LAS VEGAS – Las Vegas casinos, fighting hard to rebound from a dreadful stretch for tourism, face a new threat if NFL players and owners can’t agree on a new contract.
And the longer the sides disagree, the worse things might get for the gambling mecca.
“I can’t see us losing a whole NFL season,” said Lee Amaitis, chief executive of Cantor Gaming, a company that operates sports books in four Las Vegas casinos. But if it happens “it won’t be good.”
“If this town doesn’t have the Super Bowl, it’ll be a disaster,” he said.
The NFL is king among sports bettors, whose influence in casinos goes far beyond actual wagering on games.
The main tourism agency that promotes Las Vegas estimates this year’s Super Bowl alone brought 275,000 visitors to Sin City, generating $85.6 million in revenue beyond gambling. In 2010, 267,000 people came and spent $83.1 million on things like hotel rooms, restaurants and other entertainment besides gambling, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said.
Those figures dwarf the $724,000 casinos won on $87.5 million gambled statewide on the Green Bay Packers’ win over the Pittsburgh Steelers last month.
“You can back it up all the way to the cab drivers, to the
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