LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Former Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman is betting on the Kansas City Chiefs to win Super Bowl 58.
On Friday, he placed a bet for Kansas City plus two and a half at the Westgate Sportsbook.
"I like the bet. I like both teams very much but to me, it's David and Goliath. I see this as a biblical game," Goodman said. "You have Mr. Irrelevant playing against maybe one of the five best quarterbacks who ever lived. To see that kind of a matchup, for a fan, it can't get any better than that. You have to like that kind of a matchup. It's like Rocky versus Apollo Creed."
Sportsbooks across Southern Nevada are expected to break records this weekend as thousands of football fans visit the valley.
"You can definitely see the spike and we anticipated that with us being the host city," said Jay Kornegay, Westgate Las Vegas Vice President of Race and Sports Book Operations. "We have more VIPs in town. We have more celebrities in town. We have more venues set up so we're expecting the biggest crowds we've ever seen for a Super Bowl weekend."
Goodman said it's been a long road to get the Super Bowl to Las Vegas and that persistence pays off.
"It was a lot of years of trying," Goodman said. "Early on, I was advocating having all the Monday Night Football games televised from here on ESPN. That was my first proposal and everyone said the NFL will never come here. I said it's just a matter of time, the same way David Stern said the NBA will come here over my dead body. I said I think I can arrange that and the serious negotiations started."
Goodman added that the Neon City has finally become not only the entertainment capital of the world, but the sports capital of the world as well.
"We're in our infancy. We already have the Stanley Cup. We have the Aces with the WNBA. These are champions. We had to wait a long time since the Tarkanian days where we had the national championship here," Goodman said. "It has a terrific effect on a city when you can root for a team. It galvanizes a city. It unifies a city and people identify as being part of a city."
