MediterraneanGrocery Wholesalers in Las Vegas, NV

LAS VEGAS (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday congratulated hospitality workers for reaching a tentative agreement with several Las Vegas hotel-casinos and calling off a strike deadline for another, telling members of the local culinary union, “When you do well, everybody does better.”

“I came to say thank you — not just thank you for the support you’ve given me the last time out and this time, but thank you for having the faith in the union,” Biden, who is running for reelection in November to a second term, told Local 226 Culinary hospitality workers who gathered at Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas. “Thank you for continuing to push it because this really matters. It matters, it matters, it matters.”

The president has been in Las Vegas since Sunday for campaign appearances ahead of the state’s Democratic primary on Tuesday. He visited with the union members on Monday and later visited a boba tea shop before flying back to Washington.

The Culinary Workers Union, which represents hospitality workers, says it has reached a tentative agreement with six more downtown hotel-casinos and called off a strike deadline for another.

The Culinary Union is the largest in Nevada with about 60,000 members statewide. It negotiates on behalf of its members for five-year contracts.

Biden recently was endorsed by the United Auto Workers union. He proudly touts his longstanding support for the men and women of organized labor.

“I make no apologies for being the most pro-union president in America,” he said Sunday night at a reelection campaign rally in a historically Black neighborhood in Las Vegas.

The culinary union’s tentative agreements averted a Monday morning walkout threat at several near-Strip and downtown properties as the city kicks off Super Bowl week. The San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs will face off at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on Sunday.

After negotiations with some of the remaining casinos hit a snag, the union announced last week it would go on strike if tentative contracts weren’t in place by early Monday for downtown casino workers at properties that hadn’t reached agreements.

The NFL’s 58th Super Bowl is expected to bring 330,000 people to Las Vegas this week, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Sidewalks and overpasses festooned with red and purple signage. Corporate installations and official merchandise stands still being erected. Sprawling casino floors filled with fans clad in football jerseys, huddled around table games and feeding bills into NFL-branded slot machines. The first Super Bowl to be played in Las Vegas was still days away, but the signposts of America’s high holy day were already in full view on a drizzly Monday afternoon up and down the famous Strip.

They were scenes that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago, when the major US professional sports leagues – none more than the NFL – uniformly shunned Vegas for its associations with gambling culture. But when the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs kick off the nation’s biggest sporting event on Sunday at Allegiant Stadium, it will mark the culmination of a city’s improbable rebranding from old gambling town to America’s sports capital.

Over the past calendar year, a locale once verboten to major sports outside big prizefights has played host to the NBA’s Summer League and In-Season Tournament finals, a Formula One grand prix, and the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament. College football’s national championship game and the men’s Final Four are up next. In the span of less than a decade, Las Vegas has become the home of the NFL’s Raiders, the NHL’s Golden Knights (who have already won one title) and the WNBA’s Aces (the last two on the trot). Major League Baseball’s Athletics are already in the process of relocating from Oakland, while an NBA expansion team with an estimated value of $6bn is widely expected to follow with LeBron James openly campaigning for ownership. No city this side of Riyadh is hoovering up sports properties at a faster clip.

But no event signals Las Vegas’s arrival as a sporting mecca quite like the Super Bowl, the all-conquering pan-cultural event for a league which for decades had kept Sin City at arm’s length. Nearly $7bn has been committed to transforming Vegas into a global sports hub in recent years, according to a Bloomberg estimate, which has included the construction of state-of-the-art stadiums and arenas. That figure also accounts for eye-watering tax breaks: no less than $750m of the $1.2bn price tag for Allegiant Stadium was funded by Clark County hotel room taxes, then a record amount of public funding for a football stadium. But few can dispute the return on investment if the expected $500m economic impact from this week’s Super Bowl proffered by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is even close to the mark.

“We are the sports capital of the world right now,” said Oscar Goodman, the former mob lawyer turned Las Vegas mayor from 1999 through 2011, who tried for years to bring professional sports to town. “If there isn’t a sport here yet, we will have it in a couple of years.”

For decades America’s pro leagues adhered to the firewall between gambling and sports, one borne from the nation’s puritanical roots and erected in the face of existential crisis amid the 1919 Black Sox scandal. That bulwark was only reinforced with each passing generation’s betting imbroglio: the CCNY point-shaving episode, Tulane basketball, Pete Rose and Tim Donaghy. The NFL’s resolve to insulate football from sports betting redoubled in 1963, when Green Bay Packers halfback Paul Hornung and Detroit Lions defensive tackle Alex Karras were suspended indefinitely for wagering on games. The obsession with appearances continued into the new millennium when the NFL famously refused to air a commercial from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority promoting the city’s tourism and even cancelled a fantasy football convention scheduled to be held at the Venetian casino.

