Trump Taj saves Atlantic City; Barrack resurfaces; Visiting Memory Lane

When we rounded up Atlantic City gaming numbers yesterday, we didn’t get into market-adjusted comparisons and thus buried the lead. The Boardwalk’s surviving casinos saw, on average, a 6% increase in gaming revenue, thanks to the Oct. 10 closing of Trump Taj Mahal. Take out the Taj (which labor troubles did) and a slightly revenue-negative month swings to a significantly positive one. And, for the year, the seven surviving casinos are up by 3%, according to the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. If it’s too soon to say “comeback,” we can at least say “market correction” and throw a little ticker tape out the windows. PokerStars hasn’t been the shot in the arm it was supposed to be but Resorts Digital is an amazing 204% ahead of October 2015’s revenue. So while Atlantic City isn’t out of the woods — the revival of Ten threatens to dilute the revenue base — it’s looking a lot better than it has in a long time.

* New Jersey won’t be going it alone this time when it supplicates the Supreme Court to be allowed sports betting. Amicus briefs have been filed by the states of Arizona, Louisiana, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Mississippi. It’s still a long shot but it indicates a growing appetite by state governments for legalized sports wagering. Their argument is that the Bradley Act “blurs the line” betwixt state and federal regulation. “Congress has obscured its own responsibility by forcing state governments to carry out federal policy rather than doing so itself.” Let’s hope it’s a winning case.

* Nincompoop (former) casino owner Tom Barrack is in the news again. The executive chairman of Colony Capital, which ran several casinos into the ground (including the Atlantic City Hilton, Resorts Atlantic City and Las Vegas Hilton) has been given a job more in line with his dubious competence: planning Donald Trump‘s inauguration. Then again, we wouldn’t trust Barrack to organize a one-horse parade. At least he’ll have trustworthy help. The board is replete with big casino names, including Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Steve Wynn, Phil Ruffin and Gail Icahn, all of whom could run a casino better than Barrack — Mrs. Icahn included. While the Trump inaugural won’t have the Rat Pack cachet of John F. Kennedy‘s, it could boast the artsy-smarty flair of Cirque du Soleil. Of his Mystere acrobats, Ruffin says, “I can supply them if they want them.” (Cirque’s aesthetic tends to be pretty ‘green,’ so I wonder if they share Ruffin’s enthusiasm.) The Vegas wing of the 20-person committee have been tagged “finance vice chairs” and are presumably charged with hitting their friends and colleagues up for donations. You’ve got to hand it to Trump: He knows where the money is … Unless you’re a Colony Capital investor, in which case you and your money are rapidly parted.

* The Ohio Casino Control Commission is getting ready to take on “skill games,” machines that are slots in everything but name. There are 7,000 of these devices scattered across the Buckeye State and they pay out in small cash amounts or in gas cards. This gray-market industry is a new interation of the storefront Internet casinos that the state cracked down on two years ago. Operating skill-based games is a fifth-degree felony but Ohio lawmakers are working on a second prong, whereby genuinely skill-based-game distributors would be licensed at $2,000 a year. “The difficult thing they have to do is draw the fine line between Dave & Busters and Magic Mountain, and skill games that are not legal,” attorney Kurt O. Gearhiser told The Columbus Dispatch. “We want to put the bad guys out of business just like they do. The vast majority of people I represent just want some certainty that their machines are OK.”

* Gaming attorney Anthony Cabot has some advice for the Chinese government vis-a-vis Macao: Stop telling casino operators to diversify their product and take a laissez-faire approach. He also recommends a reduction of the 39% tax rate but chooses a poor analogy: Atlantic City, which enjoys one of the lowest gaming-tax rates in the nation. (If Maryland‘s 60% rate has proven anything is that there’s no impost too high to deter casino developers.)

* It’s official: Genting Group is cashing out of South Korea to concentrate upon Japan. The long-shot prospects of casino legislation passing the current Diet make this a risky bet but, if Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is successful, the potential upside is enormous.

* Feeling nostalgic for old Vegas shows? Here are five of which you should definitely be aware.