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Tilman Fertitta, billionaire owner of the Golden Nugget casinos, the Landry’s restaurant chain and the NBA’s Houston Rockets and host of CNBC’s Billion Dollar Buyer reality program, has approached Caesars Entertainment with a merger offer that values the Las Vegas-based casino giant at $13 a share.

Sources cited by Reuters and CNBC said Fertitta is looking to interest Caesars in a reverse merger in which Caesars would be the acquirer and Caesars shareholders, including private equity firms Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital, would be shareholders in the combined company, with Fertitta as chairman and CEO.

Caesars (NASDAQ: CZR), coping with general softness in its prime Las Vegas Strip market, had seen its shares plummet 28 percent year to date as of last Tuesday after warning of slower Q3 growth with its second-quarter earnings report in August. The stock leapt after Reuters first reported the offer on Wednesday. It was up more than 12 percent to $10.25 at the close on Thursday.

However, it was far from clear late last week how the offer would fly, with Caesars commanding a market capitalization of around $7 billion after last week’s rally and Fertitta’s net worth pegged by Forbes at $4.5 billion.

Caesars, Apollo and TPG declined to comment, while Fertitta and his representatives were similarly mum, according to Reuters.

Fertitta, 61, is best known for building Landry’s into a nationwide powerhouse featuring brands such as Saltgrass Steak House and Joe’s Crab Shack. He owns more than 600 restaurants in all, including the McCormick & Schmick, Morton’s and Rainforest Café chains.

His closely held Golden Nugget operates casinos in Downtown Las Vegas and Atlantic City and in Laughlin, Nevada, Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Biloxi, Mississippi. Considered well-run and benefiting from significant reinvestment, particularly in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, the portfolio generates $250 million to $300 million in annual EBITDAR, according to gaming analyst Carlos Santarelli of Deutsche Bank.

One of the keys to his success has been to feature his restaurants in his casinos and to aggressively market them together via advertising and a customer loyalty program.

His combined holdings were good for $650 million in EBITDA last year on total sales of $3.5 billion, according to data compiled by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. But he borrowed heavily to buy the Rockets for $2.2 billion last year, and his company’s current debt stands at around $4.3 billion.

A merger with Caesars would dramatically increase his casino holdings—with the vastly expanded restaurant cross-marketing opportunities that go with that, not to mention a big-time entry into the burgeoning U.S. sports betting market—while enabling him to fold his debt into the larger company.

Caesars, which has been an aggressive acquirer in its own right, could see the prospects playing nicely into its own plans as well.

The parent of brands that include Caesars, Harrah’s and Horseshoe, Caesars owns or operates 49 casinos in 13 states and in Great Britain, Canada, Egypt and South Africa. Caesars recently acquired two racinos in Indiana.

But the company missed out on the Macau boom—which it’s looking to compensate for by planting its flag in Japan, South Korea and Australia—and a protracted bankruptcy reorganization has forced it to play catch-up domestically and internationally with mega-rivals MGM Resorts International, Wynn Resorts and Las Vegas Sands.

The one jurisdiction that might cause a problem for the proposed combination would be Atlantic City. Caesars owns three properties out of nine in the resort, and with Fertitta’s Golden Nugget, it may constitute as too much capacity for one company if determined by the state Division of Gaming Enforcement. Some speculate that the lagging Bally’s could close or one of the properties could be sold to a company like Boyd Gaming, which until recently operated the Borgata with its former partner and now sole owner, MGM Resorts.

Caesars is still paying down around $9 billion of debt, but the reorganization, which was concluded last autumn after 18 months of difficult wrangling with creditors, allowed it to shed more than $10 billion of obligations stemming from Apollo’s and TPG’s 2008 acquisition of Harrah’s Entertainment and gave it a REIT partner to offload its real property onto and furnish leverage for diversifying out of Las Vegas. Last November, the company concluded a deal to buy privately owned Indiana casino and horse racing company Centaur Holdings for $1.7 billion and is currently exploring a multibillion-dollar bid for Jack Entertainment, the casino operator owned by Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert.

