If a 3% ROI is your idea of a good return on a casino, have we got the place for you: The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. It continues to narrow losses and improved gambling revenues 25%. Last year, the Cosmo’s casino made $155.5 million. But … hotel rooms generated $277 million and F&B brought in $314 million. When gaming is the “loss leader” at your $3.9 billion casino, you’ve got a problem. No wonder Deutsche Bank has been trying to hide these numbers from public scrutiny. They’re an embarrassment. Rather feebly, the Cosmo said it was looking to its Rose. Rabbit. Lie show/nightclub and its Chelsea concert hall to drive revenues. I’ve been the former and everyone should see it once, but it’s not going to get the Cosmo out of its doldrums. (Can Caesars Entertainment really be trying to acquire this turkey? Somebody must have offered them a helluva bargain.)
Delaware taxpayers will be out $20 million if a casino-bailout plan passes the Legislature. One of the unspoken attractions of casino gambling for states is that it’s industry that pays its own. When it’s got its hand out for a taxpayer subsidy, it’s time to reexamine 
the premises under which the industry operates. In the Delaware giveaway, taxpayers would be on the hook directly for $10 million in costs paid to slot vendors. (In effect you’re playing the slots even if you never put a coin in one.) The yearly table-game tax would be zeroed out. And the annual tax rate of 29% on table game revenue would go down to 15% from 29%. The whole magilla will also be renegotiated in 2015-16.
Racinos in Delaware were approved both to help the state and its horseracing industry. Now the casino industry is playing the role of mendicant, begging for a handout. Has anybody thought of suggesting to the racinos that they cut costs by $20 million, instead of panhandling John Q. Taxpayer?
Kansas has a casino license it literally can’t give away. In an attempt to make it more appealing, the state senate has lowered the application fee to $5.5 million and the minimum required investment to $50 million (from $25 million and $225 million, respectively). Casino operators like Penn National Gaming, who bought in at the higher rates, may cry foul, but the state’s got to do something to put that fourth license into play. (The upper chamber wisely kiboshed a smoking ban.) A racino at the defunct Woodlands track in Wyandotte was rejected. If Phil Ruffin wants slots at Wichita Greyhound Park he’ll find himself thwarted by hard-liners in the Kansas GOP, who blocked a local vote on the issue.
In 2012, tribal casinos set a new record of revenue, albeit at a slower rate of growth — 2% vs. 2011’s 3.5% — which gives some cause for concern. Compared to the traditional casino industry (4% growth) and racinos (8%), tribal casinos were sluggish. Some of this is attributable to faster growth in the private sector, although they represented 43% of casino revenue nationwide.
Two-thirds of Indian casinos surveyed by Alan Meister reported increases, particularly in the Bible Belt (Alabama and Texas), Montana and South Dakota. Slow-growth states included Connecticut, New York, Idaho and Colorado. Meister blamed some of the malaise on aging facilities and new, private-sector competition. California alone represented 25% of total income. Oklahoma came in second. Revenue is way down from the go-go, early years of IGRA (148% in 1989) but we’re still talking about a $28 billion industry. With the most tribal-gambling facilities in the U.S., Oklahoma posted an above-average growth rate of 7%. However, perhaps due to state charges on Class III machines, their number in the Sooner State has declined for the fourth year running. New Mexico was up 7%, Florida’s revenues only 2.5% but the growth in non-gaming tribal income was 10 times that. The greatest increase was in Alaska (20%) while the greatest decline (-8%) was in Connecticut.
Quote of the Day: “We thought of Las Vegas, but Macao is just so close, and maybe better anyway, so we came here. We had canard au sang yesterday at a good restaurant “and it was pretty special.” — tourist Zhao Yi, from a New York Times story on the increasing Disney-fication of Macao. Meanwhile, Singapore grows more attractive for those Chinese who don’t want their gambling scrutinized.
Not sure how DB is even earning a 3% ROI when the place is loosing money. It is a really cool resort … they just completely over-spent on the place.
On Kansas, I was thinking the same thing. The operators that are already in the market deserve a refund!