of losing, he also retains his record, assuring he can continue to get big money fights.
Let’s face it. Conor couldn’t lose. Losing to Mayweather in a boxing match doesn’t hurt his brand at all, and he comes away $100 million dollars richer and an even bigger brand.
The secret to negotiating is to have a deep understanding of what the other party wants.
Make the deal win-win. If the other party has massive leverage or if the deal could be a game changer for you or your business, don’t be afraid to give them more.

Lesson 22 - Spend More Time on Promotion

MMA training takes a considerable amount of time.
MMA fighters train in multiple disciplines, lift weights, and do a ton of cardio. They also need time to sleep and recover.
With all this training, how do you even have time to promote the fight?
Still McGregor has taken time to make appearances, go on press tours, television, podcasts, and more.
A lot of fighters hate promoting. It takes time away from the things they need to do to prepare for a fight.
No matter how hard it is, promotion is key to becoming a big name in the sport.
This is great advice, especially for creatives. Creatives spend so much time producing work. It seems productive, but you need to spend equal time promoting.

Lesson 23 - Diversify | You Need Multiple Revenue Streams

As in most professional sports, MMA fighters take a brutal toll on their bodies. It is hard to determine the average fighter’s career length, but the 9-year rule, stating that fighter’s start to decline around the 9-year mark, is a good indicator.
This means that most fighters only have 10 years to maximize their career earnings in the sport.
McGregor has done this through sponsorships:

Burger King
Beats by Dre
Monster Energy
David August
BSN
Anheuser-Busch
HiSmile
Betsafe

He has a residency deal with the Wynn Las Vegas for his post fight after parties.
He owns digital properties selling workouts (McGregor FAST Program), emojis (MacMoji App), the MacTalk App, and the everything McGregor and MMA website, the Mac Life. All of these generate additional revenue.
Then like a true Irishman, he started his own line of whiskey, Proper 12, just in time before the biggest fight of his MMA career against Khabib Nurmagomedov. In a genius move, McGregor sponsored his own UFC fight to promote his new whiskey. The brand has reportedly brought in $1 billion in sales in its first year.
Changing markets, the economy, or a pandemic can all change everything in an instant. It is important to have multiple revenue streams to both maximize revenue generation opportunities and safeguard you from a change in circumstances such as a lay-off.
Side Hustles are becoming more and more popular!

Lesson 24 - There is No Such Thing as Bad Publicity

Conor McGregor and his team’s bus incident ignited a flurry of bad press. A string of bad publicity follows. Let's take a quick look at the Google trends for Conor Mcgregor searches over time:
There are 12 peaks indicating high searches:

Becomes Cage Warriors Double Champ (& tweeted by Joe Rogan)
McGregor vs Mendes (& interviewed on Conan)
McGregor vs. Aldo
McGregor vs. Diaz I
McGregor vs. Diaz II
McGregor vs. Alvarez
McGregor vs. Mayweather
McGregor Bus Incident
McGregor vs. Khabib
Accusation of Sexual Assault
Mcgregor Bar Fight
Mcgregor vs. Cerrone

Numbers 8, 10, & 11 are all bad press.
But an old saying by P.T. Barnum rang true.
The fight with Khabib went on to become the biggest fight in UFC history.
Now the saying isn’t 100% true, we’ve all seen bad press sink a company, but let’s be real, this is the fight game. The fans secretly loved it. Come on, he’s a fighter. We expect this.
Bad Publicity can actually help smaller brands, as it still gets eyeballs on the product, service, or person. The strategy definitely has some risks, but we’ve seen some major brands built with bad press (think Kim K’s sex tape).
However, larger brands can lose a lot of business with bad press.

Lesson 25 - Forward Momentum Propels You Forward | Choose Your Battles Wisely

After a long lay-off between the Khabib defeat, Conor needs to win a big fight to get back in title contention.
Donald Cerrone is a great matchup. It is a fight he is expected to win as he is a -300 favorite according to oddsmakers. Plus, Cerrone is one of the most entertaining fighters to watch with his stand and bang style.
McGregor’s quick win over Donald Cerrone provides him with forward momentum once again and vaults him right back into title contention.
Look for little wins. Forward momentum propels you forward, boosts your confidence, and reinvigorates your motivation.
Set goals. Blast them. Keep moving forward.

Lesson 26 - Be Willing to Walk Away if the Deal Isn’t Right

At this point, McGregor wants a big fight.
A rematch with Khabib, a contender’s fight against Gaethje, or a spectacle with either a Diaz trilogy or the BMF holder, Masvidal.
No other fights really make sense right now.
Maybe Conor will take a rematch with Floyd Mayweather or perhaps the talks about Pacquiao are true. Who knows.
Without the right match on the table, Conor decides to sit on the sideline until the right deal is presented.
Sometimes it is better to walk away and keep your stock high than to take a bad deal.

Bonus Lesson 1 - Take Care of Your Body & Mind

As an elite athlete, surely Conor McGregor is in great shape. Yet, it was a story about Lebron James that changed his entire outlook on training and mindset.
Lebron reportedly has a cadre of trainers, biomechanists, massage therapists, nutritionists, and personal chefs that have all contributed to his longevity in the sport. He does cryotherapy and spends time in the hyperbaric chamber. It was even reported that Lebron took ballet classes to help with his footwork.
He spends roughly $1.5 million a year on his body.
After McGregor read this, he knew he had to invest in his own body.
It seems he also worked with Tony Robbins, the ultimate life coach, to help with his mental state.
Work, Sleep, Family, Fitness, or Friends. Choose three.
The above is a running joke in the startup world. It is hard to juggle everything when you’re busy trying to change the world.
Physical fitness and mental health are extremely important. Keep in shape and you’ll be more productive, have more energy, and be able to think more clearly.

Bonus Lesson 2 - Develop Unbreakable Confidence

Conor McGregor exudes confidence. While all professional athletes share this trait, Conor’s confidence is off the charts even for professional athlete standards.
A lot of people mistake McGregor’s confidence for arrogance. Understandably so.
Yet, Conor believes what he is saying.
I’ve watched countless hours of pre-fight interviews of both Conor and other fighters. Conor McGregor has absolute certainty he is going to win.
Other fighters also believe they are going to win. However, you can see faint tells, twitches, micro expressions, or even vocal uncertainties in their responses. Subconsciously, somewhere deep down, the fighter has doubts. Doubts in themselves and doubts in their abilities.
This is not evident anywhere in Conor McGregor’s UFC career. This does put the Tony Robbins coaching into perspective. DId Conor need help getting his confidence back after he was defeated by Khabib? Tony Robbins would be the guy to get your mojo back!
I believe there are two main drivers to success in business:

Believing in yourself
Having something to prove

Confidence gets you on the road to success. If you believe in yourself, you’ll be willing to take the chance at greatness.
On the flip side of the coin, there is one group of people with low confidence that also have the ability to make it big - someone who is determined to prove their worth. These people are so determined to be successful their lack of confidence does not scare them away. Slowly, they become confident along the way.

Bonus Lesson 3 - Be Grateful

The one thing that surprised me in the research for this article was how grateful he is for everything he has accomplished.
Conor Mcgregor, an international sports legend with $100+ million dollars. A man that could have anything he wants. And he is truly grateful for his success.
No matter your success in life, this one is the key. No amount of money will ever make you happy. But gratitude - for your family, your friends, your lifestyle, for every little positive thing in your life that you take for granted, that is the real key to success and happiness.
If you enjoyed this, the full article can be found here.

The Six Cities Most Deserving Of NBA Expansion

Originally posted at my website at: https://www.thephoenixonline.com/post/the-six-cities-most-deserving-of-nba-expansion

Las Vegas
Now that T-Mobile Arena has been built, Las Vegas has been primed for sports franchises, with the NHL’s Golden Knights capitalizing on the opportunity. There’s already professional basketball in Las Vegas with the WNBA’s Aces, but they play in the nearby suburb of Paradise rather than in downtown Las Vegas. Despite the absolute insanity that was the 2007 All-Star Game, Las Vegas has maintained its hold as the official summer league of all thirty NBA teams. Black Knight Sports & Entertainment is actually the perfect group to start an NBA franchise, with the consortium’s first venture experiencing immediate success. The Vegas Golden Knights have quickly established themselves as a top-tier organization, which would be encouraging to the other NBA owners. Another thing that is encouraging is the major half of the consortium, the Maloof family. The Maloofs have owned both the Houston Rockets from 1979 to 1982 and the Sacramento Kings from 1998 to 2013. With an arena in place and an ownership group with sports pedigree, this might actually happen sooner rather than later.

