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 from Baltimore to Toronto. Take away Gilbert’s money and every non-Las Vegas project proposed by Caesars CEO Gary Loveman suddenly turns into the Emperor’s New Clothes. Having converted the historic Higbee Building into an admired, temporary casino, eventually to be absorbed into the permanent one, Gilbert and Loveman turned their attention to suburban racino Thistledown Park. They’re also angling for a pedestrian skyway into the Higbee Building. This raises the worst nightmare of retailers and restaurateurs whenever a casino comes to town: That it will find ways to “capture” business and suck it away from the surrounding area.
Gilbert was sufficiently stung by local critics to reply — via Twitter — that he is still proceeding with Phase II, albeit on a problematic site that’s below grade (the casino will have to sit atop a parking garage) and therefore cannot be rushed. Tweeting uncontrollably, Gilbert made a passing sneer at Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Brent Larkin as representing “yellow journalists.” Unlike Larkin, I’m sure Phase II will be built … but agree that Gilbert should provide some quid to go along with the quo he wants from the city, especially when he’s dividing Cleveland’s casino market between himself, as Thistledown Gilbert goes mano a mano with Higbee Gilbert. And the winner is … Gilbert! In the meantime, Dan’s got a credibility problem on the home front — probably worsened by his promiscuous courtship of other markets — that it will take more than a few snippy tweets to repair.
“Sell.” That’s a word rarely seen in reports on gaming stocks. But it appeared in this morning’s Deutsche Bank 
dispatch, which continued to forecast a falloff in the Scientific Games‘ stock price (to $6/share). Analyst Kelly Knybel seemed shocked by an $11 million shortfall in Deutsche Bank’s revenue estimates for Scientific, cushioned only by one-time sales revenue. Scientific’s WMS Industries purchase, its cost and the associated leverage all gave Knybel pause, as did a “more competitive” picture on the lottery front — Scientific’s bread and butter. “[T]he rich premium and difficult to identify synergies make the pro forma outlook for SGMS daunting, in our view,” wrote Knybel. That’s the problem with combining two companies with complimentary skill sets: Whence cometh the ‘redundancies’ which are eliminated to pay down debt? The Scientific/WMS deal looks like a guppy trying to swallow a whale.
