Blood Suckers II

About Blood Suckers II

A private steakhouse and lounge is being planned for the $2 billion Athletics ballpark rising from the former Tropicana demolition site on the Strip. The Athletic Club will only be accessible to season ticket holders and their guests during games and other stadium events.

The venue, to be located directly behind home plate at field level, is projected to debut along with the ballpark in February 2028.

Renowned restaurateur Will Guidara—celebrated for his tenure co-owning New York City’s three Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park and pioneering the “Unreasonable Hospitality” movement—is spearheading the design.

Hockey fans heading to Vegas Golden Knights games can now partake in way-cheaper stadium eats than the Athletic Club will offer. SMKD (Smoked Meats, Killer Drinks) BBQ has launched an upper-concourse food cart at T-Mobile Arena. Spearheaded by Top Chef Season 7 alumnus and Beat Bobby Flay champ Chef Alex Reznik (in partnership with Ogden Hospitality), the expansion builds on the success of SMKD’s brick-and-mortar location, which opened in November 2025 at 10895 S. Eastern Ave. in Henderson.

What is Blood Suckers II?

Atucha praises the regulation and the regulators themselves for making entry into the market easy, as well as allowing them to be competitive against illegal operators. But the market hasn’t been without its challenges.

A 1% selective consumption tax (ISC) on the value of every online bet has been in force since 1 July 2025, after the original policy was scrapped from proposed regulations in July 2021.

Atucha warns that regulations are often perceived as operator-friendly at the start before governments begin looking to squeeze licensed sectors, likening the process to “boiling a frog”. He has observed similar scenarios in other LatAm markets, with tax increases occurring in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico in the last couple of years.

What is Blood Suckers II?

Just eight years after the state of New Jersey successfully petitioned the US Supreme Court to repeal the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which opened the floodgates of sports betting expansion across the country, the Garden State has again petitioned the high court, this time to defend its sports betting jurisdiction against the rise of prediction markets and sports event contracts.

On Wednesday, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport announced that her office had filed a petition for writ of certiorari following an appeals court verdict from earlier this year that went in favour of prediction markets. That 2-1 verdict from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals was handed down in April, and New Jersey had until Thursday to petition the high court.

The petition poses the question of whether the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was enacted in 2010 in the aftermath of the Great Recession, “preempted states from regulating sports bets that occur within their jurisdictions if those bets are offered on markets registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission”. Prediction markets have argued that their event contracts are financial derivatives regulated by the CFTC whereas many states contend that they are simply sports bets by another name.