Industry watchers will have plenty of time to analyze the issue, since commissioners aren't expected to act until Nov. 18, the date of the commission's next meeting in Las Vegas. When commissioners met last week, they asked that attorneys go back to settlement talks. But here are some of the matters that are unresolved:

• Since the commission has ruled that, in essence, ad content is not at issue, will the Hard Rock and the state reach a settlement on the third count of the complaint, which involves whether the Hard Rock broke its promise to regulators that it have all promotional materials reviewed by an internal compliance committee?

The Hard Rock and the state agreed to settle the three-count complaint in May. The resort said it would pay $300,000 in fines to resolve the case, but the commission chose to reject the settlement, setting the stage for a series of legal arguments that focused the issue for regulators but seemed to confuse the public.

• Will regulators look differently at advertising in general, now that the commission has expressed that it has no appetite for regulating ad content?

The state Gaming Control Board in the past has stepped in on ad campaigns that have played fast and loose with casino odds and the games themselves.

• Will community activists who sought a forum for toning down the sexual content of billboard advertising find a new venue, now that the commission has rejected the two counts of the state complaint that spoke directly to sexual content?

Regulators, Hard Rock executives and industry observers are optimistic that some good will come out of the high-profile controversy.

Kevin Kelley, president of the Hard Rock, said the resort's legal staff would attempt to negotiate a settlement on the third count, which stems from an agreement brokered in 2002 when the Hard Rock paid a $100,000 fine over the resort allowing sex acts to occur in nightclubs.

Part of the settlement included a promise from the Hard Rock that the resort's promotional efforts would be reviewed by an internal compliance committee. The third count alleged compliance didn't occur in the case of the advertisements.

But Kelley said that since the board has tossed out the complaints about the ads, the matter of compliance shouldn't be an issue.

"We're very willing to sit down with the board and work through this," Kelley said. "It's become a matter of whether they (regulators) want to let this thing go. There's no regulatory oversight (on the ads), so it kind of negates the need for compliance review and waters the whole thing down."

But Dennis Neilander, chairman of the state Gaming Control Board, said the compliance matter is of concern, since the Hard Rock agreed to review its promotional activities when the complaint about public sex acts was resolved and it didn't on the ads.

Neilander said the entire case was unique, "because we looked at certain things in ads that we normally wouldn't look at" because they were directly concerned with the glorification of unsavory activities, including cheating in a casino, plural marriage and drug abuse.

Although the Hard Rock and "friends of the court" argued it was constitutionally protected in its right to run the ads, regulators were still uneasy about the content. And, the debate opened the door to community activists who hoped commissioners would review casino advertising in general and the sexual content of ads specifically.

The Hard Rock poked fun at the matter with a billboard with cartoon characters filled with double entendre.

"We've always had subtleties with sex and gambling, but those ads were disrespectful of the regulatory process," said Bill Thompson, a professor of public administration at UNLV who studies the casino industry.

"Those ads created bad will," he said. "The casinos should recognize that the Control Board is promoting and protecting honest gaming and the gaming board is on their side."

Kelley said the dismissal of the two counts directly related to the ad content won't mean that his property or others will fill the market with sexually charged ads.

"We want to be good corporate citizens, but we still want to connect with our target market," Kelley said. "It doesn't mean you have to have a race to the bottom."

That should be a relief to Michael Wixom, a Las Vegas attorney and a member of the group known as the Main Street Billboard Committee, which had hoped the commission would be the forum for ad content.

"We're willing to sit down with concerned people to talk about it," Kelley said. "We've always wanted to be clever, irreverent and have a sense of humor."

He said the Hard Rock is conscious about placing its ads in the resort corridor and not in residential areas.

Neilander said community ad standards are not something gaming regulators should be involved in. He suggested that local ordinances and debates by the county commission or city councils would be a more appropriate outlet for decency, taste and community standard issues.

Richard N. Velotta covers tourism for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. He can be reached at (702) 259-4061 or by e-mail at velotta@lasvegassun.com.