David Mckee's Stiffs & Georges - Tourism

From the mailbag #9

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:55:00 -0700

One reader asks, regarding senatorial aspirant Sue Lowden's esteemed Pioneer Hotel & Gambling Hall:

I'm confused (as usual, but...) - Isn't the Pioneer NOT a gambling hall now, its shell hosting an ABC convenience store & various other small shops?
I don't remember if I ever patronized the place when it was a casino, but its stores are in a good location for the Downtown tourist crowd; the ABC Store is especially popular with our Hawaiian friends. That's good for sales taxes, right?

As for the Vegas Club, please don't vaporize it yet: We're going to stay there at the end of the month, mainly because it's free for me - and a separate free room for a friend of mine - allowing him to attend the Speedway races for that much less money.

You're thinking of the Pioneer on Fremont Street, while Ms. Lowden's establishment is down in Laughlin. And it very much has gambling. As for dematerialization, S&G did not nominate the Vegas Club for that dubious honor but suggested that, as long as Sen. Harry Reid's people are threatening to "vaporize" Ms. Lowden that they make themselves useful and turn their phasers on her grind joint, which is regarded as a bottom-feeder even by Laughlin standards.

The Vegas Club is very much on people's minds, as another reader asks:

How is it possible that TV series VEGA$ starring Robert Urich came out on DVD on October 20 and I saw nothing in the Las Vegas media celebrating the occasion. I saw an ad in Newsweek. They couldn't get something with Wayne F. Newton at the Tropicana or Phyllis Davis and Judy Landers in front of the Plaza or the Las Vegas Club? Sad, sad, sad.

Ah, a Phyllis Davis shout-out. You're speaking our language. And, yes, that VEGA$ release really snuck by, didn't it? In a classic case of the blind following the blind, local TV stations take their cues from the newspapers. The various Greenspun-owned organs have been slashing staff at a fearsome rate, so it's understandable that they'd miss it.

As for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, suffice it to say that staffers there, up to and including head cheese Thomas Mitchell, had to be told that the Moulin Rouge was burning down because -- even though it was happening across the street -- they work in a penetentiary-like building with no windows to the outside world (architecture as institutional metaphor).

So it's not the least bit surprising that our insular and rapidly declining local media would totally blow this one. As for Mayor Oscar Goodman, he had a previous commitment in London, but still ... no proclamation? No declaration that Oct. 2009 was hereby "VEGA$ Day"? Another missed opportunity for some free ink.

Quote of the Day

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:06:00 -0700

"I'd like to keep one strip of that airport as an airport. I think it closed prematurely. I think greed went nuts." -- Atlantic City mayoral candidate Joseph Polillo (I), on what to do with Bader Field. Incumbent Mayor Lorenzo Langford's idea for the former airport is -- wait for it -- another casino.

MGM: CityCenter worth $4.88 billion

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:37:00 -0700

MGM Mirage has announced that it's writing off approximately $1.3 billion (i.e., taking an "impairment charge") against CityCenter, with $348 million of that chalked up to falling real estate values. (Some $174 million of that will apparently be fobbed off on MGM's partners, bringing MGM's writeoff down to $1.1 billion.) The value of MGM's half-share of the project has been restated at $2.44 billion (a 31% decline). No word yet from Dubai World as to what it thinks its half of CityCenter is worth.

Kirk Kerkorian's Tracinda Corp. shook a rhetorical fist at Wall Street, stating in a press release that there is "substantial unrecognized value in MGM and CityCenter that is not reflected in the market value of MGM’s stock." It's nice to know that even mega-corporations can feel underappreciated.

Bottoming out? Air traffic into and out of Las Vegas was almost flat, year over year, -1.2% in September, helped by passenger-load increases -- and I don't mean those hefty people who take up two seats -- on nearly every domestic carrier not named US Airways (-26%). Considering that international traffic was -21%, this is augurs well for a return of domestic consumer confidence in Sin City. And, yes, flat is the new "up."

Pennsylvania: Rendell intervenes. Never accuse the Keystone State Lege of acting in haste. The table games bill is still mired in conference committe, prompting Gov. Ed Rendell (D) to wade into the fray. Rendell's magic number for the amount of revenue table games must yield in fees and taxes is $200 million. To get there, the guv believes the tax rate must be 16%. But he's closer to the GOP position, warning that the higher levies favored by Dems would "kill the golden goose" and deprive Little Johnny's school of needed funding. Meanwhile, Rivers Casino continues to disappoint, with the lowest revenue-per-slot in the state.

Finally, a taker! Out of left field, a contender has emerged for the orphaned casino license in Cherokee and Crawford counties in Kansas. You'll recall that it was awarded to Penn National Gaming, seemingly ages ago, but Penn -- spooked by nearby tribal competition -- all but spat on the license before leaving in a huff.

Enter Ozark Trail Gaming, a consortium of Kansas businessmen, offering to build a $225 million, 900-slot, 30-table casino. After some bad experiences with carpetbagger casino developers trying to dictate terms to the Sunflower State, you have to think the Kansas Lottery Board will look kindly upon this native-son effort.

ColSux loses again. A $41.5 million summary judgment has been slapped on Columbia Sussex for abrogating its purchase of the President riverboat in St. Louis (now the property of ColSux arch-foe Pinnacle Entertainment). Regulators for Missouri didn't like the looks of ColSux and its CEO, William J. Yung III (above). The latter pulled his license application and used that as an excuse to void the President purchase, but a federal district judge wasn't buying it.

The former President owners were also suing ColSux for jacking up parking rates for casino patrons by 560% (no, that is not a typo), a truly Yungian move. If poetic justice were served in this case, the court would award the ship to ColSux. Since the President's days on the water are numbered and Yung will licensed in Missouri only in his wildest dreams, trying to dispose of that near-worthless asset might be the aptest punishment of all.

Eight Vegas shows reviewed

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:10:00 -0700

As promised, Mike Shackleford's WizardOfVegas.com site has launched. It took a while to get the bugs worked out, hence my review of Scarlett & her Seductive Ladies of Magic didn't appear until after the show had closed. However, to the best of my knowledge, you can not only read about but still see all of the following ...

• Amazed

• Anthony Cools

• Gordie Brown

• Marriage Can Be Murder

• Matsuri

• Sin City Bad Girls

• V - The Ultimate Variety Show

Sample line: "Yes, Marriage can be murder ... and so is the food." Enjoy!

Quote of the Day

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:32:00 -0700

"I predict a rough winter for Vegas. Swine flu may not be a pandemic, but it may really mess with the casino business. It could make the economic downturn look mild." -- a locally based casino-industry expert, in an e-mail to LVA.

Aria drives prices ... down

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:23:00 -0700

Contrary to repeated assertions by J.P. Morgan, it would appear that MGM Mirage is putting out promotional specials for Bellagio ... and very aggressively so. Note however, that Steve Wynn's masterpiece is maintaining its price point and Aria is the one having to come down to meet it.

Also, an unscientific survey of mid-week rates parallel to Aria's opening shows that what the CityCenter flagship is doing is sucking the air out of the rest of the Strip, especially other MGM properties. Even Wynn Las Vegas is down to $159/night that week (quotes were predicated on a three-night stay).