Sources close to Fertitta’s plan said it calls for exchanging stock in a private company owned by Fertitta for shares in Caesars at the same multiple that Caesars currently trades. There would then be somewhere between a $2 billion and $3 billion “Dutch” tender to give Caesars shareholders an option to sell, with Fertitta emerging as the largest single shareholder. Caesars also would sell the land and buildings associated with Landry’s and Golden Nugget to a REIT, using some of that cash to repurchase its own shares. Vici Properties was a Caesars spinoff formed last year and currently owns a majority of the Caesars real estate. It’s not clear if Vici has had any role in the ongoing negotiations.

The deal would not affect Fertitta’s 100 percent ownership of the Rockets, CNBC said.

Santarelli calculates the $13 offer at 8.5 times his 2019 EBITDAR estimate for Caesars, saying, “At the very least, it brings interested parties to the table and reminds investors that nonsensical valuations don’t go unnoticed within the industry.”

Conversely, Cameron McKnight of Credit Suisse said Golden Nugget’s high-quality portfolio would be additive and sees potential synergy opportunities around sports betting, while Fertitta would be a great addition to Caesars management as he’s well-known and respected and a successful cost-cutter. He reiterated his “outperform” rating on CZR and has named the stock his top gaming pick.

McKnight said the proposed deal is just the latest example of consolidation within the gaming industry.

Chad Beynon of Macquarie Securities said last week he was holding to his $15 target for CZR, implying the offering price could go higher.

Fertitta is a cousin to Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, who own and operate Red Rock Resorts (formerly Station Casinos), based in Las Vegas. The relationship between the cousins has reportedly been tense for years.

Construction is officially under way on the MSG Sphere, an 18,000-seat high-tech entertainment arena that appears destined to change the experience of seeing a live event in Las Vegas.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval led the list of dignitaries who journeyed to Sin City for a ceremonial groundbreaking on September 27, hosted by Las Vegas Sands and Madison Square Garden Company, which are jointly developing the venue just east of the Strip on LVS land adjoining the company’s Venetian megaresort and Sands Expo & Convention Center.

“I was thinking to myself, this truly is the next chapter in the history of the evolution of the entertainment capital of the world,” Sandoval said to a gathering of some 300, which included LVS Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson, President and COO Rob Goldstein and Jim Dolan, chairman and CEO of MSGC.

“When you look at the Sphere, it is unlike anything on planet Earth,” the governor continued. “This will be the first of its kind, right here in Las Vegas, Nevada.”

Dolan noted, “Do you suppose when they broke ground for the Eiffel Tower that people knew what it was going to be? I’m pretty sure they didn’t. I think this is going to be like that.”

Slated to open in 2021, the Sphere will encompass 580,000 square feet and will top off at 360 feet, a height that ensures it will be a prominent addition to the Strip skyline. It will feature fully programmable video imagery on its exterior as well as interior surface, highlighted by a 170,000-square-foot spherical indoor display plane. Sound will be transmitted through thousands of tiny speakers embedded in the walls so the clarity will be same from any seat, front row or back. Spectators will be able to feel programmable vibrations via an infrasound haptic floor system. The “beam-formed” technology, as it’s called, will direct sound with laser-like precision so that performers will be able to hear instruments and vocals without wires. Similarly, speakers at an event will be able to reach their audience in different languages in different parts of the building wirelessly.

MSG unveiled the technology at a presentation at Radio City Music Hall in New York earlier this year and has taken it on the road to Southern California and London.

The company reportedly has a commitment to develop a Sphere in London, but Las Vegas will be the first to open.

In a poll of 622 voters conducted by the Florida Chamber of Commerce September 19-24, 54 percent said they’ll vote yes on Amendment 3, which would give voters exclusive rights to authorize new casino gambling through citizen-initiated ballot measures. Twenty-eight percent said they’ll vote no and the rest were undecided.

Two months ago, a poll by Hill Research Consultants indicated 71 percent of voters would vote yes, 18 percent would vote no with the remainder undecided.

