MMA

UFC 174 Viewing Parties

June 13, 2014 by Marc Leave a Comment

UFC 174 Las Vegas Viewing Parties — UFC 174

Las Vegas is home to the UFC and people here love MMA of all kinds. The casinos don’t show pay per view fights (boxing or UFC) so you can’t watch these fights in a sportsbook.

Since Station Casinos owns part of the UFC they throw viewing parties at some of their casinos for each Pay Per View. The casinos are different for each pay per view. Here are their parties for the UFC fights this weekend.

The below parties have doors at 5 p.m., $10 cover and are 21 years or older.

Grand Ballroom at Palace Station
Club Madrid at Sunset Station
Chrome Showroom at Santa Fe Station
Rocks Lounge at Red Rock Resort
Lobby Bar at Green Valley Ranch

Wildfire Valley View will also host a free viewing party in its lounge area.

You can usually watch the preliminary fights in the sportsbook. Station Casinos cannot take bets on UFC because of their partnership. If you want to bet UFC fights you might want to load up a William Hill or Cantor Gaming account.

UFC 173 Viewing Parties

May 23, 2014 by Marc Leave a Comment

Las Vegas is home to the UFC and people here love MMA of all kinds. The casinos don’t show pay per view fights (boxing or UFC) so you can’t watch these fights in a sportsbook.

The below parties have doors at 5 p.m., $10 cover and are 21 years or older.

Grand Ballroom at Palace Station
Club Madrid at Sunset Station
Chrome Showroom at Santa Fe Station
Rocks Lounge at Red Rock Resort
Lobby Bar at Green Valley Ranch

Wildfire Valley View will also host a free viewing party in its lounge area.

Lion Fight and The UFC present Lion Fight 16 during UFC’s International Fight Week July 1-6

May 9, 2014 by Marc Leave a Comment

UFC International Fight Week in Vegas is a big deal with MMA fans all over the world. There are meatheads, dudes and bro’s all over Vegas. Lots of light beer will be consumed and fun will be had. There are MMA related events all over town. I’m sure Vegas Chatter will have more information when we get closer to July.

I don’t know what Lion Fight is and I don’t want to know. If you do a google image search for Lion Fight you’ll find all kinds of awesome. Here are the details on Lion Fight at Palms if you love MMA

Press release:

Scott Kent made the biggest and boldest move yet for the sport of Muay Thai and his LION FIGHT organization in joining with the UFC, for the first time ever, to present a world class full Muay Thai rules event, LION FIGHT 16, as part of the UFC’s International Fight Week taking place in Las Vegas July 1 – 6. UFC President Dana White and Kent, LION FIGHT Founder and CEO, today announced to fight fans everywhere that LION FIGHT 16 will take place live Friday, July 4 from The Pearl inside Palms Casino Resort, presented on the UFC’s roster of fan events and activities taking place in the city’s hottest venues and clubs throughout the holiday weekend.

UFC 172 Viewing Parties

April 23, 2014 by Marc Leave a Comment

Las Vegas is home to the UFC and people here looooove MMA of all kinds. The casinos don’t show pay per view fights (boxing or UFC) so you can’t watch these fights in a sportsbook.

Since Station Casinos owns part of the UFC they throw viewing parties at some of their casinos for each Pay Per View. The casinos are different for each pay per view. Here are their parties for the UFC fights this weekend.

The below parties have doors at 5 p.m., $10 cover and are 21 years or older.

Grand Ballroom at Palace Station
Club Madrid at Sunset Station
Chrome Showroom at Santa Fe Station
Rocks Lounge at Red Rock Resort
Lobby Bar at Green Valley Ranch
Wildfire Valley View will also host a free viewing party in its lounge area.

LVH SuperContest Weekend

August 26, 2013 by Marc Leave a Comment

LVH SuperBook - Las Vegas Hotel — LVH SuperBook

Just like that….LVH SuperContest Weekend has come and gone. The LVH SuperContest is the largest most known football contest in Las Vegas (there are many). Its $1,500 entry fee makes it worth paying attention to, in part because of the huge prize pool. This year LVH is estimating that there will be over $1 million in prizes given away with the winner taking home over $200,000. Not too shabby!

I don’t play in the SuperContest because I don’t feel like spend enough time handicapping football to I’m not confident that I can win the contest. That doesn’t stop me from enjoying a little bit of SuperContest Weekend. It’s nice to see some of the serious sports bettors that I already know and meet new sports bettors.

I only attend the seminars with the pro sports handicappers discussing their thoughts on the upcoming football seasons (college and pro). I figure that I’d learn a little bit in between beers and chit-chat. Here are my notes from the college football panel.