The absolute bargain was Downtown's Golden Gate ($12.71) and unless you count Hooters and fellow bottom-feeder Wild Wild West, the lowest on-Strip price was $21.21 at MGM's Circus Circus. The Sahara ($22.40) and Imperial Palace ($25) were close behind. They were ever-so-slightly outpriced by the Riviera ($27) and Tropicana ($29.33).

As for other properties in the lion's den: Excalibur ($31), Luxor ($48.37), New York-New York ($50), Monte Carlo ($58.62), the Green Monster (aka MGM Grand, $70), Mandalay Bay ($72.55), The Mirage ($76.50), THEhotel ($93.29), Vdara ($109) ... with only the Green Monster's Sky Lofts ($600) outpricing Aria.

So, MGM, are you sure this oligopoly business model is the way you want to go? I'm just askin'.

<crickets>

Macao giveth, Macao taketh away

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:41:00 -0700

Casino operators in Macao better make the most of the recent relaxation of visa quotas into the enclave. What the government gives with one hand, it partly reclaims with the other. Casino expansion remains out of the question and the minimum age for gambling would go up to 21, from 18, under a bill draft soon to be put forward. (Steve Wynn can afford to be sanguine, as it's far more likely to impact his mass-market-oriented competitors. Investors didn't share his enthusiasm.)

If Wynn -- who continues to toe the Peking party line -- comes out a winner, facing negligible "obstacables," Lawrence Ho is the presumptive loser. As best S&G can ascertain, the curtailment of gambling in residential areas is aimed at his Mocha slot routes, one of the younger Ho's bread-and-butter enterprises.

Another proposal awaiting action by the Macanese Lege would cap table-game inventory. Writes J.P. Morgan analyst Joseph Greff, "we believe the Macau government believes the timing is right to implement these initiatives given the completion of the commission cap rule and the resumption of growth in the industry ... if the number of tables will be limited to 1,000 per operator, [Las Vegas Sands] may need to modify its future expansion plans, as it is already over the limit, while SJM will need to close down some of the older tables operated by the third parties, as it too is already over the limit."

None of this appears to bode especially well for Sands' long-in-coming IPO, although it remains to be seen whether this is a bonafide legislative agenda or simply a warning to inhibit growth. The news, however, managed to cast a pall over Sheldon Adelson's planned resumption of his Cotai Strip™. Also, it's not as though the Macanese government and its casino-owning subjects don't have to worry about an upsurge in gambling back on the Mainland.

Detroit, briefly. The depression continues to eat into Detroit's casino revenues, -2% last month. Despite a -6.5% drop, MGM Grand Detroit remains the big cat, grossing $42 million. Second place is up for grabs, though, as MotorCity continues to fall back (-7%) toward upstart Greektown (+12%), which is closing the gap, grossing $28.5 million against $33.5 million for MotorCity.

Hope for Boardwalk?

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:08:00 -0700

As you know, S&G puts more stock in year/year comparisons than sequential ones, but the most recent set from Atlantic City affords a slender reed of hope. With the help of tighter slots, A.C. held its September decline to 6%, the lowest of 2009 and the smallest drop in over a year. Even perpetual dog Resorts International had a good month, up 4% y/y.

Both in dollar volume ($63 million) and growth (6%), the leader was -- no surprise -- Borgata. In fact, the Boyd Gaming property made more than the four lowest-grossing properties (Resorts, Atlantic City Hilton, Trump Plaza, Trump Marina) combined. The two lesser Trump properties slipped below the Colony Capital ones, so one doesn't know whether to feel good for Colony or sorry for Trump Entertainment Resorts. The handover of Resorts Int'l continues to proceed slowly, as regulators enter uncharted waters with understandable caution.

Percentage-wise, Showboat, the Hilton and the Plaza had the worst of it, while gainers included Harrah's Atlantic City (3%) and even the Tropicana (1%). But the bloom is off the Trump Taj Mahal rose; it fell back to the middle of the pack, grossing $36 million.

One unexpected factor in the city's bump was a late-September, gay-themed promotion at the four Harrah's Entertainment properties. For all the lip service paid, year after year, to diversifying Atlantic City's appeal, Don Marrandino and his Harrah's colleagues backed up the talk with meaningful action.

Dead casino walking: Trump Marina

Back at Trump, its CEO, Mark Juliano declares "The real question is how long until we get back to the results we saw in past years, which is the question everyone in every business has." No, the real question is: On what planet is Mr. Juliano living? And: Do they have oxygen up there?

The math is inexorable. Excluding three months of sub-2% growth, Atlantic City's revenues have going one way -- down -- for the last seven quarters, often by double-digit margins. Casinos in Pennsylvania continue to ramp up, Delaware is talking very seriously about casino expansion, slot parlors in Maryland are in train and then there's prospect of additional competition from the greater New York City area.

Instead of asking "Where are the snows of yesteryear," S&G modestly suggests the Boardwalk's casino braintrust ought to be thinking about how to move forward into a future of diminished (i.e., more realistic) expectations.

Up the road, now that the novelty factor has worn off of Sands Bethlehem (above), the $724 million casino remains mired in fifth place. The solution? More and bigger promotions, it would appear. Judging by the lukewarm response to Sands and to Rivers Casino, the Pennsylvania market isn't big enough to support casinos built with Vegas-sized budgets.

Leaving Las Vegas

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:17:00 -0700

At least 28,000 have done so over the two years-plus (probably more when you allow for the people still moving here). What are the likely consequences of Las Vegas' pegging its future on a one-trick economy? And is it going to be like one of those Rust Belt cities (like Pittsburgh) that turned it around or one of those (say, Detroit) that continues to decline?

Those questions and others are posed in a splendid article that connects most of the dots regarding Vegas' economic plight. One of the most disturbing points raised by Las Vegas Sun reporter J. Patrick Coolican is that cities doing well at present tend to be ones that possessed robust institutions of higher learning -- and invested in them. Neither can be said of Nevada's dismal education system, the recipient of savage budgets, thanks to our governor and the ever-feckless Lege.

If Las Vegas' future hinges on well-funded and -respected academic institutions, then the near-term prognosis is grim.

Speaking of Detroit, casino owners and politicians there may be casting a wary eye on rising pro-casino sentiment in Ohio. In whichever form casino gambling is legalized by Buckeye State voters, it stands to take a big bite out of Motown casino receipts -- and sap state and local revenue collection, too. A helpful Detroit News map shows precisely which Detroit, Indiana, Pennsylvania and West Virginia casino operators have reason to be fretful about the emergence of a casino industry next door.

Like their Strip brethren, tribal powerhouses Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort Casino went all-in ... into debt, that is. Now that it's time to pay the piper, they find themselves in binds comparable to those facing non-tribal casinos. However, they have fewer options for relief, as they discover the downside of being a tribal operation.

Dog's breakfast at Tiffany's. Few readers of this column can probably afford to buy anything at the Tiffany mega-boutique that will be part of the Crystals mall at CityCenter. However, it will make for some lovely window-shopping. (Click on the pictures to see them in a larger size.)

Atlantic City reprieve. Although New Jersey's three-way gubernatorial race is up for grabs, casino owners can take one consolation. Whichever of the two leading candidates is elected, continued opposition to racinos is promised.

Case Bets: California crisis, M cutbacks, "Guiding Light" in LV, etc.

