Stiffs and Georges

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

America’s casino officially emerged from the doldrums with the release of the American Gaming Association’s yearly survey, showing a 5% increase in private-sector casino revenue, just $200 million shy of 2007’s record amount. Mind you, we have quite a few more casinos now than we did in ‘07, so the pie much be sliced more [...]

Yes, the recovery in Las Vegas could be said to be a chastened and limping one. The national press will leap at just about anything to restart the “Vegas is back” narrative. And yes, CityCenter ROI improved exponentially … to 4%. But all that being the case, nothing seen in recent numbers — like a [...]

“MGM [Resorts International] still has much of its business in on the Strip, unlike its major rivals Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Wynn Resorts … Those companies both reported gains for the first three months of the year because of their Macau resorts, while Caesars Entertainment, which has no presence in [...]

Every few years, brows are knitted earnestly in discussion of whether this will finally be the year in which Japan legalizes casino gambling. I’ve been hearing versions of this debate regularly since 2005, so you’ll pardon me if I suppress a yawn. Yes, billions of dollars — to say nothing of various Asian currencies — [...]

“Slot machines and blackjack tables have no power at all. What we are not building is a box of slots. We’re building a beautiful hotel that just happens to have a gaming room in the back.”– Steve Wynn, repositioning himself as an urban hotelier in the course of unveiling a $1.2 billion, proposed casino [...]

All but a very few Ameristar Casinos shareholders voted to approve the company’s takeover by Pinnacle Entertainment, in one of the fastest M&A deals in industry memory. Regulatory approvals are still pending in Nevada and other states but Ameristar always kept its nose clean and Pinnacle has generally behaved itself under previous CEO Dan Lee [...]

If Carl Icahn holds the note on your life, you are in a world of hurt, my friend. Just ask Trump Entertainment Resorts, whose $20 million sale of wretchedly performing Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino suddenly looks very shaky. What’s Uncle Carl’s reasoning? That the casino is “worth more,” although how much more is conveniently [...]

No sooner had I confidently predicted that Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh (whoops, wrong Tony) would not be making any gaming related purchased when the shoe mogul pounced on the financially troubled Gold Spike. Showing the acumen that’s made him the most-admired magnate in town (yes, even more than Steve Wynn), Hsieh snapped up the note [...]

“But it also must be said that — of all the demands made by organized labor groups in Las Vegas, whether private-sector or public-sector — the demands of the Wynn [Resorts] card dealers is among the most reasonable ever. In opposing the tip pooling policy, they are not asking for extra pay [...]

Since Colliers International hasn’t been able to move Gary Goett’s 100 gaming-enabled acres on St. Rose Parkway and I-15, at $1.25 million per acre, he’s still got time to rethink his decision not to build his Southern Highlands megaresort (left), complete with a mini-ripoff of Wynn Las Vegas, architecturally speaking. But Penn National Gaming continues [...]

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than right: When Tamares Group made an indiscriminate splurge on downtown Las Vegas real estate in 2004, it was banking on a construction boom that never took place. It also found itself with several casinos and slot-route locations for which it never had any strategy. But Tamares sure was [...]

Eight years later, Steve Wynn is still firmly ensconced at the top. Gary Loveman is hanging on for dear life and George Maloof is a sad-faced figurehead. And $2.7 billion for a casino resort (Wynn Las Vegas) looks like frugality after the sums blown on CityCenter, Fontainebleau, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and — oh [...]

Continuing a very occasional series, here are some casino-related ephemera that have washed up on the shores of cyberspace. For instance …

… only about 25% of the rooms at the newly announced Gansevoort Las Vegas will enjoy this particular Strip view. Guess which ones will command the premium price points? And how many Strip hotels [...]

S&G contributor JeffInOKC returns from a too-long absence with some thoughts on one of our favorite topics, the North Strip …

It is common for us to hear the term “Too Big to Fail,” but I think the true story of Fountainebleau is “Too Big to Succeed.” The original plan for the property [...]

Kudos to Chuck Monster for finding this fanciful rendering of SLS Las Vegas, presumably designed to mislead would-be EB-5 Visa investors from China and points East. Shazam! The former Sahara has miraculously floated down the Strip and over to Koval Lane, where it will miraculously sit opposite bargain paradise Ellis Island Casino, a popular haunt [...]

“On the U.S. side … we view the State of Nevada as having uninspiring oversight of activities occurring in Macau. For every gap of oversight that exists from the Nevada Gaming Control Board or Nevada Gaming Commission, the U.S. Federal Government may fill it … If the Nevada Gaming Control Board and Commission were to [...]

Philadelphia casino-applicant frontrunner Bart Blatstein has a new sidekick. He’s ditched Hard Rock International in favor of … Isle of Capri Casinos. It’s a big win for Isle and a very embarrassing public setback for the Seminole Tribe, which Blatstein characterized as too slow-moving for his needs. The new alliance also has sentimental ties for [...]