5 Lions Reborn

About 5 Lions Reborn

For the better part of two decades, both the king of late night and the self‑proclaimed King of All Media leaned heavily into Carrot Top as a recurring punching bag.

Because he relied on props, sported a wild look, and established a dominant Las Vegas presence, he fit perfectly into the “anti-showbiz” persona cultivated by both arbiters of Gen-X cool. Across the 1990s and early 2000s, “Carrot Top” became universal shorthand for lazy, cringeworthy comedy.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

About 5 Lions Reborn

The barge functioned as an intimate stage graced by legendary performers, including Dionne Warwick, Blues Traveler, Matt Goss, and CeeLo Green. Its final performer was another Vegas icon rumored to be powered by hydraulics: Wayne Newton. His “Up Close & Personal” residency in 2019 was the lounge’s final act before the pandemic shut down the Strip for 90 days and closed Cleopatra’s Barge for good in March 2020.

The lounge enjoyed one last moment in the spotlight in 2022, however, when Adele—on the eve of the debut of her long-delayed residency at the Colosseum—tweeted a photo of herself goofing around nervously on its abandoned deck.

The Cleopatra statue itself was removed to storage in late 2023, as the space was transformed into today’s Caspian’s Caviar and Cocktails.

How to play 5 Lions Reborn

Atucha praises the regulation and the regulators themselves for making entry into the market easy, as well as allowing them to be competitive against illegal operators. But the market hasn’t been without its challenges.

A 1% selective consumption tax (ISC) on the value of every online bet has been in force since 1 July 2025, after the original policy was scrapped from proposed regulations in July 2021.

Atucha warns that regulations are often perceived as operator-friendly at the start before governments begin looking to squeeze licensed sectors, likening the process to “boiling a frog”. He has observed similar scenarios in other LatAm markets, with tax increases occurring in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico in the last couple of years.