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:50:00 -0700

Ist California kaput? That's the question posed by the The Observer and it makes for troubling reading. If Gov. Jim Gibbons (R-NV) is right that tourism from California is the carotid artery of Nevada's economy, then the Silver State is -- to put it politely -- screwed. A good thing the Lege didn't follow Midnight Jim's advice and shut down Nevada's outreach efforts in China.

Speaking of which ... Amidst a flurry of economic developments and positive indicators in Macao, the casinos of Stanley Ho are backing off the expensive VIP trade and going mass-market. (Translation: "We're coming after you, Sheldon Adelson.") Thanks to reader mike_ch for the link.

Colossal buMMer. Breakfast has just been eliminated from the offerings at the M Resort buffet. Unless one lives nearby (a relatively small clientele), M is a heckuva long detour to make for breakfast, so this economy move is understandable ... but depressing all the same. No casino buffet gets higher marks from LVA readers.

That's a bit weird. Stay with me here, folks. CBS cancels Guiding Light, replacing it with Let's Make a Deal, which is shot at the Tropicana Las Vegas. So what should be coming to Vegas in December (at The Rio) but a Guiding Light farewell tour -- yes, Reva, Josh and the whole kit 'n kaboodle. How much you wanna bet they won't be taking in a LMaD taping at the Trop? The only way to make this scenario more Banquo's Ghost-ly would be for the soap convention to be held at the Trop, too.

P.S.: Better get your tickets now before the 'Otalia' fans scarf them all up.

Company. Performances resume at UNLV tonight and it's a must-see. Mind you, the Review-Journal praises the Stephen Sondheim revival with faint damns, while the Sun's review reverses that formula. But I'd pay to see it again, which I don't say about many shows in this town.

Want your ass kicked?

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:16:00 -0700

Then go hang out at Stack. If they don't like your looks, the in-house goons will be sicced on you. And Las Vegans wonder at the schadenfreude so many people feel with regard to Sin City's current doldrums.

No magic bullet. Liberalization of casino rules in Colorado will raise considerably less revenue than expected. Whoever made the projections that are now coming up 60% short obviously didn't take the recession into account.

Opposition grows. An effort by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn to saturate the state with video gambling devices is encountering widening opposition. Chicago suburbs Evanston and Naperville are among the areas that have nixed the prospect of slot routes.

Don't like our roads? Mail your thanks to Gov. Jim Gibbons, who just got his knuckles rapped by the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure for laggard deployment of federal highway funds. It's pretty slow around Carson City once the Lege decamps, so what's Midnight Jim's excuse this time?

Sanity 1, Drunks 0. A trio of boozing bozos who rampaged through Buffalo Bill's before piling their car into a ditch can't sue MGM Mirage for their own asshattery, Nevada's high court rules. Since they were drunk off their asses and getting into fights, the trio of boozehounds maintained, casino management had an obligation to keep them on-property ... presumably so they could have continued terrorizing other patrons and otherwise letting the good times roll. In an unrelated victory for common sense, it is no longer a crime in South Carolina to play poker in the privacy of your own home.

Keystone stalemate. Casino owners like Las Vegas Sands who have gone ahead with preparations to add table games will soon be rewarded -- but not until endless legislative machinations play out. House Democrats appear to be backing off a 34% tax rate for tables (J.P. Morgan reports that leadership is now floating a 21% figure) and may even come down to the 12% rate favored by their GOP colleagues. The $10 million upfront fee, though, appears to be a done deal.

All that said, solons managed to spend much of a special weekend session dickering over matters that ought to be none of their business. Like: Should casinos be allowed to serve free drinks to their patrons? Or: Can they operate on Christmas? Now, nothing sounds more depressing than spending Christmas Day at Harrah's Chester, but aren't these matters that ought to be the prerogative of the individual casino owner? Also, ostensibly pro-business Republicans wanted to put table games before the voters, which could render the whole legislative exercise moot ... and relief can't come soon enough for racinos like Penn National Gaming's Hollywood Casino, which is starting to slash its payroll.

Macao's blockbuster month

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:23:00 -0700

A flurry of good news to end the week, starting in Macao:

September, the first month affected by a relaxation of severe visa restrictions imposed on the mainland, saw a 53% jump in Macanese gambling revenues. In terms of market share, Stanley Ho opened a big lead on Sheldon Adelson, 30% to 20%, with Melco Crown Entertainment close behind with 16%. The remainder of the market was divvied between Wynn Resorts (14%), MGM Mirage (10%) and Galaxy Entertainment (8%).

Is Melco's City of Dreams (above) eating into nearby Venetian Macao's business? On the surface, it certainly looks plausible. Given the immensity of the facilities he's building on the Cotai Strip™, Adelson ought to be getting more bang for his pataca.

Vegas hearts gays. Earlier today, I was asked to reflect on my nearly 11 years in Las Vegas. It's been full of surprising twists of fate -- who ever thought Steve Wynn would be forced out of the Mirage brand he'd created, just for starters?

But I sure as heck never imagined I'd open my e-mail box at work and find the following casino promotions, all keyed to National Coming Out Day (Oct. 3):

"Two Queens Beat a Straight" (New York-New York)

... or the slightly more innocuous ...

"COME OUT and Celebrate at Luxor"

(Luxor was smart and didn't offer Criss F. Angel tickets as part of the, uh, package)

In the Vegas of even a few years ago, "Boys' Night Out Package at Excalibur" would have had more of a frat-party connotation. MGM Grand plays it safe with a "His or Her Getaway" which sounds like a generic singles-oriented deal. Even so, we're actually seeing progress from the days when Vegas marketed itself as a synonym for a very debauched and jaundiced vision of male heterosexuality.

There's nothing like a depression to make this a party town of equal-opportunity decadence. After all, LGBT dollars spend just as fast as straight ones.

$545 a night. That's what Mandarin Oriental is asking. If you read the fine print, you'll note that (through March 31), if you buy a room night at that rate, you'll get a comped night, too. Which makes the effective rate $272 and change. By current standards, that's still steep ... but maybe staying in a 392-room hotel instead of a 4,000-room behemoth is an intangible added value. What do you think?

Scarlett saved?!? & other Case Bets

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:28:00 -0700

Splendid news, lads (and lasses). Scarlett, Princess of Magic may return to the Riviera in nine months or a year ... that is to say, whenever the economy eventually rebounds. This comes straight from Riv management.

Of course, there's a good chance the Riv itself won't be around in nine months or so. It's miracle it's stayed out of Chapter 11 as long as it has. Then again, President William Westerman has an enviable track record when it comes to beating the odds. People were writing him off 11 years ago and he's still here.

Ah, the good old days. Remember when the Gold Spike was hands-down the scariest casino in Las Vegas? The Siegel Group has done a splendid job of spiffing the place up but a reminder of the Spike's dodgy not-so-distant past came in the form of a guilty verdict in a Nov. 17, 2008 shooting. According to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Las Vegas Sun, the attempted murder was a "grizzly homicide." Does that mean the assailant was firearm-proficient bear?

Now that autumn is here, get out and enjoy Lake Mead while you still can.

Investors may be tiring of endless debt swaps and postponements. A proposed 64-cents-on-the-dollar (at 10% interest) issuance of MGM Mirage debt laid an egg. When it took out $12 billion-plus, due next June, MGM must have been either high as a kite on CityCenter cash-flow projections when it agreed to that deadline or assumed that, when push came to shove, it'd just rejigger its debt load anyway.

