Las Vegas Becomes Porn Paradise As XXX Expo Comes To Sin City


Las Vegas hosts a four-day porn party starting today, January 15, when the 31st annual Adult Entertainment Expo, the sex industry’s top trade show, invades the Hard Rock Hotel with a veritable army of barely clad, shapely ladies and mostly male purveyors of pornographic merchandise touting their risqué wares.

The porn industry comes into Las Vegas this year keeping a brave face after a difficult 2013 in which the adult film industry was slammed with repeated, significant setbacks, as NBC News reports.

The DVD business, once the heart and soul of the adult film market, has nearly disappeared.

Steve Hirsch, president of L.A.-based Vivid Entertainment, generally considered the pornography industry’s largest firm, told The Las Vegas Sun, that DVDs now account for a mere 10 percent of Vivid’s business.

“We’ve had to find ways to boost our income and move into different potential revenue strengths,” the porn purveyor told the paper. “Pay TV has had amazing success in a very short period of time. We have 60 million addressable homes here in the U.S. that carry Vivid TV or the Vivid video-on-demand product.”

The disappearing DVD business, coupled with the increasingly easy availability of free porn online — much of it illegally copied from commercially produced adult films —remains the central concern of porn industry bean counters as they head into the annual Las Vegas gathering.

Additionally, porn film sets were badly shaken by a series of HIV scandals last year. The industry had not experienced a case of a confirmed, HIV-positive performer for three years when, last year, four different sex-film actors tested positive for the AIDS-linked virus.

All over Southern California, production on adult videos came to a halt, shut down the by HIV announcements. The HIV issues also came at the same time that Los Angeles is attempting to institute a law requiring all pornographic performers to use condoms when filming penetrative sexual acts, a requirement that porn professionals say would rob adult entertainment of its essential “fantasy” element.

If you’re planning to be in Las Vegas for this years Expo, however, never fear. The porn industry remains optimistic about 2014.

“Companies have figured out how to change their business models to sustain profitability,” said Alec Helmy, of the trade publication Xbiz. “In terms of the number of players, it’s at an all-time low, but those who have survived are obviously the stronger breed.”

While, as USA Today so helpfully enumerates, there will be porn events all over Las Vegas this year, the Hard Rock itself will remain the center of XXX entertainment. The Las Vegas Sun reports that for the first time, six topless “X Burlesque” dancers will bring their shows right to the convention floor this year.

Share this article: Las Vegas Becomes Porn Paradise As XXX Expo Comes To Sin City
More from Inquisitr