Last week, Horseshoe Baltimore found itself a sitting duck during the civil disturbances that followed the death of Freddy Gray. With police imposing a 10 p.m.-5 
a.m. curfew, Horseshoe had no choice but to curtail its operating hours, closing at 9 p.m. for five nights. Since the casino is struggling and parent company Caesars Entertainment is in bankruptcy (although not the subsidiary that owns the plurality of Horseshoe Baltimore), management would have a very good excuse not to pay its employees for the hours the casino was dark.
This is where management rose to the occasion, paying employees for full shifts, whether they were curfew-truncated or not. As Vice President of Marketing Noah Hirsch said, “Business was adversely affected by the curfew, but certainly there were more important considerations.” Somebody buy that man a drink. In keeping with its largesse to employees, the casino is also keeping patrons happy by hewing to its announced schedule of promotions. There haven’t been too many opportunities to praise Caesars lately. This is one of them.
* Elsewhere in Maryland, they’re thinking large at MGM National Harbor, which is looking to draw more than half its customer base from outside the Free State. “The reason 
why we’re investing to the degree we are — it’s clearly far more money than anybody has ever invested in a regional casino — is because we don’t believe it is a regional casino,” CEO Jim Murren told gaming analysts.
While allowing that some cannibalization would take place, Murren tried to downplay the amount that would occur. Murren’s not thinking in terms of the lucrative Virginia counties across the Potomac River but of states along the Eastern Seaboard. “We, in our other regional properties, have a robust charter-air program. We intend to deploy that here, too, so that we’d be bringing people from up and down the East Coast and in the middle of the country for multi-day excursions,” Murren said. After all, it’s difficult to argue that North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia aren’t underserved markets, especially for an MGM-quality experience.
Although the casino’s hotel will tower 23 stories, it will only have 308 rooms and suites; hardly Vegas scale. The low-key exterior design is meant to comport a certain dignity in 
keeping with being a stone’s throw from our nation’s capitol. Still, there will be robust competition for customers and Maryland Live is being advised to brace itself for losing 23% of its business, while Horseshoe Baltimore will take a smaller hit (14%). Marylanders ravenous appetite for table games should also play right into MGM’s hitting zone. The heated casino rivalry in Maryland might prompt the Virginia Legislature to get into the act but MGM is trying to set the bar forbiddingly high for anyone who would try to compete.
* In an embarrassment for Warner Gaming, it allowed a data-security breach to go undetected for eight months. If you used a credit, debit or players card at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, in Las Vegas, between September 3 last year and last April 2, hackers would have had a field day with your customer information (excepting PIN numbers and unspecified “other sensitive customer information”). The damage seems to have been limited to Hard Rock-run portions of the property, while stand-alone amenities like Nobu were unaffected. Warner is offering one year of free Experian data protection to customers who were exposed to the hacking.