A wise colleague of mine once said in re Donald Trump, "All he ever does is restructure his debt because that's all he can do!" That has now become the modus operandi of the casino industry at large -- except for Mr. Cash-and-Carry, Phil Ruffin. So I guess Trump can legitimately claim to have been ahead of his time.

Penn hearts F'bleau. Well, sorta. Penn National Gaming has acknowledged that it's been sniffing around bankrupt Fontainebleau but cites several disincentives to a deal. Penn's CFO even called F'bleau worthless (and few in town would give him an argument at this point). Penn's publicly stated criteria for a Las Vegas acquisition have included that it be affordable and unencumbered. F'bleau is neither. So if Penn can't make liens and litigants go away, perhaps it can trash-talk F'bleau's price down so far that completion-related headaches become grudgingly acceptable.

Case Bets: Wynn in Macao, "Peepshow" strips down

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:30:00 -0700

• Steve Wynn is accelerating his timetable for developing on the Cotai Strip™. If Wynn continues to learn from his early miscalculations (and I see no reason to expect otherwise), a gaming-centric Wynn Resorts property on Cotai is a far better bet than Sheldon Adelson's retail- and hotel-heavy business model.

• While the unpredictable Aubrey O'Day is the ostensible focus of this Peepshow update, she's not the main point of interest. Rather, it's the spate of cheesparing moves made by BASE Entertainment.

The show's band has been thrown overboard and the cast has been reduced, requiring some performers to double in other roles. This explains the disappearance of Katie Webber, a strong vocalist whose big number has now been reassigned to Ms. O'Day. At some point, I'm going to be obliged to revisit Peepshow but I can tell you right now I'm not looking forward to it.

• Despite Sen. Harry Reid's juice job on the Sig Rogich Victorville Flyer (aka Desert Xpress), backers of an alternative maglev project are fighting back. Given that the most difficult part of the SoCal-to-Vegas drive is past once you reach Victorville, why anybody would park their car in the broiling sun and hop aboard Sig's Choo-Choo to Nowhere remains a mystery.

From the mailbag #6

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:41:00 -0700

Reader kerr_mudgeon writes, a propos the return of "What Happens Here, Stays Here":

But it's still way better than the one they ran on TV in Los Angeles years ago featuring a bunch of well-dressed women walking into a casino, called "the wrecking crew"... as if their feminine power would beat the odds.

Oh my god, I'd forgotten that one! That takes me back a ways -- 10, maybe 12 years.

Larry, I got your message about being involuntarily unsubscribed. Would the other person who contacted me about this problem please drop me a reminder? My brain is like a spaghetti colander even on the best of days.

Unlucky dog. The depression has forced the (ostensibly temporary) closure of yet another tribal casino -- the inaptly named Lucky Dog, in Washington State. Memo to Strip casino owners: When players can't afford to patronize tribal gambling halls, how can they be expected to find the money for a trip to Vegas?

William Safire's greatest speech? It may have been one that President Nixon never had to deliver, thank God. Thanks to reader J.C. Carcamo for the tip.

Quote of the Day

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:12:00 -0700

"With his ruddy nose, droopy eyes and imposing belly, the mayor might not be much of a looker, but the middle-aged woman behind the counter blushes, and tattooed men jump up from their brown leather armchairs and grin like schoolboys. 'Hey Oscar,' yells one of them. 'Where’s your martini? Where are the showgirls?'" -- from a Times Online profile of Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and his impolitic utterances. Goodman is about to make his first-ever visit to London. Those Brits won't know what hit them.

'Phantom' fans hit Vegas

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:36:00 -0700

Heaven knows, there are conventions for soap operas, sitcoms and every iteration of science fiction (I've been to more than a few of the latter). But a fan convention for a Broadway show? That's unheard of.

Yesterday, fans of Phantom of the Opera hit town for the first-ever Phantom con, at the Venetian, where they'll score some face time with director Harold Prince and the Venetian's resident Phantom, Anthony Crivello. (You have to give Sheldon Adelson props: If Glenn Schaeffer had been running the Venetian, he'd have turned down Phantom on the grounds it was free publicity for Paris-Las Vegas. But Adelson knew a good thing when he saw it.) The Venetian has even rolled out a package of goodies to keep Phantom fans on-property. Smooth move there, Rob Goldstein.

Having recently passed its third anniversary, the Vegas-ized Phantom looks well on its way to blowing past Mamma Mia!'s six-year milestone. We could easily be celebrating its 10th anniversary come 2016. Yours truly gets name-checked in Steve Friess' interview with Prince. My only quibble with the story -- and it's a very minor one -- is that it doesn't mention Prince's original stagings of Stephen Sondheim's Company and Follies, two of the high-water marks in Broadway history. And if you think Phantom is a "downer," take Follies out for a spin sometime:

As for fan conventions, except for the annual Star Trek hootenanny at the Las Vegas Hilton, Vegas doesn't do such a great job of attracting them. We've got to work on that. And when Stargate SG-1/Stargate Atlantis/Sanctuary star Amanda Tapping graces a Vegas stage, we can say, "Job well done."

Deathtrap. Sometimes there are shows that warrant venturing away from the comfort zone of the Strip. Las Vegas Little Theatre's production of Ira Levin's Broadway hit is not one of them.

Vegas snubbed again

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:03:00 -0700

So the Death Star decides to drop by Planet Earth and where does the Imperial Fleet choose to spend its shore leave? San Francisco?!? Doesn't the Empire know Las Vegas is America's leading vacation destination, is renowned for its shows, nightclubs and high levels of inebriation, has legal prostitution just across the county line in Pahrump, and is generally a real bargain right now? Boy, is Oscar Goodman going to be demanding an apology from Emperor Palpatine or what? Harry Reid may even make an almost sort-of forceful speech on the Senate floor or, scarier still, read extensive passages from Searchlight: The Camp That Didn't Fail. That'll show those Vegas-scorning Sith!

Blast from the Past

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:09:00 -0700

Rock A Hoola, the freakish subject of this 1998 promotional film, is to be the topic of a forthcoming Question of the Day, so keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime, enjoy this slide down Memory Lane:

We drove past Lake Dolores last weekend and there sure isn't much to see now, sadly. And it's still in the middle of nowhere. That definitely hasn't changed in the intervening 11 years.

From the mailbag #4: California, tech troubles & 'resort fees'

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:02:00 -0700

Reader Kerr Mudgeon is less than amused by a recent dig at the cuisine offered by Commerce Casino to California firefighters. He writes: "The firefighters can go to numerous other nearby eateries if they don't like the FREE meals offered by the Commerce Casino -- same as paying casino customers can eat at other places if they choose. Sound like 'looking the gift horse in the mouth.'"

Good news from IT: Our "austerity regime" of no photos and no links will, it is promised, be ended today. I can think of several potential blog entries yesterday that went unwritten because no linking capability was available, so this should put some wind back in S&G's sails ... although some might say a lack of wind is the least of this blog's problems.

It's absolutely imperative that you read our 9/10/09 Question of the Day. No, I didn't write it. Our hard-working research duo of Jessica & Tanya did. (Also, Steve Friess recently mis-credited me with the Today's News column; that's a J&T Production, too, along with the occasional assist from Anthony Curtis himself.)

Aaaaaaaaannnnyyyyy-way, today's topic (and it's only online for one day) is the pernicious Vegas phenomenon known as the "resort fee." The winner of the Sustained Greed Award goes to longtime gouger Station Casinos. Station's Green Valley Ranch is also the premier resort-fee offender ($25).

