LAS VEGAS — There have always been two Super Bowls, according to South Point sportsbook director Chris Andrews — the one played in a venue somewhere and the annual festivities surrounding that game in Las Vegas.
Andrews lieutenant Vinny Magliulo said, “And Las Vegas always outdrew the host city of the game!”
The first confluence of Vegas and the Super Bowl happens Sunday, in Allegiant Stadium, where the Chiefs and 49ers will battle in Super Bowl LVIII. Ticket demand is ferocious.
“We have two very public teams in the Niners and Chiefs, so there’s the demand.” Magliulo said. “And the fact that we’ve got the Super Bowl will not deter people from coming to Las Vegas for that Las Vegas experience, either.”
He conjured figures. In February 2022, Nevada patrons wagered a Super Bowl-record $179.8 million, the handle, on Rams-Bengals, busting the 2018 benchmark (Eagles-Patriots) of $158.6 million.
“The fact that it’s here, this year, we will set [a record],’’ Magliulo said. ‘‘I will go on record and say our handle will be a record, no question about it.”
Westgate SuperBook executive vice president Jay Kornegay concurred:
“No doubt because there’s more going on in this city than we’ve ever had during a Super Bowl. The spike we normally see during a Super Bowl, it’s on another level. You can feel it. The buzz around here is tremendous.”
Jimmy Vaccaro, Magliulo’s colleague at Michael Gaughan’s South Point sportsbook, offered his own exceptional forecast.
“I wouldn’t be surprised — and this is a stretch, maybe — if in three to five years, every Super Bowl will be here because everybody benefits from it,” Vaccaro said. “It’s the perfect city for it, no scrambling for rooms or events. We have everything, from shows to casinos to spas to restaurants. ‘Go see the Hoover Dam!’ There’s more to do here than anywhere. Perfect.”
PARADISE FOUND
Twenty years ago, the NFL forbade the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority from buying a 30-second ad for the league’s title-game telecast. To the league, this place was a desert wasteland.
So, to borrow a line from the group Talking Heads, how did we get here, with Vegas actually playing host to Super Bowl LVIII?
Vaccaro mentioning the dam is wise because the start of its construction, in 1931, helped the area avert economic disaster during the Great Depression. Also that year, Vegas sliced the divorce-residency requirement to six weeks.
And casino gambling was legalized. A senator said, “It made an agreement to walk down the path to destruction with the devil.”
Marion Hicks and JC Grayson, booted from illegal gambling boats off the Southern California coast, finished building the El Cortez downtown in 1941; it is the longest continuously operated hotel and casino in Las Vegas.
Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and partners Meyer Lansky, Gus Greenbaum and Moe Sedway soon purchased the cash cow. Siegel squinted south, to the road that would become the Strip, and envisioned another paradise in the godforsaken sand.
The Strip actually traverses Paradise, Nevada, an unincorporated city that was formed in December 1950.
Siegel oversaw construction of the Flamingo, where competition heightened with the arrival of the Sahara and Sands (in 1952), Riviera (’55), Tropicana and other resorts.
On March 20, 1957, the Nevada Gaming Control Board regarded Trop gaming licensees Louis Lederer and Charles “Babe” Baron, of the Chicago Outfit, “as solid a group of applicants as have ever appeared on a major club application.”
That’s according to Kevin Braig, an Ohio judge whose book “Bookmakers vs. Ball Owners” details the long relationship between gambling, especially sports betting, and baseball and football owners and leagues.
Shadowy and slippery underworld figures by the scores, voracious to skim profits from casino backrooms, flocked to Vegas.
The Trop closes April 2, to be razed for a domed baseball stadium that will house the Las Vegas Athletics, beginning in 2028.
FEAR, LOATHING AND FOOTBALL
The substance of the city’s roots includes Jackie Gaughan, who’d left Omaha for Vegas in 1950 and bought the El Cortez in 1963.
He’d co-manage the Union Plaza, which opened in 1971 and became the first casino with a legal sportsbook, run by legendary bookmaker Bob Martin, in 1975.
The elder Gaughan mentored Vegas mogul Steve Wynn. At one point, Jackie and son Michael owned nine hotel-casinos, a father-son record that will never be broken.
Michael Gaughan built the Barbary Coast, which spawned iconic oddsmakers Andrews, Vaccaro and the retired Art Manteris. Magliulo matriculated to the South Point via Wynn Las Vegas and Caesars Palace.
Too bad Hunter S. Thompson isn’t around to set this scene’s proper tone. By a few years, in his epic “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” he missed writing about Michael Gaughan winning the off-road Mint 400 in 1966.
The father of gonzo journalism was a rabid football fan, and he would have relished melding that game with this city in his flamboyant style, blending fact with fiction in a haze.
He shot himself two weeks after Super Bowl XXXIX, in which the Patriots beat the Eagles. He titled a suicide note, Football Season Is Over. Thompson knew about destructive paths and devilish agreements.
