The American Gaming Association on Thursday brought its new code of conduct for responsible casino play to the West Coast with a panel of industry representatives explaining how they want customers to have fun without falling into a compulsive gambling trap.

Record gross gaming revenue at casinos operated by the nation’s Indian tribes in 2016 has been an economic success story for tribes but has altered the landscape in Reno and Laughlin, two Nevada destinations most affected by the competition.

Well-known casino and gaming corporation Caesars Entertainment has just opened a brand-new production studio in Las Vegas, and will be planning to feature esports in the new space. Over the weekend, it even hosted its first esports event, a Gears of War pro circuit.

Learning about the operational side of the casino industry today goes beyond how to deal cards or having an understanding of how slot game math works. Gaming—and the hospitality infrastructure that frames it—is big business, and more institutions of higher learning are recognizing this.

If you want to bet on sports legally in this country, you have to be in Nevada. But there’s a chance Nevada could lose that exclusivity.

Japan is counting on a big tourism bump from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but the government wants to keep the numbers growing even after the sporting bonanza is over. One possible solution, it hopes, is by opening so-called integrated resorts -- leisure facilities that combine casinos, hotels, shopping centers and more under one roof.

Gaming is serious business. Globally, it represents nearly a billion players contributing to an over $100 billion industry. To put that in perspective, video games in 2016 dwarfed total movie-ticket sales around the world by a good $62.5 billion. But it’s just as lucrative of a cash generator in the U.S., where revenues are expected to exceed $25 billion this year.

UNLV gaming students recently tipped their hand to Las Vegas casino companies on how they would pitch Japan in trying to win one of the two coveted integrated resort (IR) licenses expected to be issued next year.

It had to have been one of the most real-life college assignments students at UNLV’s International Gaming Institute have ever undertaken. Students of Professor Bo Bernhard were asked to write a proposal for an integrated resort to be built in Japan. They had to consider mission statements, design elements, marketing and branding strategies and to make them fit within Japanese cultural expectations. Students also had to consider an extremely important issue — how to minimize compulsive gambling.

Nevada is currently the only state allowed to perform full-fledged sports gaming operations, but that might change soon.

Dr. Bo Bernhard, one of the world’s leading figures in the study of gambling addiction and the executive director of the University of Nevada Las Vegas’s International Gaming Institute was recently in Sydney as part of a two-week trade mission to Australia.

On Feb. 19, an international athletic showdown took over the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. It was the culmination of a five-day tournament that had teams from Denmark, Poland, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Brazil and the U.S. competing for $450,000 and priceless bragging rights.