Others who provide optional amenities -- of varying desirability -- in return for the fee include Bellagio ($25), The Mirage ($15), Planet Hollywood ($5) and Gold Coast ($3, which actually buys you quite a lot). The geniuses at Morgans Hotel Group get the Steal the Stripes out of Your Socks Award for charging you $7 for "in-room safe, parking, minibar (but not its contents), bath products, and a plasma TV."

There's a word for that Hard Rock Hotel & Casino practice and the word is "chintzy." As our researchers note, "For hotels to presume to charge guests for amenities that they have no intention of availing themselves of, but cannot avoid, seems a very counter-productive measure that can only generate ill-will."

Kudos to the following fee-eschewing properties: Venetian, Palazzo, Wynn Las Vegas, Encore and anyplace owned by Harrah's Entertainment. Yes, Harrah's. I tip my fedora to you, Gary Loveman.

A one-ton horse

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:56:00 -0700

If giant equestrian statuary isn't enough to make you pass up Las Vegas for a vacation in Chandler, Ariz., I don't know what will do the trick.

Not impressed. One reader wasn't bowled over by Commerce Casino's largesse to a group of Bay Area firefighters who are battling nearby blazes. Informed that the firemen were being fed on Commerce's dime, aforesaid reader laconically replied, "Hopefully they're feeding them better than they feed their customers." Ouch!

Green $hoots?

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:22:00 -0700

There's nothing like the approach of 2010's Global Gaming Expo to make Las Vegas hoteliers rethink their rates. For instance, if you want to stay at that palace of pleasure and plushness, the Plaza downtown, it'll run you $55 a night. Even the somewhat seedier Vegas Club will set you back $52/night.

Elsewhere in downtown, troubled Binion's may not be able to pay its landlords, but that's not stopping it from charging $172.62 during G2E Week. Even the clown house is cheaper: $142 gets you a Circus Circus room. That's a bargain when you consider that Stratosphere wants $164 per night.

As for the dubious privilege of hanging your hat at Imperial Palace, that'll cost you $189, bub. But the nerviest of the bottom feeders has to be Hooters. As of Sept. 4, it wasn't blushing to demand $192 per evening. Trust me when I say Hooters ought to pay you to stay there.

Then again ... I know of someone who got six nights at Imperial Palace -- during New Year's Eve -- for $16.65/night. So, rumors of Las Vegas' imminent recovery are probably premature.

Fun with math, "Jubilee!" style

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:55:00 -0700

Does anybody know the maximum number of bared female bosoms that can be seen at any one point in Donn Arden's Jubilee!? I'm reviewing the show for a new Web site and have most of the mind-boggling statistics at hand. The mammary-count, however, is not among them. I lost track at 50, myself, though I know it's more. Anybody care to take a shot at this?

Bueller? ... Bueller?

Jackson for kids. No jokes, please. A concert tribute to the music of sometime Vegas resident Michael Jackson will raise money for the cash-strapped music programs of the Clark County School District. Besides, who can resist the prospect of what Terry Fator will do with "Ben"? It could be twisted, in a very good way.

Soulless impotence. A belated afterbirth of When We Were Kings arrives in the form of Soul Power, a title as yesterday as polyester jackets with wide lapels. The move is as underwhelming as its moniker. Or, to quote Cleveland from Family Guy, "The noise was good but I thought they phoned in a lot of the funk."

A reader responds: "David, re your blog on the R/J economics and Mr. [Sherman] Frederick's not-so-full flight from Austin [Tex.]: I live in Austin and continue to fly to Vegas three or four times a year. Although I usually fly on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, I've never seen any flight that had more than a handful or middle seats not occupied. Further, the only airline I know of that flies directly (i.e. not stop or one stop w/o change of planes) is Southwest. They have about 8 flights a day that connect to Vegas from Austin. So, yes, I can see how one flight on a Tuesday might not be full. But Austin is a great market for Vegas. Every year Harrah's gives me a handful of coupons for two free nights that I can hand out to friends and people at work. These coupons disappear by 7:00 a.m. when I send out my email to the folks at 6:30. And this is only one office."

Bounce-back for Macao?

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:17:00 -0700

Remember how gambling revenues in Macao during July were up 3% from last year (the first positive comparison this year)? That was soon followed by the news that numbers for the first half of August are even more encouraging still (+20%). Though Macanese casinos are on track for a $1.5 billion August, analysts urge caution, noting that the first half of August '08 was exceptionally weak.

Still: Wherefore this sudden resurgence?

Perhaps it's the delayed effect of a February loophole that allowed Guangdong Province residents to circumvent a ban on travel to Macao on Hong Kong visas. Whatever the case, business should get better still on Sept. 1 when, the Macau Tourism Council says, restrictions on Guangdong Province will be loosened even further. That's music to the ears of every casino boss in Macao, needless to say.

Sheldon Adelson, in particular, has fallen in clover. This revelation comes just as he's putting the finishing touches on a planned IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange (with Steve Wynn following suit). The stock offering, it is hoped, will generate sufficient liquidity to finish a quartet of stalled hotels on the Cotai Strip™ (with five more to come). Right now, the area looks like an outsize version of Miss Havisham's wedding, "leaving swaths of the nascent Cotai Strip covered by steel and concrete skeletons," in the words of Bloomberg News. Macao doesn't need more rooms right now. However, Adelson sure could use the lucre from the casinos onto which the hotels are piggybacked.

But what of Stanley Ho? While the casino baron ails, Bloomberg has unpacked Dr. Ho's June address to G2E Asia, in which he laid into his U.S.-based rivals. “The success of one market model cannot be migrated to another ... Ignoring Macao’s special characteristics and duplicating a Las Vegas or an Atlantic City would not be a successful strategy.” (The article also minces few words about the elder Ho's triad associations.)

Those of us who scoffed at Ho's antediluvian casinos are finding that the comparably ancient oligarch is having the last laugh, even if it may be from his deathbed. “The Macao audience is less focused on the ancillary things around gambling. Stanley, with his wealth of experience, understood that better," says Thornburg Investment Management analyst Alex Motola.

Meanwhile, various Ho clan members may be at daggers drawn. Favorite wife Angela Leong is the perceived successor, but daughters Pansy, Daisy and Maisy Ho (no, I didn't make that up) aren't going to step aside quietly, from the looks of things ... especially since Leong is only two years Pansy's senior. SJM CEO Ambrose So is also being tipped as a potential dark-horse heir to King Stanley's throne.

Business as usual at Hotel Lisboa.

But how would the Macanese government cotton to the notion of Pansy Ho controlling both the SJM concession and half of the MGM one? A third concession could be up for grabs if City of Dreams fails to perform, thereby becoming what Melco Crown Entertainment CEO Lawrence Ho calls his "endgame."

His father's death could also set off a philosophical war between the tried-and-true Stanley Ho business model, time-worn though it may be (and likely to be championed by Leong and So), and the Vegas Lite approach in which Lawrence and Pansy have dabbled. But with the Ho family having its fingers in three casino pies (MGM, Melco, SJM) simultaneously, they'll come out winners no matter which way the pie is sliced.

Stanley Ho's newest and oldest progeny: Grand Lisboa and Hotel Lisboa.

