The week that was in casino news includes a couple of key headlines from Las Vegas. That’s where we’ll start our weekly roundup of the news.
Fontainebleau To Finally Open As The Drew?
A few months ago, it was announced that the Fontainebleau Las Vegas property would be sold by Icahn Enterprises to Steven Witkoff, who runs a real estate company in New York. Witkoff bought the property for $600 million, which meant that Carl Icahn’s company made a profit of over $450 million on a property that was never finished. But now, Witkoff has struck a deal with Marriott International to reopen the facility in 2020 as The Drew Las Vegas. It is going to have a casino with 4,000 hotel rooms, along with a convention centre, restaurants and nightclubs. The Drew, which is named after Witkoff’s late son, Andrew, is at the north end of the Las Vegas Strip and the property was the first home of the Thunderbird Hotel and Casino. Construction for The Drew is slated to start this year.
Report: Boulder The Best Place To Play Slots
The Nevada Gaming Control Board has revealed some gaming statistics for 2017 and one interesting point that was revealed was the best place for customers to play slots: The Boulder Strip.
The report crunched the numbers to indicate which casinos are best and worst for players. The casinos on the Las Vegas Strip had the largest slot-win percentage (for the house) at 8.04 percent, which means that the casinos paid players just over 91 percent of what went in. Meanwhile, The Boulder Strip, which is in southern Nevada, had the lowest slot-win percentage at 5.53 percent, which is actually better for the players because that meant that the house paid out just over 94 percent of what went in. Megabucks machines had the best win percentages for slots at 12.07 percent, and the $25 machines were the best for the players at 4.97 percent.
Another interesting point from the report was that the game of blackjack has the biggest presence of any table game in the state. There are over 2,580 more blackjack tables than any other game (roulette came in second place, far behind blackjack). Overall, Nevada counted $11.57 billion in gaming wins for the casinos.
Wild Crypto Launches Blockchain Casino
A lot of online gaming options are heading into the crypto space and while it’s soon to be a competitive area, brands who build early will get the benefit of being first. Wild Crypto is one of those early entries as they’ve launched their iGaming platform. Players will be able to play their wide array of online casino and lottery games. Taking the ICO route, the company raised $9 million since its first token sale in 2017 and has used that money for development with Twelve40, which is working on its back-end system. This is the first blockchain gaming product to go live. As a result, their token has more than doubled since launch, according to CoinMarketCap.
Wild Crypto earned its license in Curacao and is able to accept customers from almost anywhere in the world.