You don’t go from Sin City to Win City, from city of sin to city of success, without missing something. Agent 007 also ended up in his suite in ’71. It was Sean Connery but he introduced himself as Bond, James Bond. In the hall there were mosaics and a tulip-shaped fountain, in its theater Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra sang while the dancers of the Folies Bergère went topless in ’59. He had an exotic name: Tropicana.
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Louis Armstrong played there, it was also there in ’67 that the German magicians Siegfried and Roy made their debut and later specialized in the number with the white tiger, it’s a shame that Mantacore, who was seven years old, did not fall under the spell and in 2003 when Roy asked him to say hello to the public she was rather extrovert and with one paw she took off half his neck. The Tropicana had opened in ’57, had cost 15 million dollars and for its jewelery prices (it was among the first to have a great chef) was nicknamed “Tiffany on the Strip”. It was the third oldest hotel-casino in Las Vegasbut the first one that had tried to be a little chic.
Last week the Tropicana has closed the doors forever. It will soon be demolished and a few sticks of dynamite will finish the job. It was a piece of Las Vegas history, or rather of Vegas, without an article, as the people of the night call it. The hotel is not moving, it actually ceases to exist to make way for a modern one and a half billion dollar baseball stadium where Major League Baseball (Mlb) will play and will be the home of the A’s (Oakland Athletics), those of the film L ‘The Art of Winning (Moneyball) with Brad Pitt, released in 2011.
The news is that sport pays as much or more than sin. And Vegas, as Vittorio Zucconi wrote, was the city in the desert with 160 churches and 1701 gambling houses where “sin sells very well, wholesale, retail, loose, in family-packaged packages, with a discount”. And where everything worked, but in reverse: «Women get dressed to go to sleep and undress to go to work». But now also to play, we should add. Because the women’s team Aces who participates in the Wnba, a professional basketball championship, is at its second consecutive title. Previously in Vegas you only won by gambling by betting on numbers, today also by playing sports by wearing numbers.
The death of Tropicana is a mourning reported by the Pokernews sites and also the Mobmuseum. You will understand why: the sin in the beginning was organized and managed by the mafia who made money with the casinos. And here too the Tropicana has something to do. Not even a month after its opening the gangster Frank Costello was shot in the head as he returned to his apartment at 115 Central Park West in New York. A man had gotten out of a black Cadillac and shot him. Costello was saved, refused to testify (“I don’t have an enemy in the world”), said that he had not seen the attacker who, however, was recognized by the doorman of the building. And so the police arrested Vincent “Chin” Gigante, the hitman of Vito Genovese, rival boss.
At the hospital in a pocket of Costello’s coat on a piece of paper they found some figures that were not a telephone number but the exact amount of the Tropicana takings on April 27: 651,284 dollars less 153,745 (loans to players) plus 62,844, the proceeds from slot machines. There were also 30 thousand dollars for L and 9 thousand for H. The initials of Lansky, criminal associate of Costello and Hoffa, head of the Teamsters union linked to the mafia. And voilà the Tropicana served the test: the money was real, but the business was dirty.
Now in Vegas the great sport has found a home not only with betting, which has been legal in the city since 1931 (in 2023 it reached the record figure of 15.5 billion dollars). There was a saying: Vegas is where you go to certify that you’ve become an adult. Now it is also the place that gives you your fan license, where you go to watch the Formula One GP and the Super Bowl final at night. A new sports Mecca, with other offerings apart from boxing. If before the only physical activity to engage in was golf and you could also choose to have a llama carry your clubs, now there is the ice hockey team of the National Hockey League (NHL) with the Vegas Golden Knights which last year they won the Stanley Cup. In football there are the Las Vegas Raiders and in 2028, when the new stadium is ready, the A’s will also arrive.
Vegas has transformed, has multiple professional teams and it’s not just roulette balls spinning. Do you want to see that investing in sport is worth it? It’s a good form of entertainment, it brings friends and families together and mixes not only young people.
This is what a football team in Paris, the Paris F.C. which has stopped charging for tickets to matches since November. Yes, you understood correctly, entry is free, with a couple of exceptions. Let’s say it straight away, they are not as famous as Mbappé’s PSG, they play at the Charléty stadium, in the second division (they have been missing from the French Serie A since ’79) and they are not in the Champions League. The innovation involved many young people, allowed a generational change among the fans and made the club more interesting because full stadiums attract sponsors and raise the team’s prices. Same initiative by the Fortuna Düsseldorf, a German second division club, which with the slogan “Luck for all” saw the home crowd go from 27 thousand to 52 thousand spectators. Alexander Jobst, CEO of the company, says: «We are looking for sponsors, 50% of their income will go to youth, women’s and social projects. Meanwhile, our merchandising has increased and many commercial partners have come forward.” The goal is to eliminate ticket sales within five years. It’s an experiment. As benefactors? Not so much.
«The presence of fans at the stadium increases the desirability of the television product and therefore, possibly, the value of the TV rights». He supports it Luc Arrondel, professor at the Paris School of Economics, who with another author wrote the book L’Argent du football. Football money. It wouldn’t just be generosity, but calculation. Football is an increasingly small and big screen spectacle, but it is the audience that makes it exciting, alive, unique. Empty stadiums are depressing, they have no color or warmth. Arrondel has transgressive ideas: the spectators should even be paid, they are an important part of the game, not just choreography. Goodbye, Tropicana. Rien goes plus, but you can win another way.
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– 2024-04-15 13:01:29