From Malaysia to Monticello. Do you recall those stock sales by Genting Bhd insiders a while back? At the time, it looked as though the money would go toward an acquisition of MGM Grand Macau. However, it now appears the lucre will purchase a stake in struggling Empire Resorts. That's the company whose executives were luxuriating in the low-tax suburbs of Las Vegas -- even though Empire's sole gaming asset was a racetrack in Monticello, N.Y., a full continent away.

Reality check

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:10:00 -0700

It's sackcloth-and-ashes time at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which ran another "The end is nigh" story about falling gambling revenues. (The Aliante Station Effect appears to have petered out in North Las Vegas.)

Yes, we're all the way down, down, down ... to 2004 levels. If we take the Wayback Machine five years into the past, we find the Nevada Gaming Control Board reporting a 6% increase in revenue from June 2003. And June '04 was an "off" month for a year that was distinguished by double-digit growth in casino revenue.

Aliante Station: played out?

That same August, the cost of the MGM Mirage takeover of Mandalay Resort Group inched past the $8 billion mark. "[B]ut Wall Street analysts ... said the merger still makes sense for investors and the combined company," wrote the R-J's Rod Smith. Weeks earlier, regulators signed off on the $1.3 billion Boyd Gaming/Coast Casinos merger; Station Casinos, Las Vegas Sands and MGM were all recording record-setting financial performances, and Harrah's Entertainment was girding itself for the conquest of Caesars Entertainment. Heck, the industry was feeling sufficiently bullish to absorb a 0.5% hike in the privilege tax. Read one headline, "State gaming revenue on a roll."

Had the industry lived within its means, today's narrative would be quite different. The Las Vegas Sun helpfully charts the inflation and collapse of the casino bubble, which lasted a good three years, peaking in October '07.

Unfortunately, when what went up eventually had to come down, some companies discovered themselves overexposed and with no margin for error. The likeliest victims, though, are the marginal, standalone properties which might find themselves squeezed out of existence as aggressive discounting by MGM and Harrah's brings quality Strip hotel rooms into the "affordable" realm (Or, as Phil Satre puts it, when the A-level product is priced below the B-level product.)

Valuable perspective is to be had by reading (or watching) this roundtable discussion with three men who dominated much of the gaming industry in the Nineties and early into the new century. Ex-Harrah's CEO Satre has earned the right to be a Monday morning QB. After all, he never did anything so stupid as strapping $30 billion in debt onto his company's back.

Former Station CFO Glenn Christenson seems deeply in denial at many points, though even he concedes, "It wasn’t so long ago that we hated conventions as an industry and now it’s critical to our operations. We’re severely damaged by that loss." But ex-Boyd prexy Don Snyder nails it when he describes "a false sense of security" pervading the industry, adding "I think we all got caught up in that."

2004, meet 2009, where "up" is the new "down."

Casino wars in Macao

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:25:00 -0700

Bloomberg's interview with Credit Suisse's Steven Chan is now online and is must-see TV:

Case Bets: Hard Rock, Puck, Station, Greek Isles

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:55:00 -0700

Morgans Hotel Group has never seemed able to make up its mind about what to do with the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino (one of the stranger acquisitions of recent years). Then-CEO Ed Scheetz came in talking big about classing the place up and raising ADRs. Fast-forward to '09 and the HRH is staking everything on its skanky Rehab parties (does the staff have to don hazmat suits when cleaning up afterwards?) and going for the mid-price market midweek.

One can't fault the latter half of that strategy, especially if you're in an off-Strip location and could use the traffic. However, if Morgans goal was to increase Hard Rock ADRs, perhaps it shouldn't have embarked on a ginormous expansion that practically obliterates Peter Morton's original hotel and dilutes the asking price per room. Also, I don't know whether to praise Morgans for doing the impossible and completing (sort of) its Paradise Tower well ahead of schedule ... or criticize it for being in such a hurry to churn some EBITDA that it's opening it in an unfinished state.

But here's hoping the business model works. The HRH is one of the few places in town that's hiring, not downsizing. At lot of people's jobs are riding on its success.

One less Wolfgang Puck restaurant on the Strip? That's hardly a culinary tragedy, given that he's still got -- what? -- five other places in town and has become the Ronald McDonald of haute cuisine. A laughable poster in McCarran International Airport uses Puck's visage to push the message, "Less celebrity, more chef." Uh, better put that the other way 'round.

The real tragedy here (aside from the loss of jobs) is the temporary demise of Poetry, one of the few venues in town to cater to an upscale African-American clientele. Harrah's Entertainment and the Forum Shops went out of their way to put the dagger in Poetry. Now they congratulate themselves on a job well done. Thanks for nothing, fellas.

Bondholders finally lost patience with Station Casinos, tripping the bankruptcy lever. Interestingly, all Station casinos (small "c") are shielded -- which implies that it's Station's imperial expansion plans which are are shot and that its considerable real estate holdings could be up for grabs. It looks like über-resort Viva, long-suffering Durango Station, Losee Station and umpteen other projects are kaput.

Too bad for Station partner Colony Capital; if the latter goes forward with its Neverland Ranch tourist-trap plans, it may have to disassemble the old Michael Jackson Xanadu and relocate it, lock, stock and menagerie. And what does/did Station have in abundance? Raw land. It was a marriage made in businss heaven but it surely won't reach the altar now.

Speaking of suffering, what's back on the auction block but the Greek Isles, which is $23 million underwater. Even at a revised valuation of $44 million, isn't that far too much to ask for this unremittingly unsuccessful property, the second coming of the Castaways? Perhaps it's time to exorcise this ghost which haunts the dead zone that is Convention Center Drive.

Quote of the Day

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:30:00 -0700

Sig Rogich's choo-choo to nowhere. Some parts of Sig sold separately.

"Even with the Victorville-Palmdale link, which is not a dead certainty, a Las Vegas rider who wanted to see the Magic Kingdom would have to travel from Sin City to Victorville to Palmdale to Sylmar to Burbank to Los Angeles to Norwalk to Anaheim.

"Start early if you want to see the fireworks." -- CityLife Editor Steve Sebelius on the Harry Reid/Sig Rogich juice train. Speaking of "juice," über-lobbyist (and Reid crony) Harvey Whittemore has prevailed again in one of the greasiest juice jobs I've ever seen. Poor John Ascuaga's Nugget; it never stood a chance.

The dream is dying

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:07:00 -0700

Just last week, UNLV's historical sage, Dr. Eugene Moehring, was taking a dim view of the fate of Las Vegas' working class. Now comes the Wall Street Journal to back him up with some sobering reportage.

Even at union salaries, Culinary Union-represented employees are hardly living on Easy Street. According to the WSJ's Tamara Audi, a hotel maid can expect to make slightly under $30K/year. She also finds a fry cook who was pulling in $36K annually, before he was laid off. (He's now making much less at union-free M Resort.) This goes to show not only the importance of union representation but also how close many of these people are to the economic precipice.

Many of the causes of our current plight (like real estate speculation) are outside my remit. However, a great deal of the blame falls upon casino CEOs who -- encouraged by banks that pushed too-easy credit like "happy dust" and by cheerleading Wall Street analysts -- succumbed severally and variously to a collective psychosis.

The Plaza: Rooms available, starting the 12th of Never.