Until recently Roger Goodell, the milquetoast NFL commissioner who has earned more than $500m in salary during an 18-year tenure as a human shield for the billionaire owners he represents, toed the decades-old line and was unequivocal on where pro football stood on the subject even as public attitudes shifted. In 2012, Goodell testified in the NFL’s six-year lawsuit to block then-New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s legalization of sports betting in the state. “I do not think gambling is good for professional sports.” Needless to say, he’s been singing a different song this week.

The first cracks in the wall came in 2016, when the NHL awarded an expansion team to Bill Foley, the billionaire chairman of Fidelity National Financial, who paid a $500m fee for the Golden Knights. But everything came tumbling down after the 2018 US supreme court ruling that overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act and opened up sports betting around the country – and laid the NFL’s hypocrisy bare. Turns out all those decades of moralizing didn’t have a thing to do with integrity, upholding the public good or “protecting the shield”: the league just wanted their piece of the action.

Like most conservative-leaning cultural leviathans the NFL is slow-moving, which has made the raw speed of its about-face on gambling extraordinary. To no one’s surprise, the NFL announced five-year contracts worth nearly $1bn combined in 2021, with DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars to become the league’s official sports betting partners, in addition to secondary deals with BetMGM, WynnBET, Fox Bet and PointsBet.

“This stadium is extraordinary and we’re here and we can feel it … and that’s our stage,” Goodell said at Monday’s aggressively moderated state-of-the-league presser, putting a fine point on his employer’s dramatic about-face. “For us the stadium is key, the city is key. This city really knows how to put on big events. We’ve seen that.”

The Raiders finally arrived in 2020, and have thrived in their expensive confines at the bottom of the Strip. The Aces have become the undisputed juggernauts of the WNBA. F1 was a rousing success, following a rocky start, with a deal in place to return for nine more years. Whether it’s the bottomless coffers of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund or the more than $300bn that’s been generated in the six years of legalized sports betting, the faucet is open for big-time sports.

Nothing about Las Vegas is measured in moderation. The fluorescent buildings are towering and intentionally bright. Around casino floors, at pool parties and on the Vegas Strip, throngs of tourists daily play chicken with their alcohol tolerance levels and credit card limits.

With the Super Bowl, the country’s biggest annual sporting event, happening in the desert city on Sunday, the crowds (an estimated 450,000 visitors) and parties are expected to get even bigger and livelier.

But it’s not just the hotels and casinos that’ll be bustling in the days leading up to the big game, between the San Francisco 49ers and the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs: Around 1,000 private planes are expected at Las Vegas area airports.

And that’s a lot of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The emissions levels of a mega-event like this from air traffic, and the energy use is at least double in a day than it would be on average,” said Benjamin Leffel, an assistant professor of public policy sustainability at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The Super Bowl is one of the largest annual attractions for private planes in the United States. For last year’s game in Glendale, Ariz., there were 562 business plane arrivals at area airports. For the 2022 event in Los Angeles, there were 752 arrivals, according to the business aviation tracker WingX.

This year, officials say the Super Bowl could match the Las Vegas Grand Prix in November, for which WingX reported 927 business jet arrivals at the city’s three area airports.

“The expectation is that the Super Bowl will see a similar level,” said Joe Rajchel, a spokesman for the Clark County Department of Aviation, which covers Las Vegas, in an email.

One of those flights might be bringing Taylor Swift from a concert gig in Tokyo to cheer for her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, who plays for the Chiefs. She has at least one private jet at her disposal that could make the 5,548-mile trip. The problem for her is, Las Vegas airports will be so busy there might not be a landing slot available.

(But maybe a spot could miraculously open up. When Ms. Swift flew from Morristown Airport in New Jersey to Baltimore for the AFC championship game on Jan. 28, in which the Chiefs advanced to the Super Bowl, Fox News estimated that the flight resulted in three tons of carbon dioxide emissions. That prompted Liz Plank, who writes a newsletter called Airplane Mode, to remark that Swifties could do anything because they made Fox cover climate change.)

Quantifying the exact carbon dioxide emissions from a cluster of private planes is challenging. Most municipal authorities in the United States, including in Clark County, do not track emissions. A 2023 report by Greenpeace estimated that private plane travel worldwide emitted 573,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022.

According to Klara Maria Schenk, a transport campaigner for Greenpeace who is based in Vienna, the estimate used a measuring system that draws on data from WingX and the Small Emitters Tool, a calculator developed by Eurocontrol, the agency that manages air traffic in Europe. But setting the correct parameters and ensuring consistency around colossal amounts of aviation data is tricky.

“There can be small mistakes,” Ms. Schenk said. “But in general, if you have all this data, then you can calculate to the best scientific standards the emissions of the machines.”