Louisville

Louisville is such an interesting prospective NBA city to me because cities like these is where the NBA absolutely thrives. I can easily see Louisville being a team in the same vein as Salt Lake City or San Antonio, a small market that rallies around its only major pro sport. One of the biggest benefits of Louisville would be the ability to serve both southern Ohio and Kentucky. Louisville is less than two hours from Cincinnati, Ohio and an hour and a half from Lexington, Kentucky. This is another city with an arena in place, the KFC Yum! Center. Although used for college basketball, this arena is the largest basketball arena in the United States built right on the water of the Ohio River. If used by the right team, Louisville NBA could be a crown jewel of basketball in the south. There’s a strong basketball heritage in the state, both by the University of Kentucky basketball program and the ABA’s Kentucky Colonels. Five Hall of Famers played for the ABA stalwart and eleven Hall of Famers represent the university. I’d like to see Carl Linder III and his ownership group build a team in Louisville. His group has started the FC Cincinnati soccer club in 2015 as USL (American soccer’s second tier) club and in four short years, they reached the MLS, the highest level in America. If he chose to take his talents to Louisville, we could have a really fun team in an underrated city.

Montreal
With Toronto finally winning a championship, it’s time to take the NBA to the great white north again. Montreal seems like a natural fit for Canadian expansion, with an immediate rivalry between Ontario and Quebec reminiscent of the Maple Leafs-Canadiens rivalries in the NHL. There’s such a cultural difference between the two provinces and cities, that the Raptors being the de facto Canadian national team might grow a movement in the rest of Canada that could be cultivated by one big star, similar to Vince Carter in Toronto. There’s a bit more risk here since there is no longer a Montreal franchise in the National Basketball League of Canada. However, that league began play in 2011 and early foldings are to be expected. The Molson family is a natural fit to run the franchise, with their ties to Montreal running deep. The Bell Centre is currently the home of the Canadiens and the ownership group that owns the stadium also runs the hockey team that fills it. Of the six preseason games that occurred in the Bell Centre, they were all sellouts. If that can be sustained over forty-one games, likely with more downs than ups due to being an expansion team in a city used to winning is the major question.

Seattle
Do I need to explain why Seattle needs a team? The SuperSonics were NBA royalty for over forty years, before Clay Bennett moved the franchise to Oklahoma City in business-savvy yet opportunistic move. There’s an alternate universe out there somewhere where Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant are the next big tag team in Seattle, following in the footsteps of Lenny Wilkens/Spencer Haywood and Gary Payton/Shawn Kemp. The former home of the Sonics, the KeyArena, is currently under redevelopment under the name Seattle Center Arena and if redevelopment goes well, we should expect a team in the near future. The Seattle Storm have maintained a presence in Seattle as a proud WNBA franchise, whose owners could make a great group to run the NBA side. Eleven families have stake in the Seattle Sounders MLS team, who are the most valuable franchise in MLS. The three businesswomen who make up Force 10 and run the Seattle Storm would be an amazing group with any of the families who invested in the Sounders, hopefully bringing basketball back where it belongs in the Pacific Northwest.

Vancouver
The Vancouver Grizzlies were kind of a failure. Lasting only six seasons before moving to Memphis, they were barely a blip in the radar of NBA history. The NHL’s Canucks were sold alongside the Rogers Centre in 2004 to the Aquelini group and with new developments going up around the arena, the NBA should be looking to make a return. A lot of the reasons I’d like to see Vancouver rejoin the NBA are similar to Montreal’s, but 4000 miles away. The Canucks have experienced more success recently as well as the Vancouver Whitecaps FC, with supporters reaching over 15000 in just their second MLS season. If Vancouver can last more than six seasons in a rebirth, it’d be a success. Having a face like Steve Nash joining the ownership group would be perfect as a liaison for the NBA and I think they could rebuild the image of basketball in British Columbia.

Virginia Beach
I have a soft spot for Hampton Roads. After living there a few years and seeing how fans from seven different cities mobilized for their respective teams, I really want to see how they’d rally around a local team. The only arenas in the area are the Norfolk Scope and Hampton Coliseum, which aren’t really NBA-caliber arenas. I’m OK with a team in Richmond, which is about an hour away from Hampton Roads, but the Kings were in negotiations to move to the area from 2011 to 2013. Virginia Beach is kind of the ultimate small-market team in this list because this team would be starting from scratch. There’s no major team in the area, only various minor league teams, and an arena desperately needs to be built in order to make it happen. An arena could revitalize the area and doesn’t necessarily need to be on the waterfront. There was an arena plan that failed, but I think this is an “If-you-build-it-they-will-come” situation. The Virginia Squires are another ABA team who existed and with the pedigree of Julius Erving, George Gervin, Charlie Scott and Zelmo Beaty in the Hall Of Fame, there is a place for basketball. There’s almost 400 miles of real estate between Charlotte and Washington DC, fertile for a new fanbase to join the NBA.

Honolulu, Mexico City and San Juan
If Las Vegas receives an NBA team, it makes sense to move the Summer League to a new city. Honolulu is a great place to stay for ten days, despite my bias from growing up in Hawaii. Honolulu can’t really support a team consistently, but is great for events and one-offs similar to the Pro Bowl. Mexico City would be a good place for international expansion, as would San Juan. A quick ten-day trip in an established vacation spot makes a ton of sense as a replacement.

G League
Each of the teams have a few options as far as G League affiliates. The G League is the minor league of the NBA and the cities mentioned each have options. Las Vegas could resurrect the Reno Bighorns, Louisville could bring back the Arkansas RimRockers or the myriad of teams in the Carolinas. Montreal could bring back the Springfield Armor or put a team in Quebec City. Seattle has options in Bismarck, Boise or Tacoma. Vancouver could build in Calgary or the other teams in the Great Plains and Midwest. Virginia Beach could also use the Carolinas teams or bring back the Roanoke Dazzle.

Conclusion
I did this in NBA 2K19 and expanded with all six teams at once as a sort of reboot for the NBA. Free agency when every team has a maximum of eight players besides draftees would be insane and it would give the NBA a chance to restructure the divisions to a more geographically sound, cost-efficient way. NBA 2K19 puts the expansion teams right behind the top three teams in the draft, which makes sense, and is fair for the top three lottery picks. NBA owners are reportedly talking about a $2 billion entry fee to own a franchise, but the only team in the NBA that didn’t turn a profit were the Cleveland Cavaliers, who lost the biggest star of our generation, taking millions of revenue with him. The NBA would have a chance to do something unprecedented and I think the expansion draft of players with six teams could result in major stars moving as well as some up-and-comers having the cleanest of slates. NBA expansion is a very exciting prospect to me, on and off the court and seeing the league evolve both in business and in gameplay is something that could change sports forever.