The hyper-optimistic mentality that produced a rapid-fire succession of (in no particular order) CityCenter, Cosmopolitan, Fontainebleau, Echelon, Palazzo, Encore, the Hard Rock Hotel acquisition/expansion, and even will o' the wisps like Crown Las Vegas and Viva, rested upon a bizarre assumption. Namely, that the Las Vegas Strip could not only absord literally thousands upon thousands of new rooms (preponderantly at the high end) but could do in a compressed time frame.

A few companies even thought this could be done even after they'd glutted themselves with LBO debt. (True, Harrah's Entertainment now says it never intended to go the metaresort route but the available evidence testifies otherwise.) As I've written before, a bubble was mistaken for a baseline, thereby magnifying the consequences when the economic fundamentals began to crumple.

Distance evidently lends clarity, at least to Harvey Perkins of East Coast-based Spectrum Gaming Group. He calls for a complete rethinking of the luxury-based Vegas business model, repositioning the Strip's posh palaces slightly downmarket. It'll mean eating a lot of pride but what alternatives are there?

It's a glass half-full perspective, which is preferable to the overdose of gloom quaffed by MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren. He darkly prophesies, "There won't be another property built in Las Vegas for a decade."

Just wait 'til the next economic upturn and see if Murren is still saying kaddish. There will be new casinos in Las Vegas before 2019, I'm fully confident -- but they'll be ones positioned around affordability and (hopefully) generating double-digit ROI. Because, frankly, Las Vegas isn't the investment it used to be.

The St(ump) Regis, as it was to have been.

Then there's the schizoid-sounding Sheldon Adelson, who harrumphs, "I don't see any opportunities for any development in Las Vegas." Emphasis added; the Las Vegas Sands CEO seems to swing from bullish to bearish by the day.) It'd be nice for Sands if Adelson had been vouchsafed this insight before he started work on the St(ump) Regis in the midst of a condo-market meltdown. Now it's big bloody nose right betwixt the eyes of the Venetian and Palazzo.

The polar opposite of Adelson is Culinary Union boss D. Taylor who sounds like a flack for the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority, so giddy is his optimism. Hey, D., have you talked to your workforce lately -- you know, the ones who just had to defer a $710/year pay bump?

At least some amusement is to be had from the Strip map prepared for the WSJ by Bill Lerner's new outfit, Union Gaming Research:

I don't think I'd take investment advice from a firm that doesn't know the correct spellings of "Echelon" or "Caesars." City Center seems to fallen off the map entirely. It'd also take issue with the classification of many sites (like the in-foreclosure FX Real Estate plot) as "ceased or delayed" as there was never any work to cease or delay at, say Elad Properties' "Plaza" site or Crown Las Vegas (aka "Archon"). Ditto MGM/Kerzner, Africa Israel, etc. However, the Cosmo, which really is in limbo, doesn't make onto the map.

At any rate, as land prices on the Strip continue to return to earth, there's going to be plenty of prospective acreage for the company that's ready, willing and able to build a mid-market casino on the Strip.

It's Gaughan

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:53:00 -0700

Congratulations to South Point owner Michael Gaughan, the 2009 inductee to the American Gaming Association Hall of Fame. An industry "lifer" who worked his way up from the Royal Inn to the CEO's chair at Coast Casinos, Gaughan has been one of the most consistently successful operators in the business. After 9/11, when other operators were slashing jobs, Gaughan actually added employees. That practically qualified him for on-the-spot sainthood.

He briefly succumbed to the siren song of consolidation and merged Coast with Boyd Gaming. It was a rocky marriage and Gaughan soon decided that the world of publicly traded casino corporations was not his bag. But the "divorce settlement" gave him South Point free and clear, and he maintains a lucrative ancillary revenue stream through 1,308 slots (give or take) at McCarran International Airport.

Gaughan is a man of few words -- but many deeds -- so we hope he's not forced to make a speech. But S&G applauds the AGA's excellent selection of its '09 inductee.

(And there we thought they were going to give it to James Packer.)

Penn finally makes a move

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:31:00 -0700

Well, let's not get all excited yet. Penn National has bought a puny stake in Morris Goldstein & Assoc., a slot distributor. It's a bit of kabuki theatre whereby Penn and executives CEO Peter Carlino, President Tim Wilmott, CFO Bill Clifford and veep Robert Ippolito can go through the licensing process now, just in case they feel like acquiring something significant down the road.

Mind you, Donald Trump did the same thing several years ago, by dint of a buying a stake in Rivieria Holdings. Nothing ever came of it.

Clouds over Macao. Hey, dictatorial Chinese Communist overlords in Peking, feel free to loosen up those visa restrictions to Macao anytime now. Visitation was down 42.5% in May. Hotel occupancy was also off 18%. One small bright spot was that Taiwanese visitation continues to ramp up, however modestly (i.e., 3%).

"The mean reds"

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:28:00 -0700

Back at the home office, things still aren't up to speed. I'm caught between a cold and a stomach bug, so I feel pretty thoroughly depleted. On top of that, I'm trying to grappled with a sudden plunge into depression. It's one of the lingering aftereffects of having fallen victim to clergy-parishioner sexual abuse when I was younger. I didn't address it in therapy when I had the chance and I'm paying the price now.

Despite the risk of giving too much information, I feel it's important to acknowledge the past in the hope that it might encourage other people that they're not alone and it's never too late to get help. Considering that this kind of trauma can wreak havoc in all spheres of one's life, the dangers of suppressing it are great indeed.

Oh, and my refrigerator is broken ...

... other than that, it's as wonderful as Mondays are famous for being. At least there's the Home Run Derby tonight.

Seen last night flying into Las Vegas from Dallas, former MLB manager and current Fox Sports personality Kevin Kennedy (or, as a friend refers to him, "the man with the square head").

Off to Michigan

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:04:00 -0700

If you notice an attenuation in the S&G blogorrhea, it's because I'm taking a view days to visit terra incognita: the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I'll be spending an extended weekend in the bucolic environs of the greater Marquette area. And, if I start to climb the walls, I might even poke my snout into the nearest tribal casino.

I'll be in a neck of the woods that doesn't have cable TV, which will provide needed respite from the two most tiresome "news" obsessions of the moment: anything and everything related to Michael Jackson, and the hidden meaning in the convoluted locutions of Sarah Palin. Whatever her virtues, the Great Communicator she ain't. (For unimprovable concision, my favorite American president is Calvin Coolidge, he who said, "The business of America is business." A political philosophy in six words. Hard to beat.)

City slicker that I am, I'm sure I'll stick out like a sore thumb in towns like Ishpeming. Sort of like a dog nursing a cocktail ...

So whose leg do I have to hump to get a dry martini up there?

House of wax

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:05:00 -0700

I call your bluff, comrade. As you may have heard, casinos in Russia can stay open by converting to poker rooms. A tip of the fedora goes to reader mike_ch for pointing out this story, which delineates some of the pros and cons. In Vegas, even the strongest poker rooms don't generate nearly the body count that table games and slots do. But Russian casinos are much smaller and at least a few might be able to hang on, depending on the size of the rake.

It's mighty big of the Kremlin, by the way, to concede that poker is a sport, not a game of chance. Now if only Uncle Sam would do the same ...