In “Fear and Loathing,” he might have found what he was seeking. He told an editor, “Only a genuine freak could have created the Circus-Circus, which is where I finally found the American Dream.”
THE DOMINOES
The Golden Knights of the NHL launched, playing their first season in 2017-18, and Kornegay called their birth key to this whole series of events.
At UNLV, former pro running back Napoleon McCallum first speculated about the Raiders possibly relocating here, to Bo Bernhard, then the executive director of the International Gaming Institute.
They met with team owner Mark Davis at a game in Oakland and arranged further clandestine discussions, in Las Vegas, for February 2015. Politicos investigated a public element to help build a football stadium.
The state legislature approved a hotel-room tax that would pay for $750 million of the $2 billion edifice. In March 2017, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones convinced his brethren to allow Davis to move the Raiders to Las Vegas.
Vaccaro said, “That was the topper.”
And in May 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court quashed the 26-year-old Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), letting states pursue their own legal single-game sports-betting futures.
That surprised veteran Vegas bookmaker Johnny Avello, now the race and sports director for DraftKings:
“Happy to see it, but I never thought it would happen. Nor did I think the NFL would ever come to Las Vegas.”
Today, 38 states and Washington have legal sports betting, and all have generated more than $300 billion in betting action, and billions in extra state taxes, since May 2018
With a new NFL stadium usually comes a near-future Super Bowl, and Vegas was announced as the Super Bowl LVIII site in December 2021.
The NFL Draft was held here in April 2022. Seven months later, the NCAA awarded the 2028 Final Four to Allegiant and Vegas, whose T-Mobile Arena plays host to the NCAA’s Frozen Four in 2027.
For years, Kornegay, Magliulo and others had detailed what they do, and how they do it, with executives of every sports league.
“We told them that we’re about integrity,” Kornegay said. “Integrity is our product, as well. We want true and straight games. ‘We’re on the same side, guys.’ All those factors combined put us where we are today.”
THE PICKS
For Super Bowl LVIII, I asked select pro handicappers what wager they’d make if given $5,000 and allowed to keep all winnings, and neither Illinois native Chuck Edel, in Vegas, nor Kelly Stewart, in Florida, hesitated. They’d slap it on the San Francisco moneyline. As both responded, the line was 49ers -2, meaning the moneyline, to win outright, was -130.
Steve Fezzik, the lone back-to-back victor in the SuperBook’s SuperContest, would place it on more than 9.5 points being scored in the third quarter, a -122 wager at DraftKings.
On the tip of Long Island, Tom Barton would bet on the 49ers rushing for more than 134.5 yards, at +120:
“With [Christian] McCaffrey and Deebo [Samuel], plus maybe [quarterback Brock] Purdy’s legs, I’d have a good shot.”
At the New England Sports Network, betting analyst and Illinois native Sam Panayotovich would put it on over 3.5 receiving yards, at -110, for 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk.
Panayotovich believes up-front pressure by Chiefs D-linemen Chris Jones and George Karlaftis should allow Juszczyk to flare out for opportunities “after blocking and chipping.”
As a 49er, Juszczyk has been targeted 14 times in three games against the Chiefs and has 10 catches for 98 yards and two TDs.
“If he catches one pass, this is probably a winner,” Panayotovich said.
Vegas pro Bill Krackomberger liked that this is the highest elevation (2,000 feet) for any Super Bowl, so he tapped over on longest punt, which was 56.5 yards and -125, on Monday.
Finally, in Tennessee, Tyler Wyatt opted for under 47.5, in total points, as his model shows San Francisco 23.1, Kansas City 21.3.
INTERNATIONAL DESTINATION
What would The Originals, those who built the El Cortez, Flamingo, Union Plaza, Desert Inn, Dunes and Tropicana, say about the Super Bowl landing here? Bugsy and Co. might still be too busy skimming to notice.
Of the legitimates, last year I asked Michael Gaughan, who turns 81 on March 24, what his dad might have thought about all of this. At 93, Jackie Gaughan died in 2014.
Well, Michael told me, his pop would’ve never thought that paid parking would ever come to Las Vegas, either. MGM Resorts started that in 2016. South Point parking remains gratis.
“Had I told my dad, before he died, that the Super Bowl would be here in the 2020s, he would have laughed at me,” Gaughan said.
Andrews said with a grin: “Incredible. We’re one of the centers of the sports universe.”
Andrews, Magliulo, Vaccaro, Kornegay and Avello have 220 years in the business.
Magliulo paused. Indeed, Formula One held a Las Vegas Grand Prix in November and extended a three-year deal to 10.
“We’re in the rotation for the Super Bowl and Final Four, and Las Vegas is as international of an event destination as anywhere else in the world,” Magliulo said.
What would those elders think?
“The gaming pioneers, they knew the potential of this city,’’ Magliulo said. ‘‘Did they ever envision it becoming as big as it has? You knew they envisioned that it would expand, and it was up to us, our generation, to help it expand.
“And I think we’re succeeding.”