Spring Football: A Blooming Legacy of Failure (aka: Yes, Tree, please steal: aaka: How the fuck did I write this all in 24 hours? )

Spring football. The sport’s endless fetch quest. If one cannot compete with The Shield in the fall, it looks to these greener pastures to find its roots. Only to find out that the grass is spray-painted pubic hair as countless leagues have risen and fallen trying to chase the eternal goose of spring league play. Let the body count begin!
\DING!* -JULY 1974-*
The World Football League is founded by former WHA and ABA executives in the hopes to getting into the NFL by means of merger. With the NFL and CFL suffering through strikes, those who wanted to play are eager to fuck off and join the new league. Especially after some of them were given what could only be described as Dump-truck Money. The WFL starts its inaugural season with a good amount of fanfare and packed houses. Things are looking up!
\DING!* -SEPTEMBER 1974-*
Turns out most of the people who were packing those stadiums basically got in for free. The leagues credibility is shot, multiple teams suffer financial losses and move mid-season, two teams don’t even finish, and one just up and quit before the final game. Hell, New York’s team moved to Charlotte, still made the playoffs, but were kicked OUT of it because they couldn’t sell enough tickets! It can’t possibly get any worse.
\DING!* -DECEMBER 1974-*
As the Birmingham Americans celebrate their World Bowl victory over the Florida Blazers, cameras soon point to law enforcement becoming deputized repo men and raiding both teams’ lockers of all goods, including the trophy. The leagues next season is aborted midway through as they desperately failed to nab Broadway Joe, and the leagues terrible finances finally caught up to them. The first sacrifice is complete.
-Insert clip of demolition of Fulton County Stadium with WFL logo superimposed-
\DING!* -MARCH 1983-*
David Dixon, the man who basically brought football to New Orleans sees his newest baby come to being. The USFL. At the time, the most well-known spring football league. Their first season is considered an overall success, even when some teams like Boston were losing money with sellout crowds. Ratings are better than predicted, 25,000+ average attendance per game, and the fans were passionate. I mean REALLY passionate. Like “Storm the field after your team comes from behind to win passionate!” The league is having typical growing pains but it’s an amazing start, especially with this Hershel Walker kid. Keep it up!
\DING!* 1983-84 USFL OFFSEASON*
ENTER…. THE DONALD…
*Dramatic Reverb\*
There’s no way this could possibly bite them in the ass later. Also, what the hell is a salary cap?
\DING!* 1984 USFL SEASON*
Even after the initial chaos of moves and finances and two teams effectively trading each other, the 1984 season is another successful year. Attendance is still good, the players are hungry, and the passion for the teams is still there. Things are looking well for you, USFL! Don't fuck it up!
\DING!* 1984-85 USFL OFFSEASON*
ENTER… THE DONALD…
*Dramatic Reverb\*
He thinks that being the cock-of-the-walk in spring is just not good enough. He wants to swim with The Shield, and he’s got a bigly, fantasticly good idea. FIGHT THEM ON THEIR HOME TURF IN THE FALL!
-Insert clip of Michael from The Office going “NO!”-
\DING!* 1985 USFL SEASON*
The weight of the move to the fall puts fans in conflict, forcing many to choose between their new side fling, or Old Reliable. The Denver Gold, one of the more popular teams in the league, sees its attendance cut in half when Denver finds out they’ll be competing against their precious Lord Elway next season. Finances are also starting to affect the league. Teams are merging, teams are folding, but amidst it all, the football is still quality. Add this Doug Flutie kid and we just might make it through this shakeup.
\DING!\** 1985-86 OFFSEASON
Okay, so it turns out NOT having a salary cap means spending money on players like drunken politicians. What began as 12 teams, expanded to 18 soon after is now down to 8, with nearly half the leagues teams folding due to money concerns. Hmmmm, it’s almost like you could have avoided this if you had a limit on what you could pay your players! (/sarcasm) Also, the Shield is basically strong-arming your broadcast partners to not show your games, or else they’ll take their balls and go home. ENTER… THE DONALD…
*Dramatic Reverb\*
And his antitrust suit against the NFL. Well, let’s be honest, it’s the USFL’s suit, cause they’re hinging their entire 1986 season on it. If they get the expected $1.7 billion from it, they’re set for decades to come, and the league will be here to stay! Otherwise, the season may be dead before it even begins. Get your Phoenix Wright on, boys!
\DING!* JULY 29, 1986*
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU DEFEATED THE SHIELD!
-Cheers, confetti and streamers-
Let’s take a look at what you’ve won!
-Clip of a $1 bid from The Price is Right-
*Price is Right Losing Horns\*
Actually, I stand corrected. You won… THREE dollars. Live like a king... go get that large fries. Naturally, this leads to the ‘86 season being cancelled and the USFL effectively closing up shop soon after. I’m sure The Donald will hold NO ill will to The Shield after all this…. NONE… NO grudges, no antipathy, no butthurt... I’m sure he’s very, VERY much over what happened between him and the NFL.
-Clip of The Donald going “WRONG!”-
\DING!* EARLY 1987*
Some guy just put a tiny football field surrounded by nets in the Rosemont Horizon. Cute. Wonder if that might become a thing.
\DING!* MARCH 1991*
The Shield got so spooked by The Donald and his spring football shenanigans that they decide to get in on it before someone other than them gets a firm hold again; Celestia forbid another USFL takes roots. (/sarcasm) Enter the World League of American Football; featuring teams from America, Canada, and Europe! “Yeah, the players mostly practice squad fodder, but c’mon! This is the spring football you wanted, right?” said the NFL as almost nobody shows up to their games… did I say that? Cause I meant to say AMERICAN home games. Those international games though…
\DING!* 1992 WLAF SEASON*
The World League is suspended after its second season after poor US attendance. It looks like even the Shield can’t even hack it in the spring. Least Sacramento can claim a football championship.
\DING!* JANUARY 1993*
That Sacramento team that just won a title? They’re going to the Great White North of the CFL! Their former division rival in San Antonio is also coming along! Wait… you mean it’s just Sacramento? Well, this is awkward…
\DING!* 1993 CFL SEASON*
Sacramento is at least decent enough in the Canadian League to be called mediocre.
\DING!* 1993-94 CFL OFFSEASON*
The CFL basically kept Sacramento in by telling them that even though San Antonio wouldn’t join them, they would eventually be joined by other American-CFL expansion teams. You know what this means. OPERATION CANADIAN BACON! Enter:
The Las Vegas Posse!
*crickets\*
The Shreveport Pirates!
*Clip of Chef, “What the hell is that supposed to be?”\*
and the Baltimore-
*glass breaking\*
COLTS???
-Clip of bar crowd cheering wildly followed later by a record scratch-
Yeah, turns out the Shield doesn’t like it when you dangle your butthurt out like that, and they immediately put the kibosh on that name.
\DING!* 1994 CFL SEASON*
The Baltimore Whateverthefucks are a really good squad though, finishing one game back of Winnipeg for the division lead. Add some of the highest attendance seen in a CFL game, and a Grey Cup appearance in your first year, and the savior of spring football might just be all a-boot dat maple! Not bad!
\DING!* 1995 CFL SEASON*
With the other American-Canadian teams shuffling, folding, or just plain sucking, the Baltimore Stallions (which is somehow a better name than the Colts) continue to provide a solid footing for football in a forgotten city. THIS will be the foothold for spring football!
\DING!* NOVEMBER 6, 1995*
-Cue clip of Art Modell announcing the Browns coming to Baltimore, followed by Spongebob covered by the Stallions logo in the “Where did everybody gooooooooooooo?!?!” clip-
That announcement turned the Stallions to barely an afterthought. Not even a Grey Cup win, the first American team to win the CANADIAN Football League, was enough to garner even a parade. The CFL’s venture to America died that day, and with it, another chapter in spring football.
\DING* MEANWHILE, IN EUROPE*
