Good morning, and welcome to the Indy Gaming newsletter, a weekly look at gaming matters nationally and internationally and how the events tie back to Nevada.

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Las Vegas Raiders President Sandra Douglass Morgan says the opportunity exists for additional professional sports franchises to call Southern Nevada home.

Morgan, who was named the first-ever female African American president of an NFL team in July, made the remarks Saturday during a nearly hour-long conversation about the business of sports in Nevada that kicked off the policy and politics-focused IndyFest conference.

The former chairwoman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, Morgan also discussed the nationwide growth of sports betting.

Here is a brief snippet of some of Morgan’s comments during the discussion at The Nevada Independent’s two-day conference. The interview was edited for clarity and length.

Please explain your role with the Las Vegas Raiders.

I’m responsible for the financial health and overall well-being of the Raiders. That would include all business operations, our corporate sponsorships, our sales of our suites we have at Allegiant Stadium, which is something Raiders did not have control over when they were (in Oakland). I also work closely with the general manager (Dave Ziegler) on our financial issues, which would include the salary cap. But he would make the decision as to which player to acquire.

You were named Raiders president following a very volatile situation that had extensive media coverage. How have you navigated your way through the initial challenges?

I went into this role with eyes wide open. I had an opportunity to meet Mark Davis about a year ago, who genuinely and passionately bleeds and breathes silver and black. The Raiders are very important to his family.

I wouldn't be here if it was something that I thought was so challenging that it couldn't be overcome. I've been truly welcomed with open arms not only within the Raiders organization, but the NFL community as well.

Mark was very transparent with me about some of the issues that were going on. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it was really about my discussion with Mark and understanding his vision, how he viewed this transition to Las Vegas and what his long-term goals were here.

The Raiders organization is incredibly strong and built on the vision of the Al Davis legacy. They're very close-knit. When there was the transition to Las Vegas, people weren't able to be in the same buildings together because of strict COVID protocols. People were somewhat siloed just by the nature of the pandemic. There were some cultural changes, and transitions and maybe there wasn't the best communication.

The NFL was opposed to any association with sports betting until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in May 2018. Have you helped the league, either as a former regulator or team president, navigate the sports betting matters?

I definitely am leaning into the opportunity to be able to explain and give a regulated gambling perspective to either team presidents, team owners and the league as well. I think they're going to be definitely open to that.

The NFL took a very, very hardline approach to sports betting pre-PASPA repeal. I can understand that now that I’m on this side of things. As soon as people don't think the game is fair, and if they think there's something that's improper with gambling involved, that really could affect the strength and the health of the league.

You can say sports betting is legal, but every state has a different regulatory process. That is something the NFL and other national companies are looking at concerning advertising and investing in certain things. The laws we have here in Nevada are not the same as in Arizona (and other states). It's definitely a patchwork of different gambling regulations.

Should the NFL allow betting lines to be shown at stadiums during games?

We’re used to it (in Las Vegas) but there are a lot of people that don't want to see those lines. They want to enjoy the game. I think it's an important balance that the NFL is taking to make sure you're not offending fans that don't want to see those lines or with the oversaturation of betting content. It’s a balance that's going to be struck and as attitudes for gaming and sports wagering maybe continue to soften.

Can Southern Nevada support more major professional teams besides the Raiders, the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights and the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces?

I think we need to stop selling ourselves short. We have been able to support these huge teams and these huge entertainment venues, along with having a kind of world-class hospitality and restaurants and everything else. I think it depends on the team and on the league. But I think we've shown that we're able to support a major sports franchise.

The fact that now we have the Pro Bowl and the NFL Draft here is wonderful. Ten years ago, these weren't even an opportunity for us. It’s great for the Raiders, but it’s really great for the Southern Nevada community

You’re a member of the Super Bowl LVIII host committee. What can fans expect in February 2024?

The NFL owns the Super Bowl. The host committee will work on all of the events and amazing things that happen around the Super Bowl. Even if you don't go to the game, there are going to be pre-event concerts and an entire family fun zone with different skill challenges and things like that. Historically, more people come to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl even when the Super Bowl is not in Las Vegas.

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McDowell’s fascination with casinos leads to Gaming Hall of Fame honor

Virginia McDowell could have had a career as a trailblazing female television news anchor, rather than becoming one of the few gaming industry CEOs in a landscape historically dominated by men.

The fledgling Atlantic City casino market drew her away from the news desk.

Now, more than 40 years later, McDowell will enter the American Gaming Association’s Gaming Hall of Fame next week at the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas, along with two fellow industry CEOs. McDowell will become the 13th woman inducted among the Hall’s 114 members.