In the most recent poll, 41.5 percent of those questioned said they were registered Democrats, 40.5 percent were Republicans and 18 percent did not belong to one of the major parties. The poll has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

In September, Voters in Charge, the political group behind Amendment 3, received $5 million from Disney Worldwide and from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, according to newly filed campaign finance reports. To date,

Disney has spent nearly $19.7 million to Voters in Charge and the Seminoles have spent nearly $16.8 million.

Meanwhile Melbourne Greyhound Park recently contributed $50,000 to the political committee Don’t Lose Your Control Inc., bringing the racetrack’s total contributions since early August to $145,000, according to the Florida Division of Elections. The committee, which is at least the third PAC formed to oppose Amendment 3, has received no other contributions. The other committees, Citizens for the Truth About Amendment 3 and Vote NO on 3, merged to raise more than $4.1 million as of September 14, reports indicate.

Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County is seeking a tax on complimentary hotel rooms booked by the Mohegan Sun Pocono casino.

The tax is being sought by Chief Solicitor Romilda Crocamo and Assistant Solicitor David Schwager, but the county controller’s office is resisting it. Controller Michelle Bednar recently released a 14-page report arguing against the proposed tax. The solicitor’s office released a seven-page report opposing the controller.

The solicitor’s office has recommended that the county pursue collection of unpaid and unreported taxes on the comp rooms awarded by the casino hotel. County Manager C. David Pedri has indicated the county will proceed with collection action against Mohegan Sun.

It is a subject likely to ultimately be resolved in the courts.

Bednar’s report argues that language in the county tax ordinance indicates taxes are due if the room is occupied “for consideration,” which she maintains means “for payment.”

“Since no payment is exchanged in the case of complimentary rooms, we assert that complimentary rooms are not subject to the hotel tax. Furthermore, we believe that to charge hotel tax on complimentary rooms would demonstrate non-compliance with county regulations,” the report said.

A previous controller’s office review of the Mohegan Sun hotel tax paid in 2016 said Mohegan Sun was entitled to a $7,323.48 refund for taxes paid on complimentary rooms for January 2016.

When Massachusetts Gaming Commission Chairman Stephen Crosby decided he had enough late in September, the organization was faced with a dilemma. Who would have enough independence to determine if the investigation of Wynn Resorts and Encore Boston Harbor would have credibility. While Crosby seemingly bent over backwards to be fair, he was recently deluged with letters and potential lawsuits that charged him with favoritism toward one side or another.

The commission decided who would assume Crosby’s position was answered last week when the four remaining members appointed Gayle Cameron as chairwoman. Cameron is a former deputy superintendent of the New Jersey State Police and was first appointed to the gaming commission in 2012. While in New Jersey, she was head of the State Police investigations division, which oversaw investigations at the Division of Gaming Enforcement, an arm of the State Police.

Crosby had been accused by Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment, which lost the bid to the Wynn Resorts and has filed suit to challenge alleged irregularities in the licensing process, of favoring Wynn Resorts. The name of the Massachusetts property has been changes from Wynn Boston Harbor to Encore Boston Harbor, but the Mohegans believed the fix was in.

At the same time, Crosby revealed he has received a letter from a lawyer for Steve Wynn, the former chairman and principal shareholder of Wynn Resorts, accusing him of “false and derogatory statements” to the press and of already deciding to pull the Wynn license.

Crosby said none of it was true.

“There has never been a shred of truth or accuracy to any charge of bias, favoritism, corrupt practice, ethics violations, or prejudgment in my execution of this job,” he said in his resignation letter.

The commission’s investigation of Wynn and his former company are expected to be completed shortly, and hearings should begin soon thereafter.

A federal court judge last week put a third Connecticut casino owned by the state’s two gaming tribes in jeopardy when he issued a 58-page opinion. Judge Rudolph Contreras of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia ruled that Connecticut and the Mashantucket Pequots have no legal standing to ask Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to accept revisions to the state’s existing gambling agreement with the tribe.

The tribes had proposed a casino in East Windsor, just 12 miles from the new MGM Springfield casino. The third facility was designed to blunt losses to the new casino.