That old World League that the Shield tried to do? Iiiiiit’s baaaaaaack! And with none of that pesky North American crap that was there before, except for this old Refrigerator we found. That’s right! It’s all-Euro baby! Hmmmm, an NFL league… in Europe… hold on a second…
\DING!* 1998*
The World League is officially rebranded as NFL Europe and becomes the Shield's developmental system for nearly a decade, even though it loses the league nearly $30 million a year, ultimately falling to the Ginger Hammer, but making it the longest lasting spring league to date. Did it many any stars in the process? Let’s see; do the names James Harrison, David Akers, Dante Hall, Adam Vinatieri, and Kurt Warner mean anything to you? They do? I think I made my point, then.
\DING!* EARLY 2001*
There’s one close friend of The Donald’s who’s looking expand his entertainment empire, and simultaneously give The Shield its patented double finger salute. His name?
-Clip of “VINCENT. KENNEDY. MCMAHON!”-
His vision is a league of furious football with attitude unlike his World Wrestling Federation; where pansy-ass things like fair catches and unnecessary roughness are cast aside to create a real life rendition of NFL Blitz! This is the future of football! THIS is football that’s FUN and in your face.
-Clip of “THIS…. IS THE X-F-L!”
\DING!* 2001 XFL SEASON, WEEK 1*
People flock to stadiums and their TV’s to see this new scantily clad side piece. So far, it’s a ratings juggernaut; over 10 million viewers for the first week’s games! Let’s see the glorious football they were gifted with!
-Clips of Vegas’s blowout of the Hitmen, plus the opening injury-
Ohhhh…. Oh goooood…. OH GOOOOO-
\SWITCH!**
Oh thank god, a competitive game. Still, not a bad showing, boys! Let’s see if it holds up?
\DING!* 2001 XFL SEASON, MID-SEASON*
Turns out people don’t just come to a football game to ogle at your strip-leaders. People slowly realize the football sucks, the players aren’t that good, and support quickly dries up.
\DING!* 2001 XFL MILLION DOLLAR GAME*
The XFL’s championship game is held at an empty husk better known as the LA Coliseum. The game is a total blowout, NBC pulls the plug on its support soon after, and Vince has no choice but to close up shop after one year. It’s ironic in a way, Vince was on the receiving end of a-
-Clip of Vince going “YOUUUUUUUU’RE… FIIIIIIIIIIIIRED!”-
\DING!* 2002*
NBC is smart enough though to know that there’s a want for football on their network, but with the XFL recently becoming roadkill, they have to search far and wide. Oh hey, look over there! They’re still playing football with that tiny, little netted indoor field! LET’S WATCH THAT!
\DING!* 2004*
When your broadcast team must explain to its viewers EVERY. FUCKING. GAME how the rules of your league work, it may be a bad sign that you’re not meant for mainstream coverage. Not even the likes of Lord Elway and Dad Bon Jovi can help you get cred. Arena Football’s ratings tank harder than the Dolphins, and the Peacock barely even mentions they broadcast it soon after and get back in bed with Old Reliable a couple years later. Tack on frequent expansion and contraction woes like an out-of-breath pornstar, and I think we know where this is going to lead to….
\DING!* JANUARY 1, 2006*
By the way, how did that Doug Flutie guy end up doing?
-Insert clip of Flutie’s drop kick-
This has nothing to do with spring football, it’s just awesome to see a drop kick.
\DING!* 2009*
*Wheel of Fortune Bankrupt\*
Yup, just as we thought. Arenaball finally keels over and its carcass is feasted upon by
*record scratch\*
AF2?!?! Arena football’s own DEVELOPMENTAL league?!?! Don’t you know cannibalism if forbidden?!?! Well, at least they’ll still be a league? Meanwhile other indoor football leagues are merging together. Me thinks you don’t have much time, Arena.
\DING!* 2015*
Mainstays of Arena Football, the Iowa Barnstormers, and the Arizona Rattlers, soon fuck off for the stability of the Indoor Football League. Other teams either follow, or fold, and a few years later this legendary niche is soon sacrificed. Another victim for the glory of the football gods!
-Insert clip of Aztec sacrifice with Arena being the victim-
\DING!* JANUARY 25, 2018*
Just when you thought spring football would never happen, an old contestant returns to the ring. VINCENT. KENNEDY. MCMAHON! He’s back, and he wants to bring back the XFL! But this time, he’s learned his lesson, only keeping himself as a backer after investing nearly $500 million from WWE to fund the league for 3 years. And he’s also putting actual football minds in charge of the league, rather than him running everything. He’s slated to slow build the league for a 2020 debut, hyping up their new rules and wrinkles, and giving teams enough time to find players, build a fan base, and build chemistry. You know what they say, though, Vince:
-Clip of George W.’s “Fool me once” gaffe-
\DING!* MARCH 23, 2018*
Charlie Ebersol, son of Dick, is still holding family grudges against VinneMac after Vince turned him down to help him rebuild the XFL, and calls FIRSTIES by forming the Alliance of American Football, hoping to undercut Vince by a year. They have a solid executive staff with many names more known for their on-field experience, and funding courtesy of
*car brakes\*
Reggie Fowler?! Ok. Let’s see how much he can put into the league…
-Clip of “Annnnnnnnd it’s gone” South Park with a caption “Reggie Fowler’s AAF Funding after Week 1”-
\DING!* 2019 AAF SEASON, WEEK 2*
So turns out you can’t trust someone whose entire net worth is based on a virtual currency with no actual value. Enter the Lord and Saviour of the AAF in Tom Dundon! Who immediately wants to merge the AAF with the NFL, while everyone else wants to forge their own identity. Tack on a slapdash way to house and train your teams, and the walking meme of Johnny Football and this bland, boring, cheap NFL knockoff might be doomed…
\DING!* 2019 AAF SEASON, WEEK 8*
Annnnnnnnd it’s dead. Not even a full year into its life cycle. Teams are left with finding ways home, mending their own injuries, and vendors see no money from all the things they sold during games. It’s almost like Vince made a deal with the devil. OK, XFL, the stage is yours. Don’t fuck it up!
\DING* FEBRUARY 2020*
After 2 years of hype and promotion, the XFL 2.0 premieres to a good fanfare. The stadiums are nearly full, the players are putting it all on the line on the field, and interaction between fan and player is enough to make you feel like you’re watching good friends on the field. The players are happy, the fans are happy, there's a FUCKING BEER SNAKE! With strong ratings from the opening weeks, things are looking up!
\DING!* 2020 XFL SEASON, WEEK 5*
The ratings may be slipping, but your support is still very strong in the fanbase, and the games are exciting. St. Louis is considering opening the upper level of The Dome for your next home game, and it’s expected to be a full-blown sell out! Seattle’s team is mediocre at best, but the Link is still loud and proud. The only team lagging in attendance is LA, but they don’t give a fuck about any team that’s not the Dodgers or Lakers, so who cares? Ticket revenue is on the rise, and already surpassed the AAF’s by a wide margin. As long as ratings stay above a million, and attendance hovers around 20k a game, a successful season is all but assured!
*faint coughing\*
You OK back there?
\DING!* MARCH 12, 2020*
A virus? A FUCKING VIRUS?? THAT’S what gonna put the brakes on this league?!?! Well, they’re still planning to keep playing without fans, maybe we can at least finish the season-
*ACHOO!\*
Annnnd a player is sick with the bug.... annnnnnd the season is cancelled. Least there’s hope for next year?
*Family Feud Strike\*
Well, when your main financial backer needs to keep his main baby afloat after a WrestleMania that earned literally ZERO dollars, you shouldn't be surprised. Fuck, now we see what the football gods asked for in return for the AAF dying like it did.
\TEST PATTERN\**
It’s been nearly half a century since modern football has tried entering the spring season, and no one, not even The Shield, can keep it maintained. Countless leagues have risen and fallen. Some more violently than others. If we’re somehow able to go outside and have sports again, it’s going to be VERY long time before a new league can even THINK about planting roots. Football will be back in the fall, but it seems that no matter what happens, this annoying goose that we call spring football will continue to be chased…. fucking HONK!
-Static, then a clip of that awesome BattleHawks kickoff return TD-
THANKS FOR WATCHING!
WATCH MORE SHITTY FAILURES HERE!

