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'Poker Dome Challenge' folds at downtown Las Vegas venue
By: Associated Press - | ∞
LAS VEGAS -- A nationally televised poker game is folding its hand after one year, leaving a hole in a struggling downtown Las Vegas retail complex, officials said.
The Poker Dome will be gone from the Neonopolis center by the end of August, Rick Kulis, president of Hollybrook Regency Inc., told the Las Vegas Sun for a Friday report. Hollybrook Regency holds the Poker Dome lease.
"We received word at the end of season one that the network no longer wanted to produce the show," Kulis said.
Fox Sports Network dropped its "Poker Dome Challenge" after the show's sponsor dropped support, Kulis said. The show had provided a new angle in coverage of Texas hold 'em poker tournaments by strapping pulse monitors to players.
A network spokesman did not immediately respond Friday to a message seeking comment.
Kulis did not say why Gibraltar-based MANSIONpoker.net pulled out. But he said he did not think the popularity of televised poker shows was declining.
Rohit Joshi, a representative for Neonopolis, said he agreed to let the network out of the final two years of its lease.
Losing a high-profile tenant further shrinks Neonopolis, a circular retail and entertainment complex that has struggled financially since opening in May 2002 with city support on the eastern end of the downtown Fremont Street Experience casino and pedestrian mall.
The Poker Dome opened to fanfare last year after the network signed a three-year lease and promised to televise 43 tournaments. Three of 14 Neonopolis movie theaters were remodeled to host the events, at a cost of $12 million.
The Poker Dome set will remain intact, officials said. Two theaters that had been converted to production and engineering booths will be converted back to movie theaters by Sept. 1, bringing the number of screens to 13.
The city has been trying to find a buyer for Neonopolis, a 250,000-square-foot, $100 million retail center now left with the theaters and a large restaurant as anchor tenants and a jewelry store as the lone retailer.
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