Lucky the Clown Is on the Fritz, Circus Circus Plans to Bring Him Back to Life

By Scott Roeben, on September 28 2026
3 min read 0 comments
Las Vegas Las Vegas WTF

The famous clown sign at Circus Circus, Lucky, is officially toast. Translation: He’s gone completely dark and the Las Vegas Strip just isn’t the same.

The clown sign has greeted Las Vegas visitors for 50 years, but age has caught up with Lucky. Circus Circus says it’s committed to giving him a new lease on life, despite the massive cost (we’re talking millions of dollars) to do so.

Circus Circus is taking bids for a repair of the sign, and the beloved Strip casino is also working on getting Lucky listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the federal government’s official roster of places deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance. Lucky’s down, but he’s not out.

Lucky currently looks like the opposite of this.

We and other Las Vegas sign fans have been whining for months about the declining state of Lucky.

We’ve found that passionate discourse (“whining”) on Twitter can have a positive impact on the state of signs. Our non-stop tagging of the City of Las Vegas got them to nudge the owner of the Pioneer gift shop to fix Vegas Vic. Although, with vintage signs, the war is never won. You can win some battles, though.

Anyway, we finally reached out to Circus Circus about Lucky. They are fully aware of his issues, and they said point-blank his electrical system is “fried.”

Some mansplaining is required!

Lucky is 123 feet tall, weighs about 84 tons and was built by Las Vegas sign company YESCO. There are other sign companies in Las Vegas, but it’s sort of YESCO’s world; the rest of us just live in it.

Circus Circus opened in 1968, Lucky arrived in 1976.

Lucky is the oldest major casino sign still standing on The Strip.

Fun fact: The creepy clown that sits at the Circus Circus entrance predates Lucky. That statue was designed by a guy named Montyne.

Yes, you can love Lucky and hate Creepy, they are not mutually exclusive.

The creepy clown was one of several commissioned by Circus Circus founder Jay Sarno. There were five statues. The statues included The Balancer, a self-portrait of Montyne as an acrobat, along with a lion, a clown, Gargantua the gorilla and a female acrobat modeled after Montyne’s wife, China, balancing on a rolo-board.

The statues were a popular photo op until four were removed in 2006 after Circus Circus said they had deteriorated badly from age and repeated repainting; the creepy clown survived.

As for Lucky, he wasn’t called that until January 1977, when Circus Circus held a contest to give him a name.

Restoring Lucky is a daunting task, and a multimillion-dollar investment might not make a lot of sense if Circus Circus is sold at some point. Owner Phil Ruffin is asking $5 billion. Yes, we broke that news, it’s not always about us.

Ruffin bought Circus Circus from MGM Resorts for $825 million in 2019.

Anyway, while Ruffin isn’t getting $5 billion for Circus Circus (that’s just for the land, the casino would be demolished for new development, which would cost additional billions), he probably is in no rush to throw millions at Lucky’s return.

Unfounded rumors about the sale of Circus Circus (including an especially stupid but persistent one about Disney buying it) have caused some drama and cost Ruffin some money, but that’s for another time.

As for Lucky’s fate, there’s another development that makes the sign’s rehabilitation considerably more interesting, and more likely. Yes, we broke that news, too. Please stop patting us on the back, we’re getting a rash.

As mentioned, an effort is underway to have Lucky listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign was added to the National Register in 2009, and other Las Vegas landmarks, including the Little Church of the West and El Cortez, have received the designation.

Lucky has been balancing on balls for 50 years. In unrelated news, Madonna recently opened the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards.

We hear being listed on the National Register can open up lots of opportunities for grants and financial subsidies that could defray some of the costs of the sign’s rebirth.

We are a noted Las Vegas sign expert and champion (whiner), so you know we’ll be watching Lucky’s situation closely.

While the rejuvenation of Lucky is taking longer than we’d like, props to Circus Circus for not just knocking the sign down and replacing it with a gawd-awful LED monolith. Those boring, blinding, digital signs have become the standard on The Strip, a way for casinos to not only save money, but also to compete dick-size-wize.

Those signs lack character and charm and warmth and history and they’re ruining Las Vegas like F1, karaoke, the Culinary union, terrible journalism, buskers, casino social marketers and spineless politicians who refuse to decriminalize sex work. Relax, they aren’t going to read this far, anyway.