FindFace: part 4. Alfa Bank - In late July 2016 NTechLab conducted the first test of FaceN biometric algorithm on members of the public at the annual Alfa Future People Festival

[Alfa-Bank (Mikhail Fridman) - - -> NTechLab/FindFace http://archive.is/41bFq- - -> Trump Tower...]
[“Someone high in the Russian government wanted a communications channel between the Kremlin and the Trump Transition Team.” – TIME (2019)]
TIME—Questions Remain About Putin's Request for a Back Channel to the Trump Transition
(5/21/2019) ”A few weeks before Donald Trump became president, Russian banker Petr Aven, a billionaire oligarch with Moscow’s Alfa Bank, pulled aside Washington lobbyist Richard Burt at a corporate meeting in Luxembourg with a sensitive request.
Aven told Burt that ‘someone high in the Russian government’ wanted ‘a communications channel between the Kremlin and the Trump Transition Team’ according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s recently released report. Aven wanted Burt, a former ambassador who had helped Trump’s campaign, to work on setting it up.
Burt later told Mueller’s team that the request was, in the words of the report, ‘outside the normal realm’, even for Burt, a well-traveled Washington insider who had worked with Aven for years. It looks even more remarkable now.
The ‘high’ Russian official was none other than President Vladimir Putin, Mueller’s team would later learn. Amid what Mueller called a ‘flurry of Russian activity’ during the Trump transition, the Aven outreach is the only publicly known instance in which Putin, a onetime KGB spy, was personally involved in directing Russia’s clandestine efforts with the incoming administration.
The surreptitious contacts involving Putin, Aven and Burt as described in the Mueller report contradict repeated assertions by Alfa Bank that it had no contacts with Trump or people around him. At the time of Trump’s election, Alfa Bank was at the center of a mystery over an unexplained surge in computer traffic from Moscow to the Trump Organization in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign. Computer analysts concluded that Alfa Bank had developed a covert communications channel to the Trump Organization.” http://web.archive.org/web/20190731064842/https://time.com/5592739/donald-trump-petr-aven-alfa-bank
[In late July 2016 NTechLab conducted the first test of FaceN biometric algorithm on members of the public at the annual Alfa Future People Festival (Alfa-Bank), a Burning Man style event in Russia. NTechLab used the image database to demonstrate the use of FindFace software for potential clients/investors.
In late July 2016 an independent team of data scientists were monitoring server traffic at Trump Tower in the wake of the DNC data breach. The hackers found something that has never been fully explained or understood since—data of an unknown and suspicious nature being transferred to a Trump Tower server. Upon close investigation the source of the anomalous communication was traced to a server inside Russia belonging to Alfa-Bank...]
•Forbes (Russia)—Face to face: Russian face recognition startups go global (12/5/2016) “Most of the usual users got to know the technology of face recognition thanks to FindFace. However, the founders of the company do not hide that the launch of the service was a thoughtful marketing move. The company does not plan to earn the existing part of the revenue from the mass audience. ‘We wanted to show everyone a modern level of technology development,’ [Alexander] Kabakov† explains. ‘Access was paid for not to heavily load our servers, so the revenue from the application is minimal.’ NTechLab also has two solutions: the cloud FindFace Cloud API and the licensed FindFace Enterprise Server SDK. The first commercial contract was signed by NTechLab with Alfa-Bank† and VimpelCom. Visitors to the festival of electronic music Alfa Future People with the help of FindFace could find their photos among hundreds of others by sending a selfie to a chat bot. ‘For three days, the bot received about 12,000 requests, and in response, he sent 30,500 pictures from AFP photographers,’ says Snezhana Chernogortseva, Strategic Marketing Director of VimpelCom.” http://www.forbes.ru/tehnologii/333977-licom-k-licu-rossiyskie-startapy-po-raspoznavaniyu-lic-vyhodyat-na-mirovoy-uroven (http://archive.is/y9gEt) [Translated] †[😐 Alexander (Aleksandr) Kabakov: NTechLab/FindFace founder (2015), VP of Special Projects (social media) at Mail.Ru (2017) during Facebook “image scraping” massive data collection, Agency One digital communications (founding partner, 2010), political scientist, online presidential campaign manager (Prokhorov/“Right Cause” 2012, Putin/“United Russia” 2018) http://bit.ly/2uwKVfb http://bit.ly/2TIDRpC; http://bit.ly/2HVjLWX; http://bit.ly/2JHsVcb]
•The Rachael Maddow Show—New look at Trump Org server mystery suggests avenues of inquiry (10/9/2018) “Dexter Filkins, contributor to The New Yorker, talks with Rachel Maddow about what is known about unusual communication between a Trump Organization computer server and a server at Russia's Alfa Bank, and what more some well-placed subpoenas could find out.” http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/new-look-at-trump-org-server-mystery-suggests-avenues-of-inquiry-1340582467598 (http://archive.is/i5g92)
•Financial Times—Skadden’s oligarch work comes into focus after Mueller charges (2/23/2018) “Mikhail Fridman, the Ukrainian-born billionaire and co-founder of Alfa Group, would rely on Skadden in his battles with the British government and with BP, the UK oil and gas group. Roman Abramovich [http://facebook.com/story/graphql_permalink/?graphql_id=UzpfSTEwMDAwMDQyNTc3Mzc1MDpWSzoyNDAwMTU2MjA2ODk2MjM5], the Russian billionaire, trusted the firm so much that he made the head of its European operations the chairman of Chelsea football club after he acquired the team in 2003. After almost three decades of relationship building and profit making with the toughest businessmen to emerge from the ruins of the Soviet Union, the firm has found itself under the spotlight as the US Department of Justice investigates Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. On Tuesday, Alex van der Zwaan, a former London-based Skadden associate, pleaded guilty in a Washington DC court to lying to government prosecutors investigating the lobbying activities of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates in Ukraine. Mr. van der Zwaan’s prosecution by Robert Mueller, special counsel, is connected to a report Skadden wrote in 2012 for the Ukrainian government as part of a PR campaign allegedly orchestrated by Mr. Manafort. The report continues to haunt the firm six years later. Skadden would advise the oligarch in his successful court battle with Boris Berezovsky, his one-time friend and mentor who fled Russia in 2000 after clashing with Vladimir Putin. Skadden’s fees in the Berezovsky case in 2012 were a reported £35m. Mr. Buck became chairman of Chelsea after advising on Mr. Abramovich’s £140m takeover in 2003. Mr. Buck, now retired from Skadden, declined to comment for this article. He once rejected the label of ‘Abramovich’s right-hand man’ and instead called himself ‘the little-toe-on-the-left-foot man’. The firm also forged a relationship with Mikhail Fridman, acting for the AAR consortium that included Mr. Fridman and German Khan, a Russian-Ukrainian billionaire, in its battle with BP in 2011. Skadden later represented Mr Fridman when the UK government forced his L1 investment vehicle to sell gasfields in the North Sea. The firm gained a reputation for handling knotty and difficult corporate deals. Pavel Malyi, the firm’s first hire in Moscow who later served as chief financial officer of Sibur, the gas processing and petrochemical company, said Skadden would be his first call for tricky transactions in Russia. A lawyer who saw the firm’s litigators in action called them ‘tough, smart and savvy’. But Skadden’s involvement in Ukraine’s turbulent politics proved less sure-footed. In 2012, Mr. Manafort, the American lobbyist and later campaign manager for Donald Trump, helped arrange a report by Skadden for the Moscow-backed government of Viktor Yanukovych, former president of Ukraine. US investigators have taken an interest in the case as part of Mr. Mueller’s investigation into Mr. Gates’ and Mr. Manafort’s dealings in Ukraine. On Thursday, Mr. Mueller filed new charges of fraud and tax evasion against the pair. Mr. Manafort has denied wrongdoing. Mr. Gates is expected to plead guilty on Friday to conspiracy against the US and making a false statement The Ukraine report has been thrust into the spotlight once again because of Mr. van der Zwaan, 33, a Dutch national who worked for Skadden in London. The Russian-speaking associate worked on the Tymoshenko report. Mr. van der Zwaan’s profile, since deleted from Skadden’s website, also listed work for Gennady Bogolyubov, a Ukrainian oligarch, when the businessman was sued by his fellow countryman Victor Pinchuk in 2013. He also acted for Mr. Abramovich’s businesses in relation to mining assets in Ukraine, according to the profile. Last summer, the associate’s connections to the oligarch world deepened when he married Eva Khan, a daughter of Mr. Khan, the Russian-Ukrainian billionaire whose interests Skadden has represented in the past alongside Mr. Fridman.” http://www.ft.com/content/741975b0-18ae-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44 (http://archive.is/EWc7e)
•Tea Pain (data science blog)—Data Patterns Suggest Trump ToweSpectrum Health Ran a “Stealth Data Machine” With Russia (3/8/2018) “Jared Kushner is currently taking a victory lap, crowin’ about his ‘Stealth Data Machine’ that put Donald Trump over the top in the 2016 race. Let’s pry off the lid and peer into the inner-workings of this ‘Data Machine.’ The Signal in the Noise: Building on the data analysis by @Conspirator0 on Twitter, Tea Pain has stumbled onto a possible ‘signal in the noise’ that opens a window into the data-swappin’ shenanigans going on between Trump Tower, Spectrum Health and Russia’s Alfa Bank during the election. The data traffic, when analyzed, tells a very different story, a story of automated, orchestrated data sharing among multiple sites for a strategic end. Tea Pain originally dismissed this story as a possible red-herring. With the Russia craze at a fever pitch, this activity could be explained by what Tea’s daddy used to say, ‘When you got a new hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ But when Tea Pain saw the data patterns analyzed by Conspiritor0, he knew he’d spotted something mighty familiar: Database Replication. Put a pin in that, more on that later. At first, data analysts were puzzled by what appeared to be random activity with no apparent pattern. Perhaps it was email activity? Maybe money transfers? But there were literally thousands of these IP ‘pings.’[...] Whatever was running, it would hook up, transfer data for a few minutes, then go to sleep for an hour. This was the clue that led Tea Pain to formulate a much clearer working model to explain what we were all seeing: SQL Server Database Replication between multiple sites. What Is Database Replication?: Database Replication is a rather simple concept. When you have a database with millions of records representing hundreds of gigabytes of data, and you would like to keep a copy of that database housed in 2 or more locations, it makes no sense to continually copy the entire database from point A to point B every time a change is made, so you ‘replicate’ it. This allows only the changes made to be sent from one database to another[...] Tea Pain’s working theory is that Russia created a voter targeting database with information gleaned from hacked DNC data rolls and other data rolls ‘acquired’ from other states to feed this growing contact database. That database originated at Russian Intelligence which was in turn replicated to Russia’s Alfa Bank. This is where the ‘data laundering’ takes place, Alfa Bank is the pivot point where the FSB’s data fingerprints are wiped clean. Ironically Russia launders its data at the same place it launders its money. At Trump Tower, more data could merged into this system using various legal sources as well. Spectrum Health could also add value to the data by matching names and addresses in their extensive healthcare databases to harvest email addresses and phone numbers to flesh out this list. All these changes would be promptly replicated back to Russia in a matter of hours. Once back in the hands of Russian Intelligence, this massaged data could be programmatically matched up with social media handles to create a micro-targeted ‘hit list’ for the thousand Russian trolls employed by Putin.” http://web.archive.org/web/20170404010239/https://teapainusa.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/data-patterns-suggest-trump-towerspectrum-health-ran-a-stealth-data-machine-with-russia
