From Vegas, Inc – At the stroke of midnight Monday, a boycott of the poker room at Sheldon Adelson’s Venetian began.
But virtually no change was visible Monday afternoon. Dozens of visitors crowded the tables.
The only sign of a boycott was online, where local poker pros took to blogs to rage over Adelson’s aggressive campaign against online gambling. The disgruntled players appeared to be the only ones taking part in the five-day boycott.
“This isn’t a fight about profits,” poker insider Nolan Dalla, who sparked the protest in a widely read blog post, wrote June 27. “It’s about making a statement. Let’s do whatever we can to create an empty poker room for five straight days.”
While the Venetian’s poker room was far from empty Monday, Dalla said the overwhelming response from the poker community made the boycott a personal victory in his mind.
“Frankly, I don’t think there is a metric to measure how effective the boycott will be,” Dalla said. “This was about awareness, and to that end, we have been successful.”
Ron Reese, spokesman of Las Vegas Sands Corp., declined to comment.
Dalla called for the boycott after Adelson described online gaming as “a societal train wreck waiting to happen” and launched a website urging lawmakers to vote against online gaming, which he argued “is not a good bet for the future of America.”
