Adelson’s endurance; Doom for Dotty’s?

Outwardly, Sheldon Adelson maintains an air of placidity regarding business affairs in Macao, where gaming revenue dropped 34% in 2015. sheldonadelsonHowever, it can’t much please him to pick up his morning newspaper and read that Wall Street is expecting more of the same in 2016. For that matter, where are the relief measures that China‘s central government promised would materialize by year’s end but somehow forgot to implement? Of all the Macao concessionaires, Adelson has borne Beijing‘s crackdown on everything from currency movement to table-game allocations with the most grace. (A real surprise, considering Sheldon’s hard-earned reputation for intemperance.)

Whether or not casino operators bought into it, gaming analysts had visions of a $100 billion-a-year Macao market by 2020 dancing in their heads, so last year’s $29 billion gross was a stiff dose of reality. Now they’re saying things like “The structural growth of Macau gross gaming revenue won’t come back in the next two years and the multiples do not look appealing.” Even so, $29 billion split six ways isn’t chump change and, by the time the Macanese economy is expected to recover, concession renewals will be drawing nigh. Rival operators might do well to take a page from Adelson’s book and realize that they’re there at the sufferance of the Chinese government, and not blow a gasket because they can’t get as many table games as they want. There is, after all, a big difference in life between what we want and what we get.

* As much as it brags about being “the gold standard” of gaming regulation, Nevada does some things in remarkably back-asswards fashion. For Cosmo askewinstance, William McBeath has been running The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas for several quarters now and has been doing a quantifiably good job of it. (The Cosmo is about to report its third consecutive quarter of profitability.) However, he’s been running the property without a Nevada gaming license, a matter that was only remedied today by the Nevada Gaming Control Board, a decision that is expected to be ratified by the Nevada Gaming Commission later this month. Now, how would the NGCB cover its butt if the same tardy licensing process had involved someone of lesser probity than McBeath? Actually, we know. Sam Nazarian got caught snorting blow and paying extortion money. He got a license anyway. Nevada really can do better.

* It’s reckoning time for Dotty’s and other, less-controversial slot parlors of its ilk (like Jackpot Joanie’s). A federal appeals court has upheld a Clark County ordinance that decreed that gambling revenue must be “incidental” to their business model, representing 50% or less of the money they make. SisolakOnly slot parlors operating prior to late 1990 will be grandfathered under the court order, which could throw a lot of these hole-in-the-wall casinos out of business, especially if their “tavern” business model entails selling merely pre-packaged food as opposed to having a working kitchen. Even if they do, how many Dotty’s do you think are making their nut off of food sales? It’s too soon to say what steps Clark County will take to enforce the court-ratified law but county commissioner and Station Casinos shill Steve Sisolak (above) lauded the speed and reasoning of the court’s decision. So at least one person is happy with the outcome of the case. There’s got to be a lot of gloom and doom going around the slot-parlor industry, though.

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