McDowell, who worked for several casino operators in Atlantic City and the former Argosy Corp., was CEO of regional casino operator Isle of Capri from 2007 to 2016. A year after her retirement, the company was sold to Eldorado Resorts, which is now Caesars Entertainment.

Her involvement in gaming, however, has not stopped. She is on the board of United Kingdom online gaming operator Entain Plc and is the co-founder of Global Gaming Women, a nonprofit established in 2016 with a mission to support, inspire and influence the development of women in the gaming industry.

“I have been incredibly fortunate to spend my career in a complicated and fun and dynamic industry, where I can honestly say that no two days are ever the same,” McDowell said in an interview last week. “But one of the things that I like to stress and to reinforce when I speak to women who ask, ‘how did you get to be CEO?’ I never stopped learning. And I never stopped looking for opportunities to learn.”

McDowell was earning her communications degree at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1979, when casinos were legalized roughly 60 miles southeast in Atlantic City. She was also a student reporter for the CBS television affiliate WCAU in Philadelphia.

“We were covering this story and I was fascinated by it,” McDowell recalled in an interview last week. “I wrote my capstone paper for college on Atlantic City, ‘Should the Casinos Finance the Dawning of the Dice Age?’ I was fascinated by the prospect of this industry that had unlimited growth that was being unleashed on an island that had 35,000 residents. Who was going to pay for this?”

After graduating from Temple in 1980 and spending a few years at WCAU, gaming was still on McDowell’s mind. She applied for a job as a publicist at Bally’s Park Place, which opened in 1991. She listed her two years of media experience, which caught the eye of the director of publications, herself a former bureau chief for The Associated Press.

Bally’s also had two female vice presidents, including Redinia Gilliam-Mosee, who became the first Black woman inducted into the Gaming Hall of Fame in 2016.

In rapidly expanding Atlantic City – the only legal casino market at the time outside of Nevada – McDowell found the opportunity to learn all facets of the gaming business. During two years at Tropicana Atlantic City, she oversaw 10 different casino departments.

“That was a great opportunity and I had two great mentors at the Tropicana who were giants in the industry,” McDowell said of Jack Galloway and Jim Perry, the resort’s two presidents during her tenure. “If you look at women in the gaming industry, a lot of us worked for them. They supported us.”

McDowell spent 16 years in Atlantic City before joining Illinois-based Argosy Gaming in 2005. She returned to Atlantic City after the company was sold to Penn National Gaming to serve as executive vice president for Trump Entertainment Resorts before joining Isle of Capri in 2007.

At Argosy, McDowell realized data warehousing and technology were keys to moving the gaming industry forward, and she took over those functions at the casino company.

“I'm a reporter by trade and I technically entered the industry on the marketing side and then pushed my way into operations,” McDowell said.

Global Gaming Women (GGW), which began as part of the AGA in 2011, was designed to bring women into gaming industry management. Then-International Game Technology CEO Patti Hart and McDowell put the organization in place, while the AGA supported it with research.

Five years later, McDowell, along with Hart and former gaming industry executive Patty Becker, turned GGW into a nonprofit. She said the organization has more than 6,000 names on its mailing list.

After a recent address at a gaming conference in Atlantic City, McDowell and Entain CEO Jetta Nygaard Anderson were approached by a young woman who worked for a start-up company, who thanked her for the words of encouragement she gave to the audience.

“She’ll never know how much it meant for me to hear her say that,” McDowell said.

Rumbolz and Isaacs to enter Gaming Hall

Michael Rumbolz, whose gaming career included time as a Nevada gaming regulator, chief executive for both casino operators and gaming equipment manufacturers and a corporate board member, and Gavin Isaacs, a longtime executive in the gaming equipment sector, are joining McDowell in the Class of 2022.

Rumbolz, who is the executive chairman of Everi Holdings, announced his retirement plans from the company in December. He served as Everi’s CEO from February 2016 until his retirement became official in April. In more than five years under Rumbolz’s leadership, Everi’s market capitalization increased from $168 million to approximately $2 billion.

Rumbolz spent more than 40 years in all aspects of the gaming industry, starting as a chief deputy attorney general in Nevada before he was the youngest-ever chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, where he served from 1985 to 1988.

A one-year cooling-off period for board members before they could join a licensed gaming company wasn’t in place at the time, but Rumbolz turned down an opportunity to run the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas for Steve Wynn. Instead, Rumbolz was hired by then-Atlantic City casino operator Donald Trump to explore Nevada gaming opportunities for the future president. Rumbolz eventually went east to oversee Trump’s casinos on the Boardwalk.