Rescue the Riv! Random observation from driving down Las Vegas Boulevard last night: The Riviera suddenly looks so much better and more classic when juxtaposed with the incredible bulk that is Fontainebleau. Land values have fallen, RIV stock is worthless and the property itself provides ready access to the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Time, methinks, for Penn National to get off its duff and make an offer ... unless Penn CEO Peter Carlino is waiting for the Riviera to go into bankruptcy, so he can pluck the carcass at auction. Then again, if Carlino really thinks that Planet Hollywood and some or all of Station Casinos are low-hanging fruit, who am I to second-guess him?

Who's the dummy? The purpose of our excursion was to attend an incredibly pointless media event at Madame Tussauds at The Venetian. If there was a point, it was so that the assembled media hordes would serve as extras for yet another episode of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List. A waxwork of Ms. Griffin was being unveiled and suffice it to say that Wax!Griffin looks far better than Real!Griffin. (I must be Officially Jaded, for I scarcely gave the comedienne a second glance.) The various and sundry female impersonators on hand -- led by Frank Marino -- had clearly taken greater care of their appearances than Griffin had of hers. There was, in fact, just about every stripe of LGBT humanity on hand last night, so it was almost more Rainbow Coalition than media event.

What excitement there was went on outside, where a smallish crowd surrounded the Michael Jackson statue. Tributes were in evidence but everything was tasteful and no hysteria was to be seen. As for Mme. Tussauds itself, I've been to the original one in London, and I recall its wax figures as being more believable and the setting itself as more atmospheric (especially the tableaux of infamous British homicides and regicides) ... but that was 35 years ago this month.

Give Vegas Tussauds props for having a Joan Rivers dummy who looks more animated than her real-life counterpart, as seen on the NBC sitcom Celebrity Apprentice. All that's missing is to give the waxwork Rivers a voice box that periodically squawks, "A pokuh playah! A pokuh playah!" Still, we easily spent more time checking out the doodads and gizmos in Brookstone than we did in the wax museum.

LVCVA has lemons, makes lemonade

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:43:00 -0700

What do you do if your expensively wrought, expensively litigated marketing slogan has jumped the shark and become the most tiresome cliché in America.?If you're the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority, you figure out a way to monetize the fact that your catchprase is played out ... thereby ringing up a few extra changes upon it. Congratulations to R&R Partners for this splendid example of advertisement jujitsu.

Stormy weather

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:40:00 -0700

It may be monsoon season in Las Vegas but there's a typhoon blowing through Macao's casino economy. A series of bulletins from J.P. Morgan outline a worrisome trajectory for China's gambling enclave.

City of Dreams: a flop

June 23: The South China Morning Post reports service cutbacks in Macanese air traffic during January-March. Low-cost carrier Air Asia held steady, but China Eastern Airline scrapped all flights, Xiamen Airline slashed service by 59%, followed by Malaysia Airlines (-38%). Single-digit declines were noted at Air Macau (-9%) and Viva Macau (-4%). Although recently de-licensed carrier East Star had been shedding flights (-40%), competitors did not appear to be moving to fill the void.

June 24: Macao's Special Administrative Region Statistics & Census Service reports a 20% visitation decline in May, to 1.6 million tourists. Of those, fewer than half were from the mainland (-27%) and 55% were day-trippers. Only 13% are coming from outside Hong Kong, Taiwan or the mainland.

July 1: News agency Lusa has preliminary revenue numbers for June (the first month for City of Dreams) and the comparisons, by Macao standards, are terrible: -17%, for $1.05 billion. So far, the casinos are tracking ahead of the government's revenue projections -- which were pretty dire ($892K/month) already.

There's a silver lining for Sheldon Adelson, whose Sands Macao and Venetian Macao rebounded, running Stanley Ho's myriad casinos a close second in market share, 26% to 30%. Wynn Macau fell toward the pack, which was as follows: Wynn 14% (a humiliating setback; it had been only three points behind Las Vegas Sands in May), Galaxy 12%, Melco Crown International down a point to 9%, and MGM Mirage bringing up the rear, as always, with 8%.

Sands Macao: Adelson's best-ever investment

Buoyed by Sands' Macao numbers, Morgan analysts are bullish on Adelson, mainly because of "reasonable near-term and achievable expectations for its LV Strip properties and our belief that its LV properties are outperforming its peers." Just when you think Sheldon's painted himself into a corner, he seems to find a means of escape ... which may be why some of us were less skeptical of the financial hurdles facing Sands Bethlehem and the Cotai Strip™ than we should have been.

There seems to be a school of belief that if one keeps saying that visa restrictions from mainland China to Macao are about to be relaxed, it will miraculously happen. Not if Peking muckety-mucks keep seeing headlines like this. More to the point, bailout money that was intended to induce Chinese banks into writing more loans, thereby stimulating production, is flowing to the casino tables instead. That's a scenario highly reminiscent of the circumstances that led Peking to crack down on Macanese traffic several times already.

Case Bets: A.C. Trop, 21, Ensign, Boulder City, Jacko, etc.

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:45:00 -0700

After conservator Justice Gary Stein turned his trusteeship of the Tropicana Atlantic City into a $7.4 million gravy train, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission is belatedly bolting the barn door. It's going to petition the Lege to limit the ambit of future trustees, none of which would be necessary had the NJCCC not let Stein run amok in the first place.

The failings of his butterfingered stewardship have been rehearsed enough in this space. However, the Press of Atlantic City's story adds yet another incredulity-making touch. Stein, a former member of the New Jersey Supreme Court and with an entire law firm at his command, still had to rely upon legal opinions from the NJCCC's general counsel.

Lower bet limits are no bargain, the Las Vegas Sun finds. The Strip casino that has the stones to go back to 3:2 blackjack will become the hottest spot in town.

Who knew? Seems that Sen. John Ensign's curriculum vitae included a stint at the helm of the Gold Spike, one of downtown Vegas' seamiest casinos. Given the comparable seaminess of Ensign's ongoing scandal, perhaps it was a case of water seeking its own level. Las Vegas Gleaner reader "Goldy" puts the sordid mess in perspective: "... he didn't reveal the affair until the demands from the Hampton's [sic] (including Doug) became 'outragous.' [sic] That implies that prior demands were 'reasonable' and Doug was making them. ... he essentially was selling his willing wife, and Ensign was buying, until the number got too high. So, like most things, this entire deal was really just about the number." [emphasis added]

You can take Ensign out of the casino but you just can't take the casino out of Ensign.

A potential tragedy. Several weeks back, the Better Half and I spent a beautiful Sunday in Boulder City. The highlight of our visit was the Boulder Dam Hotel, where we enjoyed a splendid lunch and an eye-opening tour of a museum devoted to the history of Hoover Dam. (Suffice it to say that the people who built it endured privation that 21st century Americans would find unimaginable.) Sadly, we do not have the $60,000 that it's going to take to keep the Boulder Dam Hotel open. Please, philanthropic Nevadans, do not let this treasure go dark like ...

Nevada itself. Visitors to Gibbons-era Nevada are likely to find it closed. History? Books? Parks? Them's pansy egghead stuff fer Commie states like Kalifornia, doncha know? Gawta get me some more guns afore Harry Reid repeals the Decoration of Independence or whatever.

Speaking of museums ... could the untimely demise of Michael Jackson spell opportunity for mistake-prone Colony Capital? The casino owner has the opportunity to monetize its acquisition of Neverland Ranch as never before. Converting it to a tourist attraction rather than a (misguided?) real estate play seems a no-brainer.