•Meduza—The end of privacy ‘Meduza’ takes a hard look at FindFace and the looming prospect of total surveillance (7/14/2016) “In June 2016, N-Tech. Lab sold its technology to Beeline to create the Alfa Future People Electronic music festival app. The festival will be held on July 22 – 24 under Nizhny Novgorod, last year it gathered about 40,000 spectators. The application based on the FACEN algorithm will allow you to send your selfie to the robot, which, in turn, will find other photos of the user in the festival [data]base.” http://web.archive.org/web/20160827095842/https://meduza.io/en/feature/2016/07/14/the-end-of-privacy
•The Rachel Maddow Show—New look at Trump Org server mystery suggests avenues of inquiry (10/9/2018) “Dexter Filkins, contributor to The New Yorker, talks with Rachel Maddow about what is known about unusual communication between a Trump Organization computer server and a server at Russia's Alfa Bank, and what more some well-placed subpoenas could find out.” http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/new-look-at-trump-org-server-mystery-suggests-avenues-of-inquiry-1340582467598 (http://archive.is/i5g92)
•The Rachel Maddow Show—Republicans To Put Russian Bank Lawyer In Coveted DoJ Position [Alfa-Bank] http://facebook.com/drew.incarnate/posts/1736659809691528
•CNN—Russian bank sends threatening letter to computer scientist who called for Trump investigation [Alfa-Bank] (3/22/2017) "Alfa-Bank has stepped up its fight against computer scientists who suggested the major Russian bank was in communication with the Trump Organization in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The bank has sent a letter to one of those computer scientists, L. Jean Camp of Indiana University, warning of potential legal action. 'Alfa-Bank is exploring all available options to protect itself from malicious or tortious interference,' it said. 'Those options include litigation.' In recent months, Camp posted the bank's leaked computer logs on her personal website. She has repeatedly said 'this computer traffic should be investigated" by American law enforcement. In its letter, the bank noted that she "disclosed certain computer data regarding Alfa Bank... and encouraged inquiries into supposed links to the Trump Organization.' 'Your activities continue to this day to promote an unwarranted investigation into Alfa-Bank's 'communication' with the Trump Organization,' the letter warned." http://www.facebook.com/drew.incarnate/posts/1736726246351551
•Politico—3 Russians named in Trump dossier sue Fusion GPS for libel [Fridman, Alfa-Bank] http://facebook.com/drew.incarnate/posts/1737103689647140
•Getty Images—Face Control Finds First Commercial Use At Alfa Future People Festival http://facebook.com/drew.incarnate/posts/1736623383028504
•Slate—Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia? (10/31/2016) “This spring, a group of computer scientists set out to determine whether hackers were interfering with the Trump campaign. They found something they weren’t expecting. [...] In late July, one of these scientists—who asked to be referred to as Tea Leaves, a pseudonym that would protect his relationship with the networks and banks that employ him to sift their data—found what looked like malware emanating from Russia. The destination domain had Trump in its name, which of course attracted Tea Leaves’ attention. But his discovery of the data was pure happenstance—a surprising needle in a large haystack of DNS lookups on his screen. ‘I have an outlier here that connects to Russia in a strange way,’ he wrote in his notes. He couldn’t quite figure it out at first. But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue. More data was needed, so he began carefully keeping logs of the Trump server’s DNS activity. As he collected the logs, he would circulate them in periodic batches to colleagues in the cybersecurity world. Six of them began scrutinizing them for clues. (I communicated extensively with Tea Leaves and two of his closest collaborators, who also spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, since they work for firms trusted by corporations and law enforcement to analyze sensitive data. They persuasively demonstrated some of their analytical methods to me—and showed me two white papers, which they had circulated so that colleagues could check their analysis. I also spoke with academics who vouched for Tea Leaves’ integrity and his unusual access to information. ‘This is someone I know well and is very well-known in the networking community,’ said Camp. ‘When they say something about DNS, you believe them. This person has technical authority and access to data.’) The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn’t the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation—conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank. The researchers had initially stumbled in their diagnosis because of the odd configuration of Trump’s server. ‘I’ve never seen a server set up like that,’ says Christopher Davis, who runs the cybersecurity firm HYAS InfoSec Inc. and won a FBI Director Award for Excellence for his work tracking down the authors of one of the world’s nastiest botnet attacks. ‘It looked weird, and it didn’t pass the sniff test.’ The server was first registered to Trump’s business in 2009 and was set up to run consumer marketing campaigns. It had a history of sending mass emails on behalf of Trump-branded properties and products. Researchers were ultimately convinced that the server indeed belonged to Trump.” http://web.archive.org/web/20161031215320/http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
•The New Yorker—Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign?; A team of computer scientists sifted through records of unusual Web traffic in search of answers. (10/15/2018) “A set of cryptic data has inspired a years-long argument over its meaning. In June, 2016, after news broke that the Democratic National Committee had been hacked, a group of prominent computer scientists went on alert. Reports said that the infiltrators were probably Russian, which suggested to most members of the group that one of the country’s intelligence agencies had been involved. They speculated that if the Russians were hacking the Democrats they must be hacking the Republicans, too. ‘We thought there was no way in the world the Russians would just attack the Democrats,’ one of the computer scientists, who asked to be identified only as Max, told me. [...] As Max and his colleagues searched D.N.S. logs for domains associated with Republican candidates, they were perplexed by what they encountered. ‘We went looking for fingerprints similar to what was on the D.N.C. computers, but we didn’t find what we were looking for,’ Max told me. ‘We found something totally different—something unique.’ In the small town of Lititz, Pennsylvania, a domain linked to the Trump Organization (mail1.trump-email.com) seemed to be behaving in a peculiar way. The server that housed the domain belonged to a company called Listrak, which mostly helped deliver mass-marketing e-mails: blasts of messages advertising spa treatments, Las Vegas weekends, and other enticements. Some Trump Organization domains sent mass e-mail blasts, but the one that Max and his colleagues spotted appeared not to be sending anything. At the same time, though, a very small group of companies seemed to be trying to communicate with it. Examining records for the Trump domain, Max’s group discovered D.N.S. lookups from a pair of servers owned by Alfa Bank, one of the largest banks in Russia. Alfa Bank’s computers were looking up the address of the Trump server nearly every day. There were dozens of lookups on some days and far fewer on others, but the total number was notable: between May and September, Alfa Bank looked up the Trump Organization’s domain more than two thousand times. [...] One remarkable aspect of Foer’s story [Slate] involved the way that the Trump domain had stopped working. On September 21st, he wrote, the Times had delivered potential evidence of communications to B.G.R., a Washington lobbying firm that worked for Alfa Bank. Two days later, the Trump domain vanished from the Internet. [...] [T]he Trump-Alfa Bank story seemed to fade. The Trump campaign dismissed any connection, saying, ‘The only covert server is the one Hillary Clinton recklessly established in her basement.’ Bloggers and tech journalists assailed the Slate piece online. The cybersecurity researcher Robert Graham called the analysis ‘nonsense,’ and complained, ‘This is why we can’t have nice things on the Internet.’ He pointed out several problems. For instance, Foer’s sources had found that the Trump domain was blocking incoming e-mail, and argued that this was evidence that Trump and Alfa Bank were maintaining a private communications network; in fact, Listrak routinely configured its marketing servers to send e-mail but not to receive it. Graham also noted that the domain was administered not by Trump but by Cendyn, a company in Boca Raton that handled his company’s marketing e-mail. Alfa Bank hired two cybersecurity firms, Mandiant and Stroz Friedberg, to review the data. Both firms reported that they had found no evidence of communications with the Trump Organization. The bank also began trying to uncover the anonymous sources in the Slate piece. Attorneys representing Alfa contacted Jean Camp, telling her that they were considering legal action and asking her to identify the researchers who had assembled the data. [...] Alfa Bank was founded by Mikhail Fridman, in the last years of the Soviet Union. Fridman was born in western Ukraine and studied metallurgy in college. Like many others of his generation, he was introduced to the market economy through hustle. He sold theatre tickets, washed windows, and ran a student discothèque. After the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1991, Fridman joined the scramble to befriend members of the new government and amass a fortune with help from the state. Along with an economist named Petr Aven, who had previously served as the country’s minister for foreign economic relations, Fridman built Alfa Bank into one of the most successful businesses in the new Russia. Its parent company, Alfa Group, now controls the country’s largest private bank, along with financial institutions in several European nations. Fridman and Aven acquired reputations as brilliant, relentless businessmen. Describing the lawless post-Soviet years to the journalist Chrystia Freeland, who is now the foreign minister of Canada, Fridman said, ‘We were absolute savages.’ In a notorious episode in 2008, a group of Russian companies, including Alfa Group, tried to gain control of a joint venture they’d formed with British Petroleum. The power struggle was so fierce that the C.E.O. of the joint venture, Robert Dudley, felt compelled to leave Russia. The oligarchs kept pushing for control of the BP venture until it was sold to a state-owned petroleum company, for fifty-five billion dollars; Alfa Group’s cut was almost fourteen billion. Alfa Bank prospered during the Yeltsin years and has continued to do so under Putin. Though Fridman and Aven are not part of Putin’s innermost circle, they have managed to avoid the fate of some other oligarchs, who have had assets seized and, in a few cases, been imprisoned, after falling out of favor. Michael McFaul, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, told me he was impressed that Fridman and Aven had ‘navigated the very difficult world of maintaining their private business interests and not crossing the Kremlin.’ One reason the server story alarmed Alfa Bank was that it threatened the bank’s standing in Washington. Members of Russia’s government and many of its businessmen have been under American economic sanctions since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, but Alfa’s principals and representatives have enjoyed access to U.S. politicians at the highest levels. Fridman and Aven met several times with officials at the Obama White House, discussing such issues as Russia’s effort to gain entrance to the World Trade Organization. (Alfa Bank maintains that it has ‘never advocated for political or trade issues on behalf of the Russian government.’) ‘Fridman and Aven were seen as people that Washington could talk to about U.S.