For those of us who missed it this year, the best Christmas tradition of which I know.
First and most importantly …
To you, the reader, who makes this possible, a year of happiness, health and wealth, whether material, intellectual or spiritual.
Atlantic City: Good luck in a year that will end with ’13.’
Boyd Gaming: New TV commercials.
Caesars Entertainment: A new CEO, president and chairman of the board.
Carl Icahn: A nice, fat pigeon who’ll take Fontainebleau off your hands.
Cirque du Soleil: The sense to know when you’ve run out of ideas.
CityCenter: An end to the Harmon embarrassment, preferably punctuated with a celebratory implosion.
Colliers International gaming analysts: A broken window and some fresh air.
The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas: Gamblers.
Dan Gilbert: A truss, for having to piggyback Gary Loveman from one new market to the next.
Donald Trump: Alien abduction.
Fontainebleau: Dynamite and lots of it.
IGT: A business plan that succeeds.
Illinois lawmakers: The epiphany that more casinos do not necessarily equal more money. For anyone concerned.
Kansas: Somebody, anybody to bid on that fourth license, still going begging after all these years.
MGM Mirage: Receptive ears in Massachusetts.
Neil Bluhm: A casino in Las Vegas. We need you out here, guy!*
Penn National Gaming: A pacifier.
Revel: More customers.
Riviera: An end to your identity crisis.
Sahara: A new owner, preferably one with some class. (See: Bluhm, Neil)
Sheldon Adelson: Both a lifetime membership to the Hair Club for Men and a copy of The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail but Some Don’t by Nate Silver. It might save you a few hundred million dollars, four years hence.
Station Casinos: Another year of lowered prices and “george” coupon offers.
Steve Wynn: That the second time may be the charm in Philadelphia and Boston.
Tamares Group: A Nevada Gaming Control Board licensing probe.
Tilman Fertitta: A year free of lawsuits against your players. Just pay the man.
Tropicana Entertainment: A labor accord with your Boardwalk workforce. Just pay the men.
Vegas (the series): A seven- to 10-year run on CBS. Historical authenticy, hell! Dennis Quaid, Michael Chiklis and the breathtaking Carrie-Ann Moss — and top-of-the-line production values — make this most entertaining show on TV.
Vegas (the town): A 2013 in which recovery is no longer ‘just around the corner.’
* — last weekend’s telecast of the Pittsburgh Steelers‘ face-plant against a theoretically inferior Cincinnati Bengals team included eye-opening vistas of Rivers Casino, which Bluhm inherited from Don Barden. Man, is that one ugly box of slots or what?
And with that thought, as we write out of sight, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
Merry Christmas to you and your Family, David, and thanks for all the articles.
Merry Christmas!
Nicely done, David. I can’t argue with any….especially the Loveman, er Caesars, one.
Merry Christmas and many thanks for the Vegas and gambling blog David. One of my Christmas wishes is for the Justice Department to grow a pair and enforce the FCPA in regards to bribing Chinese officials to get a casino.
Merry Christmas, your gambling blog is very informative and well written. Good job.
Bill Thompson, a UNLV professor emeritus shares his opinion on Rep. Lou Lang’s overly optimistic projections of Illinois gambling impact in a newspaper article in todays Chicago Tribune: “Those numbers are bogus. It’s pie in the sky.”