Mayor asking casinos if they would give up NBA betting

Angie Wagner

Friday, Oct. 1, 1999 | 10:29 a.m.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is polling the city's casinos to see if they would give up taking professional basketball bets so the city could qualify for a National Basketball Association team.

"I want to find out what they think," Goodman said Thursday at his weekly news conference. "I want to see if there's any give. You never know."

Goodman and city officials met in New York Tuesday with commissioners David Stern of the NBA and Gary Bettman of the NHL to talk about bringing a professional team to a proposed downtown sports arena, but the meeting didn't go as well as the mayor wanted.

Neither league has any plans to expand, and neither league has any team seeking a new home.

And Stern's position seemed to be either NBA betting goes or no team goes to Las Vegas. The league has a long-standing policy against gambling.

Goodman and his staff are now polling the city's casinos to see if banning NBA betting is an option. But would Las Vegas be willing to make that sacrifice?

"This has to be a community effort," he said.

Even though basketball betting accounts for about 23 percent of the total sports handle in Las Vegas, NBA betting does bring in visitors to the city.

"There's not just the sports wagering aspect - you have to look at the ripple effect throughout the rest of the property," Vince Magliulo, assistant vice president of race, sports and keno operations at Caesars Palace, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "We draw people who not only gamble but spend money on food and beverage and other things. It goes beyond the race and sports book numbers."

An NHL team seems more probable because Bettman said the league likely would allow betting on all hockey games except for the home teams.

Stern promised Goodman he would bring up Las Vegas and the issue of sports gambling at the next owners meeting on Oct. 28.