-Russia, because they checked two boxes—they were ‘polite company’ oligarchs, and they could shed light on Putin’s intentions and perspective,’ a senior official in the Obama Administration told me. ‘They got meetings at State and on the Hill and at the White House. And they were understood to be operating with the consent and guidance of Vladimir Putin.’ Alfa is still closely tied to the Russian system, but Fridman and Aven live much of the time in the United Kingdom. If there was a communications link with the Trump Organization, it might have been created without their knowledge. According to experts I spoke to, large Russian companies typically have a member of the intelligence services, either active or retired, working at a senior level. If a company’s services are required in some way, the officer—called a kurator—coördinates them. ‘A company couldn’t say no,’ a Washington-based Russia expert told me. (When asked about this, an Alfa Bank spokesperson said, ‘To our knowledge there are no senior intelligence officials at senior levels at Alfa Bank.’) This past May, I saw Petr Aven in New York, at the Four Seasons Hotel. He had just come from a dinner in Washington, at which he had met a group of prominent Americans, including officials from the White House, to discuss Russia’s economic situation. Aven seemed worried about surveillance; before we sat down, he brought his phone to the other side of the lobby and hid it behind a plant. He wouldn’t say much for the record, but he told me that his bank didn’t have ‘any connection at all with Trump—nothing.’ Aven and Fridman have visited Washington less often since Trump took office. But Trump’s victory appeared to elevate Alfa Bank’s connections there—at least by association. Don McGahn, the White House counsel, came from Jones Day, one of the law firms that represent Alfa Bank in the United States. McGahn brought five Jones Day lawyers with him into the White House; six more were appointed to senior posts in the Administration. Jones Day has done work for businesses belonging to a long list of Russian oligarchs, including Oleg Deripaska, Viktor Vekselberg, and Alexander Mashkevich. The firm has also represented the Trump campaign in its dealings with Robert Mueller. For this reason, McGahn secured an ethics waiver that allows him to talk to his old firm when its clients have business before the U.S. government. In June, 2017, Trump nominated Brian Benczkowski, a lawyer who had overseen the Stroz Friedberg report for Alfa Bank, to lead the criminal division of the Justice Department. At his confirmation hearing, Benczkowski said emphatically that Stroz Friedberg, like Mandiant, had rejected the possibility of complicity. The investigation, he said, found that ‘there was no communications link between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.’ Democratic senators expressed concern that Benczkowski had taken on work for Alfa Bank; he had been a senior member of Trump’s transition team and had good reason to expect that he would be appointed to a job in the Administration. ‘The client was a Russian bank that is under suspicion of having a direct connection with the Trump campaign,’ Senator Richard Durbin said, during the hearing. [...] [T]he traffic coincided with Paul Manafort’s time as Trump’s campaign manager—but the D.N.S. queries continued after Manafort stepped down. ‘A lot of people are seeing faces in clouds,’ Leto said. The Trump Organization had done little to clarify the matter. In October, 2016, it released a statement denying interactions with Alfa Bank ‘or any Russian entity.’ Instead, it offered a peculiar explanation for the D.N.S. traffic: it had been triggered when ‘an existing banking customer of Cendyn’—the marketing firm—had used the company’s systems to send communications to Alfa Bank. Such a scenario would be highly irregular; it was as if Gmail had allowed a user to send e-mail from another user’s account. ‘It makes no sense,’ Paul told me. Trump’s advocates claimed that the investigations sponsored by Alfa Bank had proved that Alfa and the Trump Organization were not communicating. In fact, they sidestepped the question. Mandiant, one of the cybersecurity firms, said that it was unable to inspect the bank’s D.N.S. logs from 2016, because Alfa retained such records for only twenty-four hours. The other firm, Stroz Friedberg, gave the same explanation for why it, too, was “unable to verify” the data. As Jones’s team vetted the data, they examined various possible explanations. One was malware, which had played a role in the hack of the D.N.C.’s computers. Most malware has ‘distinctive patterns of behavior,’ Camp told me. It is typically sent out in a blast, aimed simultaneously at multiple domains. There is a ‘payload’—a mechanism that activates the malicious activity—and a ‘recruitment mechanism,’ which enables the malware to take over parts of a vulnerable computer. None of the experts whom Jones assembled found any evidence of this behavior on the Trump server. ‘Malware doesn’t keep banging on the door like that,’ Paul said. A second possibility was marketing e-mail. After the Slate article appeared, some commentators suggested that Trump’s server had innocently sent promotional e-mails to Alfa Bank, and that a computer there had responded with queries designed to verify the identity of the sender. [...] The timing and the frequency of the D.N.S. lookups also did not suggest spam, Paul and Leto believed. Mass-marketing e-mails are typically sent by an automated process, one after another, in an unbroken rhythm. The Alfa queries seemed to fall into two categories. Some came in a steady pulse, while others arrived irregularly—sometimes many in a day, sometimes a few. ‘The timing of the communication was not random, and it wasn’t regular-periodic,’ Paul said. ‘It was a better match for human activity.’ But, if the Trump server wasn’t sending or receiving e-mail, what could explain the traffic? There was the possibility of ‘spoofing’—essentially, faking an identity. [...] As Jones’s team sifted through explanations for the traffic, they began constructing their own theory. ‘What you have here is a minimally viable technical footprint of a small number of people who are using what I suspect is an ad-hoc system to communicate,’ Paul said. ‘Anytime the F.B.I. or anyone else pulls apart a cyber-crime organization, there is always some communication structure that’s used for command and control. That’s where the high-value communications happen.’ (Max and his colleagues did not see any D.N.S. evidence that the Trump Organization was attempting to access the server; they speculated that the organization was using a virtual private network, or V.P.N., a common security measure that obscures users’ digital footprints.) If this was a communications mechanism, it appeared to have been relatively simple, suggesting that it had been set up spontaneously and refined over time. Because the Trump Organization did not have administrative control of the server, Paul and Leto theorized that any such system would have incorporated software that one of the parties was already using. ‘The likely scenario is not that the people using the server were incredibly sophisticated networking geniuses doing something obscure and special,’ Max said. ‘The likely scenario is that they adapted a server and vender already available to them, which they felt was away from prying eyes.’ Leto told me that he envisioned ‘something like a bulletin-board system.’ Or it could have been an instant-messaging system that was part of software already in use on the server. Kramer, of Listrak, insisted that his company’s servers were used exclusively for mass marketing. ‘We only do one thing here,’ he told me. But Listrak’s services can be integrated with numerous Cendyn software packages, some of which allow instant messaging. One possibility is Metron, used to manage events at hotels. In fact, the Trump Organization’s October, 2016, statement, blaming the unusual traffic on a ‘banking customer’ of Cendyn, suggested that the communications had gone through Metron, which supports both messaging and e-mail. The parties might also have been using Webmail—e-mail that leaves few digital traces, other than D.N.S. lookups. Or, Paul and Leto said, they could have been communicating through software used to compose marketing e-mails. They might have used a method called foldering, in which messages are written but not sent; instead, they are saved in a drafts folder, where an accomplice who also has access to the account can read them. ‘This is a very common way for people to communicate with each other who don’t want to be detected,’ Leto told me. David Petraeus, when he was the director of the C.I.A., used this method to exchange intimacies—and to share classified information—with his lover, Paula Broadwell. In June, an attorney for the Mueller investigation accused Paul Manafort of using foldering to facilitate secret communications. Given the limitations of D.N.S. data, none of the independent experts I spoke to could be certain of what Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization were doing. Some of them cautioned that it was impossible even to guess at every way that an e-mail system might malfunction. A senior analyst at a D.N.S.-service provider said, ‘Things can get messed up in unexpected ways.’ But Paul and Leto maintained that they had considered and rejected every scenario that they had encountered in decades of cybersecurity work. ‘Is it possible there is an innocuous explanation for all this?’ Paul said. ‘Yes, of course. And it’s also possible that space aliens did this. It’s possible—just not very likely.’ [...] If Trump and Alfa Bank [...] were communicating, what might they have been talking about? Max and some of the other scientists I spoke to theorized that they may have been using the system to signal one another about events or tasks that had to be performed: money to be transferred, for instance, or data to be copied. ‘My guess is that, whenever someone wanted to talk, they would do a D.N.S. lookup and then route the traffic somewhere else,’ Richard Clayton, of the University of Cambridge, said. Camp also speculated that the system may have been used to coördinate the movement of data. She noted that Cambridge Analytica, which was working for the Trump campaign, took millions of personal records from Facebook. In Camp’s scenario, these could have been transferred to the Russian government, to help guide its targeting of American voters before the election. The researchers I spoke with were careful to point out that the limits of D.N.S. data prevent them from going beyond speculation. If employees of the companies were talking, the traffic reveals nothing about who they were or what they were saying; it is difficult to rule out something as banal as a protracted game of video poker. ‘If I’m a cop, I’m not going to take this to the D.A. and say we’re ready to prosecute,’ Leto said. ‘I’m going to say we have enough to ask for a search warrant.’ More complete information could be difficult to obtain. This March, after Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee announced that it had found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the committee’s Democrats filed a dissent, arguing that there were many matters still to be investigated, including the Trump Organization’s connections to Alfa Bank. The Democrats implored the majority to force Cendyn to turn over computer data that would help determine what had happened. Those records could show who in the Trump Organization used the server. There would probably also be a record of who shut down the Trump domain after the Times contacted Alfa Bank. Cendyn might have records of any outgoing communications sent by the Trump Organization. But the request for further investigation is unlikely to proceed as long as Republicans hold the majority. ‘We’ve all looked at the data, and it doesn’t look right,’ a congressional staffer told me. ‘But how do you get to the truth?’ The enigma, for now, remains an enigma. The only people likely to finally resolve the question of Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization are federal investigators.” http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign (http://archive.is/MSR3j)
[“No collusion”? Collusion.]

