Stiffs and Georges

Foxwoods Resort Casino CEO Scott “Woody” Butera didn’t close the sale with Milford voters earlier this week, but they didn’t slam the door on him either. Rather than prejudice the issue with a town-meeting vote, local sentiment favors a city-wide referendum. Although casino opponents have dominated the argument so far, hearing from Foxwoods-in-Milford supporters seems [...]

Good news for Caesars Entertainment: Macanese gaming magnate Galaxy Entertainment Group wants to buy a golf course. Caesars has a $578 million one it desperately wants to unload. Bad news for Caesars, Galaxy wants a course that’s on nearby Hengqin Island, not in Macao proper, where Caesars Golf sits. Amazing place, Macao: Where else could [...]

A spiffy makeover and a nostalgia-themed market position aren’t helping the Riviera as customers gravitate back toward higher-priced hotels. A bad neighborhood, while hardly a new phenomenon, isn’t helping. Having Echelon and Fontainebleau as your neighbors is akin to living next to a cemetery and a slum, respectively. “We anticipate that our walk-in traffic will [...]

Say what you like about MGM Resorts International’s plans for Monte Carlo and New York-York, the company isn’t letting any grass grow under its feet: As of 9 a.m. this morning, the Monte Carlo facade was merely walled off with naked cyclone fencing. By 3:30 p.m. — voila! — a logo-festooned banner had wrapped the [...]

Just when boosters of casino expansion in Illinois thought they had a done deal, Gov. Pat Quinn (D) sprung a carefully concealed snare: No pension reform, no dice. He dismissed Rep. Lou Lang’s endless, insane casino crusade as a “shiny object.” Even gay marriage is a higher priority for Quinn (who favors it) than adding [...]

Score one for Colony Capital: It took Rational Group to the cleaners to  the tune of $11 million and there’s nothing Rational can do about it. A New Jersey court ruled that the PokerStars parent company had no one to blame for itself, having agreed to the surrender in black and white: If Rational wasn’t [...]

Penn National Gaming has filed paperwork with the SEC for an IPO that would enable you to buy into 19 Penn casinos, including flop Hollywood Perryville (shown). This Penn stalking horse would go by the incredibly generic name of Gaming & Leisure Properties (ticker symbol GLPI), a moniker so dull it must have been conceived [...]

One of gaming’s biggest new markets went out with a whimper, not a bang, when colorful Toronto Mayor Rob Ford nixed a scheduled vote on whether to put a casino in the lakeside city, hoping to extract a $97 million “hosting fee” from Ontario. Faced with probable defeat, the measure was pulled, leaving all the [...]

When last seen, Caesars Entertainment CEO Gary Loveman was telling his brethren that a stale property is an endangered property. To prove his point, he need look no farther than Philadelphia, where new kid on the block Valley Forge Casino Resort (left)was up in largely “down” April, its revenues increasing 29%. At $8 million last [...]

Early news reports held that yesterday’s $70 million judicial beat-down of Las Vegas Sands was unanimous. Not so, it turns out. At least one juror felt that Macao schmoozer Richard Suen had neither demonstrated the existence of a contract with Sheldon Adelson’s company nor any business acumen and another would have awarded him squat. Not [...]

Although the financial backing of Genting Group would — under normal circumstances — make the Mashpee Wampanoags prohibitive favorites for a casino in southeastern Massachusetts, these are anything but normal conditions. The tribe still doesn’t have a compact with the state, its site reposes on land that’s not been taken into trust and the Mashpee [...]

Obstinacy has once again been the downfall of Sheldon Adelson. Rather than settle with Chinese businessman Richard Suen, Adelson went to trial not once, but twice (the first verdict having been overturned). In 2008, a Clark County jury determined that Las Vegas Sands owed Suen $44 million — plus interest, for helping Adelson land a [...]

That’s what it could come to in Boston, if mayoral candidate — and current Suffolk County D.A. — Daniel Conley gets his wish. Rather than simply letting East Boston vote up or down on Caesars Entertainment’s proposed conversion of Suffolk Downs into a $1 billion racino, Conley would require it to get both citywide and [...]

So, as Ohio marks the first full year of casino play, is the glass half-full or half-empty. Currently, much is being made of Horseshoe Cleveland having brought in less than half of greatly over-ambitious expectations (and 12% less than what Moody’s Investor Service anticipated). And that isn’t even the fault of Rock Gaming Caesars but [...]

We don’t know how it managed it but congratulations to The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. It finally realized how to market to those hitherto-elusive creatures known as “gamblers.” Casino revenue shot up 33%, winning $41 million from players, partly due to better-than-expected hold. Room rates ($273) and 88% also continued to be some of the [...]

Gone and soon to be forgotten is the fugly NASCAR Cafe (site of terrible customer service), one of Bill Bennett’s dubious ‘enhancements’ to the Sahara during his ownership. Current owner Sam Nazarian is ripping the Sahara apart in earnest, although this story implies that two of the hotel towers will get just a light makeover. [...]

After a boffo February, the Silver State also posted extraordinary numbers in March. As Deutsche Bank headlined its report, “Different Month, Same Tune.” Analyst Carlo Santarelli cautioned, “we believe the underlying trends are not as strong as the headline would suggest,” pointing toward slippage in slot handle and in table drop (down 10.5%), excluding baccarat. [...]

It was one of the stupefying follies of the Caesars Entertainment LBO that CEO Gary Loveman believed the company could take on $30 billion in debt and continue to expand. Even as he tries to reshuffle old assets into new IPOs, Loveman is finally coming around to what some of us knew years ago: The [...]

She was a good and sturdy little Mac while she lasted but, after seven years of S&G service, she bit the dust yesterday while being upgraded to Snow Leopard. It was a sudden and painless demise, and several attempts at CPU CPR proved fruitless. I’m going to miss her — and the considerable amount of [...]

Hey, if you had an albatross the size of Caesars Entertainment slung around your neck, you’d be understandably subject to skepticism and perhaps even being called out in public, perhaps to the point of getting tetchy about it. That’s the plight of Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert. The latter has his thumb in casino pies [...]