When the state legislature passed a bill that changed the compacts in 2016, it was contingent on approval from Interior to make sure that the state’s current revenue stream from the two existing tribal casinos wouldn’t be interrupted. And to make matters worse, he gave MGM Resorts the right to intervene should the tribes and state appeal his decision. MGM has proposed its own third casino in Bridgeport, which it contends would benefit the state greatly, but has been blocked because no bidding process had been established.

“The thorough and unambiguous federal court ruling can only be seen as a clear rejection of the tribes’ insistent efforts to obtain a no-bid commercial casino license in Connecticut,” MGM said in a statement Sunday night. “It has become increasingly apparent that the tribes’ promises of legal victory, no matter how often they are repeated, prove hollow.”

The tribes responded that they wanted to continue to fight.

“We remain committed to both seeing this process through and to the people of Connecticut and our partners in state government,” Andrew Doba, a tribal spokesman, said.

The state attorney general’s office also issued a comment.

“We are disappointed with the court’s ruling, which we are continuing to review as we evaluate possible next steps,” it said.

Complicated compact language and procedures for considering revisions make any appeal problematic.

MGM, meanwhile, says the state should stop fighting and start cooperating.

“Connecticut residents are best served by the state spending less time in court and more time on real opportunities to maximize economic development and job creation,” MGM said in the statement. “That’s why each passing month makes it more obvious that the most productive path forward for Connecticut is to pass legislation calling for competitive bids on any new commercial casino in the state, and to get started on that process.”

The bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip went dark last Monday night in remembrance of the 58 people killed and the hundreds injured one year to the day in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Dimming of the resort marquees, along with the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, started at 10:01 p.m., the moment the shooting started. Earlier in the day they displayed images of the Strip with a message that proclaimed “One Year Braver; One Year Closer; One Year Kinder; One Year Prouder; One Year Stronger. #VegasStronger.”

The city hosted a series of events in the days surrounding the anniversary, which was marked by gatherings of people at various locations along the famed neon boulevard waiting for the marquees to go dark.

A reporter for The Associated Press made note of a small bouquet of dried flowers wedged inside a padlock on a portion of a chain link fence surrounding the 15-acre site of the outdoor country music festival that descended into a bloodbath when Stephen Paddock, a resident of the nearby town of Mesquite, opened fire on the crowd with an arsenal of automatic and semi-automatic weapons he’d brought to a suite on the 32nd floor of the adjoining Mandalay Bay hotel. Paddock killed himself as police closed in, leaving whatever motive he had for his madness to die with him.

The white crosses placed at the “Fabulous Las Vegas” sign last year for each of the dead were moved for the anniversary to the rotunda of the Clark County government building, where they were displayed with photos of the victims. News reports say a museum is planned in the suburb of Henderson where they will be housed permanently.

All but five of the more than 500 victims were tourists.

Some “scattered remembrances” of the tragedy were visible elsewhere around town, AP said—among them a makeshift memorial garden Downtown comprised of painted stones and pictures hung in newly planted trees.

But residents and tourists alike appear mostly to have moved on, the wire service said.

“We don’t have a lot of long traditions here. You can see it with buildings. Casinos come up, casinos get knocked down. People tend to look forward, not back,” said Pauline Ng Lee, a community activist and chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Men’s Club.

“A lot of people have probably put it out of their minds,” said Steve Sisolak, who chairs the County Commission and is a 2019 gubernatorial candidate. He said he expected the anniversary “to bring up a lot of feelings, good and bad.”

Much of the bad feelings have centered on lawsuits filed nationwide by victims and their families seeking damages against casino giant MGM Resorts International, owner of Mandalay Bay and the site where the massacre occurred.

Perhaps the worst feelings, though, were engendered by MGM itself, which earlier this year sued 1,900 of the victims in federal courts in nine states in a bid to leverage a post-9/11 federal law that immunizes companies from liability for acts of terrorism if they’ve pursued and received a special anti-terrorism certification from the Department of Homeland Security. The company that organized the music festival has that certification, and MGM argued that as the contractor it enjoyed the same protections. The lawsuits were filed in a bid for federal jurisdiction over the myriad damage claims MGM faces in state courts so the company could make its case for immunity.

