- Circa Resort & Casino will open their first five floors on October 28.
- Circa is the first new casino construction in downtown Las Vegas since 1980.
- Circa’s three-story stadium-style sportsbook is expected to be the largest in Nevada.
The Circa Hotel & Casino won’t just open on time–it’ll open ahead of schedule. Actually, the first five floors and many of the properties amenities will open ahead of schedule on October 28 with the full property still slated to debut in December. Circa CEO Derek Stevens had originally planned to open the 1.25 million square foot property in downtown Las Vegas in December. Right now, Stevens expects the full property to be open by December 28.
The decision to open the first five floors of the property’s 777 room tower wasn’t a calculated one as much as it was a response to the COVID-19 necessitated health and safety protocol for construction workers. Stevens explains the rationale:
“We couldn’t get people up to the floors efficiently. (We figured out that) if we moved all our construction labor to the first five floors, we could get (that portion) done earlier.”
THE LARGEST SPORTSBOOK IN NEVADA…ALLEGEDLY
Derek Stevens is something of a throwback to an earlier era in Las Vegas when the guy at the top of a gaming company org chart was as much a part of a casino brand identity as the logo. The name of the new property ‘Circa’ should be familiar to sports bettors–they’re the latest entrant into the Nevada sportsbook industry and are planning to open their first location outside the Silver State in Colorado later this year.
The Circa Hotel & Casino will put the sportsbook front and center as a ‘featured attraction’ and for good reason. Depending on the metric you’re looking at the Circa sportsbook will supplant the Westgate Superbook as the largest in the state. The plans call for the Circa sportsbook to be three stories high with two balconies and a 78 million pixel HD screen. Many of the specifics of the sportsbook are ‘TBA’ but the property’s website claims a 1,000 person viewing capacity. In addition, the studios of the Vegas Stats and Information Network aka VSIN will move from the South Point to the Circa.
There’s already a bit of good natured back and forth between Circa’s Stevens and the Westgate’s Jay Kornegay and John Murray over the now disputed ‘largest sportsbook in Nevada’ title. While much about Circa’s sportsbook remains unknown the tale of the tape for the Westgate Superbook is impressive indeed. Here’s how Vegas fixture John Katsilometes described it in the Las Vegas Review Journal:
The Superbook has long claimed to be the largest sports book anywhere, at 30,000 square feet with an official customer capacity of 2,019 guests, including standing-room. Its newly upgraded HD-screen layout is 220 feet long, 18 feet high, and simply staggering in its scale.
Here’s how Katsilometes described the Circa Sportsbook:
Circa Las Vegas co-owner and CEO Derek Stevens measures his fortress a little differently, at three stories high with two balconies, and a 78-million-pixel HD screen. He has said that layout is three times the 74-foot screen used at Downtown Las Vegas Events Center, which would covering a total of 222 feet.
Stevens talked about his friendly rivalry with the Superbook:
“Oh, I have a lot of fun with Jay Kornegay and John Murray with all that. There are a lot of different ways we can evaluate this. There is no question cubicly — cubicly — we’re the largest sportsbook. We have much more height here. I would say, from a cubic measure, from a measure of number of LEDs, from the amount of seating, we are the largest.”
“But I look forward to having a little jocularity with those guys about who has the biggest sportsbook.”
Stevens is a well known sports bettor in his own right and ultimately he wants competitive market forces to make the entire Las Vegas sports betting ecosystem better:
“Really, from a sports-betting perspective, I want the Caesars sportsbook to be a blow-out. I want Westgate’s and ours to be blow-outs, too. It enforces the fact that Las Vegas has the best sportsbooks in the world.”
Competition between books is definitely something that would benefit Las Vegas–even if the rivalry is a friendly one. The Circa will start taking reservations online at 9 AM Pacific on June 24.
