With one less weekend this year and weak baccarat volumes, the Las Vegas Strip got hammered, down 15%. Statewide, gross gaming revenues were off by 5%. Late-July slot 
win that was reported in August softened the blow, contributing to a 13% increase in gross gaming revenue from local players. Comparisons in September don’t get easier, as last year was a strong month for baccarat (up 20%) and 2% better on the Strip overall. This August, slot handle on the Strip dipped 3% but win was down 5%. Table wagering fell 12% but the house got pummeled, with win plummeting 24%. (Nevada now includes poker in “table games,” presumably in hopes of making the numbers look better.) Minus baccarat, the table-game picture wasn’t so bad, off 8% on 6% less wagering. Baccarat “win” was catastrophic, plunging 42% on 18% less play.
Downtown Las Vegas was unfazed, up 7%, while the Boulder Strip vaulted 22% and North Las Vegas rose 13%. Reno was absolutely flat but the sunbirds were playing — and losing — at Lake Tahoe, up 27%. The outlying Clark County markets (including Primm and Mesquite) rose 6.5%, while Laughlin had a 3% uptick. The only locals markets to suffer were Elko and Carson Valley, down 2% each.
* Score one for Boyd Gaming. Last night, Wilton Rancheria, a $400 million tribal casino project, was given the go-ahead by the Elk Grove City Council. The casino will sit about 20 miles south of Sacramento, on the road to Fresno. The federal government 
could take the land into trust (pending the outcome of the election), as early as the first quarter of next year. The Wilton band, employing Boyd’s managerial know-how, intend on building a 2,000-slot, 300-hotel-room project, with a 2019 opening envisioned. Wrote Deutsche Bank analyst Carlo Santarelli, “we think this project has flown largely under the radar for investors as management has been prudently quiet on the subject. That said, we think the progress should begin to garner attention, given we believe the deal is an appealing, high ROI transaction.” It will not, he adds, be a repetition of Penn National Gaming‘s Hollywood Jamul nightmare, in which Penn is on the hook for the cost of building the casino (which, in itself, is in a federally imposed “holding pattern”). “We believe, like [Station Casinos] deals, that [Boyd] will assist the tribe through the financing process, but will not inject capital into the construction.” That should make investors happy.
* Donald Trump‘s history of stiffing casino creditors is so lengthy it will soon fill a book. The latest complainant is J. Michael Diehl, former owner of the Freehold Music Center. Diehl took umbrage at Trump recent assertion on national TV that aforesaid creditors did subpar work and deserved to be shorted. Diehl wrote to The Washington Post that he had sold pianos to Trump Taj Mahal in 1989. When Diehl asked his 
attorney if he should demand the $100,000 payment in advance, he was told, “It’s Donald Trump! He’s got lots of money.” But, after the pianos were delivered, Diehl was met with incessant prevarication from Trump executives. Eventually, after much stalling, he was told the casino was hard up for funds and would he take 70% of what he was owed? As we have seen, this is a frequent Trump casino tactic — run out the clock on your creditors and then ask them to take a haircut. Writes Diehl, “I couldn’t afford to sue the Trump corporation, and I needed money to pay my piano suppliers. So I took the $70,000 … Today, when I hear Trump brag about paying small business owners less than he agreed, I get angry. He’s always suggesting that the people who worked for him didn’t do the right job, didn’t complete their work on time, that something was wrong. But I delivered quality pianos, tuned and ready to go. I did everything right. And then Trump cheated me. It’s a callous way to do business.” If Trump goes into the casino business in Nevada, as he has strongly suggested he will do (if he loses the election, of course), Vegas vendors would do well to demand cash on the barrelhead before doing business for Trump.
I had to search for businessmen who were US President. And it turns out that most were the worst presidents in US history, according to historians. The best one came in at #25.