For comparison, Ms. Schenk’s team calculated that the 1,040 private jet flights that landed in Davos for last year’s World Economic Forum produced carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to 350,000 cars in a week.

Las Vegas already faces energy, heat and drought challenges. Those issues, and the emissions and pollution from private planes, are raising concerns with some locals.

Jaime Brousse takes her two children, who are in elementary school, to watch sleek executive jets take off and land at Henderson Executive Airport, about 13 miles south of Las Vegas. She noticed a spike in private planes, and pollution, during the recent Formula One event.

“It’s easy to see the layer of smog sitting over the city,” Ms. Brousse, 42, said. “I know most of that is from cars, but you can’t help but think that all those private jets probably aren’t helping.”

Dr. Leffel said he was concerned about the consequences beyond Nevada.

“When consumers, when high rollers are flying in, that is a planetary problem that’s putting, for a time, nominally more emissions into the atmosphere,” he said. “That small margin accelerates climate change.”

What could the solutions be? There is regulation, which could include higher taxes or bans on private plane flights. On a local level, the Brightline West, a high-speed electric rail line connecting Los Angeles to Las Vegas in just over two hours is expected to be an environmental game changer. It is scheduled to open in 2028.

But even with that alternative, Dr. Leffel posed a question.

“Will the top 1 percent use it?” he asked.

Crosby has thought this through, though. His motivations in this particular case are completely mercenary.

"Selfishly, I want the Chiefs to win so we can be the ones to take them down and take them off that pedestal," Crosby told NFL Network's Andrew Siciliano and Brian Baldinger on Wednesday.

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Crosby has been a thorn in Kansas City's side since arriving in the NFL in 2019, racking up five sacks in his 10 games against them, including four over the past two seasons, plus several big hits on Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

This season the Raiders even upset the Chiefs in Kansas City on Christmas Day, too, but they've gone only 2-8 overall in Crosby's career.

Paying deference to the Chiefs and all their accomplishments over the past several years, Crosby nonetheless said if the Raiders want to be the champs, they've got to beat the champs.

"I take it really personal," Crosby said. "I've got the ultimate respect for Mahomes and Chris Jones and all those guys, but they're the ones standing in our way. So, we're looking forward to seeing them again next season."

Next season will continue with Antonio Pierce as head coach after he took over for Josh McDaniels midway through the 2023 season. The Raiders went 3-5 with McDaniels but 5-4 under Pierce, making a brief run at the playoffs and playing the Chiefs tough down the stretch.

Crosby said the team is backing Pierce, who won over the locker room during a tough time last season.

"So when he got announced as the head coach, he came in, he kept it straightforward, (saying) this is how we're going to win, this is how we're going to play, it's going to sound different, it's going to look different, and everybody bought in to it, and that's the product that everybody got to see," he said.

If the Raiders are going to be able to consistently beat the likes of the Chiefs and rise to the top of the AFC, Crosby believes there has to be complete buy-in to the new Raiders Way.

"I want everyone to walk in this building excited to come out here and get to work," Crosby said. "And we're going to have fun. We're going to obviously work hard, but we're going to have fun while we do it. That's what being a Raider is, we're going to do it our way. There (are) 31 teams, there's one Raiders, and we're going to do it our way, and we're going to embrace that."

The Chiefs and 49ers have managed to stay out of trouble this week, but that hasn't been the case for every NFL player in Las Vegas.

According to multiple reports, Raiders defensive end Janarius Robinson was arrested for suspicion of DUI on Tuesday morning. According to FOX5, the arrest went down at 5:59 a.m. near the 3700 block of South Las Vegas Boulevard. A report from News 3 in Vegas adds that Robinson was busted near the valet area of the Aria Casino on the strip.

The Raiders are aware of the incident, but didn't have much else to say about the arrest.

"The Raiders are aware of an incident involving Janarius Robinson last night," the team said. "The club is in the process of gathering more information."

According to court records obtained by News 3, the charge is a misdemeanor and he'll have to return to court on June 4 after being released on his own recognizance on Tuesday.

Robinson has been with the Raiders since being signed to the practice squad back on Aug. 31. The 24-year-old then spent most of the year on the practice squad before being promoted to the active roster in December. After that happened, he ended up playing in Vegas' final six games of the season, which included two starts. Robinson recorded his lone sack of the season in a 3-0 loss to the Vikings back in Week 14. Minnesota also happens to be the team that originally drafted him as a fourth-round pick back in 2021.

Robinson is under contract with the Raiders through the 2024 season.

The arrest happened during a week where the NFL spotlight is absolutely on Las Vegas. The 49ers and Chiefs are both in town to play in Super Bowl LVIII, which will be held at the home of the Raiders -- Allegiant Stadium -- on Feb. 11. Robinson's arrest went down roughly two miles away from the stadium.