Because of the $1,500 buy-in and huge prizes there is a lot of interest to be a part of the SuperContest from people all over the country. You can still take part of the SuperContest even if you don’t live in Las Vegas with a proxy service. Vegas Matty, who operates FootballContestProxy.com and the recently launched FootballContest.com, explains:

“The proxy was put in place by the LVH to allow out-of-state contestants – and those others who can’t physically make it to the SuperBook on a weekly basis – to participate in the greatest football contest in the world. The SuperContest requires picks to be submitted in person, so that requirement would obviously prevent most of an ever-growing field from entering if they could not use a proxy.

“In fact, most of my new clients tell me they would have entered previously but did not know they could use a proxy to submit picks for them. I definitely believe the growth of the SuperContest is not just directly tied to the exposure created by guys like Chad Millman and Bill Simmons (from ESPN) and marketing genius of Jay Kornegay, who have all contributed greatly to its success. In my opinion, the realization that contestants don’t need to live in Las Vegas and can use a proxy instead has also had a significant impact on the SuperContest’s spike up the last few years.”

For full disclosure Vegas Matty was one of the first people I met when I moved to Las Vegas because we have many shared interests. He’s a good follow on twitter if you like football or MMA.

The LVH SuperContest is growing every year which, in turn, makes it more difficult to win because of increased competition. If you like winning the time to sign up for the SuperContest is now. Likewise, if you like big jackpots hold out and prepare for next year. Since 100% of the money is returned to players prizes will only keep increasing.

Tweet @Vegas_Matty

UFC #1!

November 14, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

I don’t like MMA or UFC and I didn’t watch UFC on Fox this weekend, but I follow a lot of people that do on twitter. Many are boxing writers who also cover MMA. Writers and normal people alike were commenting that the UFC fight on Fox lasted only a minute. Meanwhile, I was waiting for the Manny Pacquiao fight to begin while I was watching the Oregon destroy Stanford in football. Anyway, I don’t know many people from back east that care for MMA, but since I moved to Vegas I realized that there is a lot of pride in the MMA thing.

UFC is partially owned by the Ferritas brothers who also own Station Casinos. UFC came to prominence in Las Vegas before the rest of the world began catching on. People here treat UFC like their little brother that they helped build up. Like with just about everything in Las Vegas, the locals are very protective of their little brother. However, it may be time where big brother has grown up and entered the real world. Michelle Steele (that can’t be a real last name) from Bloomberg News reported that almost 6 million people watched UFC on Fox. I don’t know the TV world, so I asked if that was good and evidently it is good. Very good.

Meanwhile, if 1 million people watched the Manny Pacquiao fight, that would be considered good. I will always have a soft spot for boxing and don’t see myself ever getting MMA, but there’s a connection that UFC has been making for years with fans that cannot be denied as the UFC has grown from a $2 million business to $2 BILLION business in 10 years. Not bad.

New Jersey Votes To Approve Sports Betting…Now What?

November 9, 2011 by Marc 2 Comments

Yesterday, New Jersey voters approved a referendum that would allow sports betting in the state if a federal ban on sports betting is lifted.

But first, a federal ban on sports betting in all but four states would have to be lifted by Congress or overturned by the courts for New Jersey to offer wagering on professional and college teams.

It’s smart that New Jersey is allowing sports betting to take place at racetracks, because who would bother driving to Atlantic City to make a $50 wager on a game from northern New Jersey or New York or Pennsylvania. Perhaps this will lead the way to New Jersey having racinos at those same racetracks in the future. But what’s next?

After the federal ban is lifted (which is rumored to be done already) casinos will have to undergo a major transformation.
Atlantic City casinos will have to buy DirecTV or some kind of satellite system to show the games that people can bet on. Currently, casinos mostly show basic cable and local sports. It’s pretty much BS that I could never watch a Jets game in Atlantic City. This will not be acceptable if they begin to take wagers on all sports.
Atlantic City casinos will have to figure out which boxing or MMA matches they can show, if any. Currently Pay Per View events are controlled by the casinos hosting the events and usually only shown on their properties. Will Caesars get back into hostin boxing matches since they own four eleven Atlantic City casinos?
Sports and racebooks will have to be expanded to show more than just horse racing and to be able to facilitate more bettors and viewers.

Studies show that there will be a boatload of money earned from sports betting for the casinos to make these changes (and more).

Citing a University of Pennsylvania study conducted last year, Pascrell (a lobbyist who is working with Raymond Lesniak on the sports betting campaign.) also said sports betting is expected to generate more than $10 billion in annual wagering. New Jersey would get an 8 percent cut of the betting action through the state’s gross wagering tax.

Again, this is all just in the early stages and quite frankly I don’t believe these numbers are real but we’ll have to see. For more information on the approval of sports betting in New Jersey take a look at the Press of Atlantic City and Covers.com.