He joined Circus Circus Enterprises (later Mandalay Resort Group) and became president of the company’s casino joint venture in Windsor, a city across the river from Detroit in Ontario, Canada.

Rumbolz returned to Las Vegas in the early 1990s as CEO of slot machine developer Anchor Gaming, and then joined Cash Systems, which was acquired by Global Cash Access.

Isaacs, who is chairman of Isle of Man-based online gaming supplier Games Global, held executive positions with three of the industry’s largest manufacturers.

He began his career with Australia-based Aristocrat Technologies, helping launch the company’s operations in the U.S. He eventually joined Bally Technologies and was chief operating officer of the games division when he joined Shuffle Master Gaming as CEO.

Isaacs engineered Shuffle Master’s name change to SHFL Entertainment, and the company was later bought by Bally’s. Isaacs became CEO of Scientific Games after the company (now known as Light & Wonder) acquired Bally’s in a $5.1 billion deal.

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Light & Wonder slashes debt following sale of sports betting business

Light & Wonder completed the sale of the gaming equipment provider’s sports betting business last week, finalizing a two-pronged effort to refocus, reposition and rename the Las Vegas-based company.

The yearlong undertaking also reduced the long-term debt of the former Scientific Games from a daunting $9.2 billion to a more manageable $4 billion by end of the second quarter.

Interim CEO Matt Wilson said Light & Wonder “delivered on our key priority to transform our balance sheet.”

The company shed itself of OpenBet to Endeavor Group Holdings for $800 million, which followed the sale earlier this year of its lottery operations – including the Scientific Games name – to Brookfield Business Partners for $6.05 billion. Light & Wonder is now concentrating efforts on developing gaming products that can be used across all platforms, including traditional land-based casinos, online gaming websites and social gaming products.

Initially, Endeavor agreed to pay $1.2 billion for OpenBet, which provides sports wagering technology and systems to sportsbook operators and casinos. But the transaction’s terms changed.

“Although the gross proceeds are lower than when the deal was originally consummated, our positive stance remains,” Jefferies gaming analyst David Katz told investors. “We believe the focus now shifts to growth in digital gaming, market share gains in land-based gaming and, most notably, share repurchases.”

Truist Securities gaming analyst Barry Jonas said the sale should lead to one other company change – removing the interim label from Wilson’s title.

“We see the deal close as a positive for the company as this now officially completes their strategic change (and) review,” Jonas told investors Friday. “As a rebranded entity focused on becoming the leader in cross-platform global gaming, Light & Wonder’s focus is now on execution towards its 2025 goals and beyond.”

Wilson, who was Light & Wonder’s group chief executive of gaming when he was named interim CEO in late August following the sudden resignation of former CEO Barry Cottle, said last week the sale of OpenBet leaves the company “well positioned to execute on our growth strategy with a singular focus on building great games fully cross-platform.”

Wilson joined Light & Wonder in 2019 from rival gaming equipment provider Aristocrat Technologies, but could not jump into the role until March 2020 because of a non-compete clause in his contract.

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Analyst outlook on Macau is ‘murky’ following September revenue decline

Travel restrictions from Mainland China and zero-COVID policy measures have sent Macau gaming revenue totals tumbling more than 53 percent compared to 2021.

The Macau government is offering signs that travel bans from five Mainland Chinese provinces could be loosened later this month or by early November. Still, one gaming analyst is not convinced the prospects for Las Vegas-based Macau casino operators are on the upswing.

“Our heart wants to say yes, but our mind tells us otherwise as we have been tricked so many times over the past two years,” Stifel Financial gaming analyst Steven Wieczynski told investors in a research note Sunday after Macau regulators said gaming revenue of $370 million in September was down almost 50 percent from a year ago.

Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts and MGM Resorts International operate casinos in Macau. For Sands, which sold its Strip properties in February for $6.25 billion, Marina Bay Sands in Singapore remains the company's only casino operating without major restrictions.

“While visitation (and) spend trends have been encouraging during periods where the (Macau) market was stable, we still believe there won’t be any signs of a material recovery until sometime in mid-2023,” Wieczynski wrote.

Through September, Macau casinos have collected $4 billion in gaming revenue compared to $10.8 billion collected in 2021. 

Macau's gaming revenue hit a record high of $45 billion in 2013, but economic challenges in China caused declines in the market over the next few years. In pre-pandemic 2019, Macau casinos produced $36.6 billion in gaming revenue.

A year later, the pandemic sent Macau gaming revenue tumbling to $7.56 billion, its lowest figure in 14 years.

“At this point, until we see a material change in visitation and spending patterns and a clear indication visitation restrictions are gone, we believe the near-term outlook for Macau will remain murky at best,” Wieczynski wrote.