Looks like Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Norm Clarke was right on the VIP money.

Over the weekend, Drudge linked to the reporter’s August 26 item about the potential for even more scandalous media materials to come out of Prince Harry’s recent boisterous visit to The Strip. This morning, Radar Online managing editor David Perel seems to confirm that possibility via an anonymous source:

“There is video of Harry partying naked with women in the Las Vegas hotel room,” a source familiar with the situation said. “There have been some very quiet inquiries to see how much the video is worth.”

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That’s the rumored ballpark licensing fee paid by TMZ to Splash News* for the Prince Harry Las Vegas “strip billiards” shots. Whether you approve of a not-so-innocent bystander cell phone snapping and selling, the citizen muckracker mechanism and resulting TMZ item were responsible for this summer’s blockbuster celebrity news scoop.

It’s a Wynn-Wynn for the two west coast media outfits. Splash News makes a quick, small profit while TMZ garners the kind of Web traffic (and residual TV ratings heat) that quickly covers the purchase price. Although $15,000 seems low. It would not surprise FishbowlLA if the licensing fee was higher, and that the $15,000 is actually what Splash paid at their end.* Attempts to confirm with both Splash and TMZ were unsuccessful.

You’d think that Harry, having grown up in the glare of Fleet Street, would have some sort of lock-down routine when he makes like a rock star and picks out young women from a hotel lobby crowd. But as The Daily Beast “Royalist” Tom Sykes rightly guessed when the story first broke, this was stunningly not the case. Today, TMZ has confirmed the security-breach details, while also gloating:

When the girls entered the room, we’re told the ladies were NOT asked to surrender their phones … an epic failure considering Harry’s well-documented wild side.

As the party fired up, several girls began to snap pics on their cell phones … and one of Harry’s minders lackadaisically told the women, ‘Awww, come on .. no photos.’

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