gaming revenue las vegas 2015 video

The Monthly Revenue Report is a summary of revenue information for nonrestricted gaming activity. Each report reflects 1-month, 3-month, and 12-month data. Prior to 2004, only fiscal and calendar year-end reports are available. Gross gaming revenue of casinos in the U.S. 2019, by state; The most important statistics. Revenue of Las Vegas Sands 2007-2019; Revenue of Las Vegas Sands 2009-2019, by business segment ; Casino ... Nongaming revenue surpassed gaming revenue totals in fiscal year 1998. In 2015 Strip casino set an all-time total revenue record of more than $16.7 billion. However, gaming revenue of $5.8 billion ... July 29, 2015. A release from the Gaming Control Board earlier this week said Nevada gaming revenue declined more than 8% to $830.9 million during June. On the Strip, gaming revenue was down 16.3% to $445.5 million. Baccarat revenue was $64.7 million for Strip casinos during the month of June, down 53.7% over June 2014. The amount wagered ... The Evolution of Nevada Casino Games--Revenue and Unit Share,1985-2019. Las Vegas Strip Table Mix Updated February 2020 The Evolution of Casino Games--Revenue and Unit Share,1985-2019 . Nevada Gaming Revenues,1984-2020 Updated February 2021 Calendar Year Revenues for Selected Reporting Areas: Statewide, Las Vegas Strip, Downtown Las Vegas, Boulder Strip, and Washoe County. Nevada Casinos ... The Abbreviated Revenue Release is a two-page document reflecting total gaming revenues (win) and percentage fee collections generated by nonrestricted licensees for the report month and comparative data for the same month year ago. Cumulative fiscal year-to-date information is also provided. The first page displays gaming win for the State of Nevada and the following Nevada gaming markets: Las Vegas is no longer a bet on gambling Following the 2008 U.S. recession, the Las Vegas economy took a major dive, especially in terms of gaming revenue, which dropped 20% from 2008 to 2010. By ... Call 2015 a wash for the state’s casino industry. Statewide gaming revenue climbed less than 1 percent (0.9 percent to be exact) to $11.1 billion during the calendar year, according to figures ... The limitations mainly affected the casinos located on the Las Vegas Strip. The gaming revenue of all casinos in that area dropped by more than a half, as they reported total revenue of $292 million. NV and Las Vegas Strip Gaming Revenue Down Again. November 30, 2015. State and Strip gaming revenue fell again in October, according to numbers released Monday by the Nevada Gaming Control Board. That makes four out of five months that we’ve seen a decline in those two metrics. In Northern Nevada, though, the casino market increased. Gaming in Reno/Sparks/Tahoe saw gaming revenue jump about ...