The suits sparked an outcry from attorneys for the victims and a social media campaign to boycott MGM properties. An assemblywoman from Queens, N.Y., has gone as far as calling on the state Gaming Commission to void the company’s planned $850 million purchase of Yonkers Raceway and its adjoining Empire City Casino.

Aravella Simotas, in a letter to commission Chairman Barry Sample, called MGM “unfit to operate in New York state.”

“These victims have already suffered through an unimaginable trauma,” she said. “It is unconscionable for MGM to use a twisted legal strategy to prevent them from seeking damages and holding the company accountable for its failure to adequately protect them from harm.”

An effort by MGM to have the 19 suits that have be filed this for against the company for alleged shortcomings connected to the October 1 shootings failed last week. A federal court permitted all suits to go forward separately, and MGM said it would defend each individually in that case.

Kentucky appears set to join West Virginia in rejecting any sports betting regulation scheme that carves out a piece of the action for the country’s major pro sports organizations.

The West Virginia Lottery Commission has approved permanent rules that don’t include the so-called “integrity fees”; while across the border in Kentucky, a joint House-Senate committee working on a bill to establish legal bookmaking in the Bluegrass State doesn’t contemplate them either.

Looking ahead to an expected wave of state legalizations, the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball and the PGA Tour are shopping the idea to lawmakers and members of Congress that their game data is intellectual property which they own exclusively. Betting operators therefore should pay them for it—a royalty, of sorts, which essentially is what the fees are.

It’s a novel idea—considering that Nevada, which has been booking bets legally for more than 60 years, has never recognized any such obligation—and a controversial one, because bookmakers need the data to settle wagers, but they contend their business model is based on such narrow revenue margins, generally in the range of 5 percent, that they can’t afford to pay for it and still make a profit.

John Cavacini, president of the West Virginia Gaming and Racing Association, warned that casinos will consider taking legal action if any such fee is imposed.

“Emergency rules can only be amended to include the legislative intent of the statute that was put in place and passed by the legislature,” Cavacini said, according to the WVNews.com website. “The real argument is between the casinos and major league sports as to whether major league sports can charge us statutorily as a part of the rules and regulations, for information and data. But we don’t believe the emergency rules can contain anything in them that is not authorized with legislative intent when the bill passed.”

Lawmakers feel the same way. “The legislature clearly chose not to include integrity fees in the authorizing legislation or some of the other provisions you’ve mentioned,” said West Virginia Del. Paul Espinosa, according to the site.

“It’s absolutely the same as integrity fees,” added Cavacini. “It’s a money grab by major leagues ports to try to confiscate from casinos, or the state of West Virginia or somebody.”

Opponents of the fees also argue that the leagues don’t need the money because they’ll be raking in plenty of new revenues from a legal nationwide betting market in the form of expanded advertising and sponsorships and increased fan engagement resulting in greater demand for media rights and increased sales of tickets and merchandise. The American Gaming Association, the commercial casino industry’s federal lobbying arm, has released a study commissioned from Nielsen Sports that projects a $216 million revenue bump for the National Hockey League alone. For the NFL it could top $2 billion, according to an earlier Nielsen study also commissioned by the association.

In Kentucky, where legislation is expected to be introduced as soon as January, lobbyists are already tussling over the issue.

“The first words out of my mouth were ‘You’re not getting an integrity fee,’” state Rep. Alan Koenig, who chairs the joint committee, told Sports Handle, an internet handicapper. “Vegas has been taking sports bets since 1949 and they don’t pay an integrity fee, so does that mean that they were not on the up and up?”

In an interview with the Lexington Herald Leader, Rep. Jason Nemes, a member of the committee, echoed Koenig’s position. “If we provide sports leagues with that fee, what will Kentucky get in return? Can you say ‘nothing.’”

“They want a piece of the action, which means a piece of the money,” former Gov. Julian Carroll, a state senator and also a member of the committee, told Sports Handle. “The consensus of legislators is no way.”

The committee, which has met twice, is expected to take testimony again this Wednesday in what Koenig intends as an educational session for lawmakers.

No representatives from the major sports leagues have been invited, he said.