David Mckee's Stiffs & Georges - Mississippi

Quote of the Day

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:38:00 -0700

"In a lot of places along the coast it looks like the hurricane hit yesterday." -- NBC reporter Charles Hadlock, reporting today on the condition of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, four and a half years after Hurricane Katrina.

Gambling scandal ensares eight more

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:32:00 -0700

It's not quite on the global scale of the Ultimate Bet brouhaha, but the Tran Organization's conspiracy to fleece dozens of U.S., Canadian and tribal casinos is racking up an amazing head count. To date, federal prosecutors have already nailed 31 scalps to their wall, not counting three other individuals to who pled out to related charges (including one in Canada).

If you thought this was the end of the Tran Organization ... surprise! The feds unsealed another set of indictments this month. Eight more individuals were hit with various counts of "conspiracy to steal money and other property from Indian tribal casinos, and conspiracy to travel in interstate and foreign commerce in aid of racketeering."

At the core of the Tran Organization's scam was the execution of "false shuffles," whereby "slugs" of unshuffled cards were insinuated into blackjack and mini-baccarat decks. This required the cooperation of corrupt casino employees and, from the looks of the Department of Justice's announcement, the core Tran Organization members must be rolling on their casino-employed helpers.

The Tran gang managed to take no fewer than 26 casinos during the life of its scheme, which is a very black mark against the industry's standard of game protection. The dishonor roll is as follows:

1) Beau Rivage Casino, Biloxi, Miss.
2) Casino Rama, Orillia, Ontario, Canada
3) Foxwoods Resort Casino, Ledyard, Conn.
4) Gold Strike Casino, Tunica, Miss.
5) Horseshoe Casino, Bossier City, La.
6) Horseshoe Casino & Hotel, Tunica, Miss.
7) Isle of Capri Casino, Westlake, La.
8) Majestic Star Casino, Gary, Ind.
9) Mohegan Sun Resort Casino, Uncasville, Conn.
10) Palace Station Casino, Las Vegas, Nev.
11) Resorts East Chicago Hotel & Casino, East Chicago, Ind.
12) Sycuan Casino, El Cajon, Calif.
13) Cache Creek Indian Bingo & Casino, Brooks, Calif.
14) Emerald Queen Casino, Tacoma, Wash.
15) Imperial Palace Casino, Biloxi, Miss.
16) Argosy Casino, Baton Rouge, La.
17) Trump 29 Casino, Coachella, Calif.
18) Isle of Capri Casino, Bossier City, La.
19) Agua Caliente Casino, Rancho Mirage, Calif.
20) Spa Resort Casino, Palm Springs, Calif.
21) Pechanga Resort & Casino, Temecula, Calif.
22) L'Auberge du Lac Casino, Lake Charles, La.
23) Nooksack River Casino, Deming, Wash.
24) Barona Valley Ranch Casino & Resort, Lakeside, Calif.
25) Caesars Indiana Hotel & Casino, Elizabeth, Ind.
26) Monte Carlo Resort & Casino, Las Vegas, Nev.

Nothing says "Sheraton" like crystal meth

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:33:00 -0700

A big bust went down at Harrah's Entertainment's Sheraton Tunica after four guests were found running a meth lab in one of the hotel rooms. According to the ABC-TV affiliate, hotel security only tripped to it after a fire alarm went off, while the Fox local says it was other guests who alerted security, which then whistled in the police.

Best line of the ABC story? "The Sheraton plans to completely renovate [the] room where meth lab was found." What? They're not gonna rename it "The Meth Suite"? How un-Vegas of them. Imagine the marketing possibilities: "Kids, don't try this at home ... Do it at Harrah's."

No word on whether the meth-making foursome had any Total Rewards points revoked.

MGM: Deal or no deal?

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:55:00 -0700

MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren is re-mulling asset sales of MGM Grand Detroit, Gold Strike (Tunica, Miss.) and Beau Rivage. But all Strip assets are definitively off the market (yes, even Slots A Fun). Since the Detroit and Tunica casinos are already encumbered with CityCenter-related debt, presumably Murren would transfer those mortgages to some or all of the "Mandalay mile." As far as I know, those three casinos are still unencumbered. The Detroit resort would be a real "trophy asset" for any potential buyer ... presuming that banks are more inclined to lend than they were(n't) the last time Murren shopped this trio around.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal took a good look at MGM's Giza deal -- and it's even better than initially thought. Not only will the company collect management and franchise fees, it also gets a cut of any profits. If there's a downside here, I'm too myopic to see it.

MGM wouldn't sell Monte Carlo when Jack Binion came calling. One presumes this had more to do with potentially being able to extend CityCenter into Monte Carlo, rather than Jack's money not being good enough for MGM. However, if the company really cares about the property, why are they slowly letting it go to seed? The Brew Pub will close on July 12.

Also ... our LVA research team has discovered that no further Lance Burton performances are scheduled. This seemingly writes finis to his long relationship with Monte Carlo. Is it just an expedient way to save money or was Burton's unpardonable sin to get very good reviews from the local dailies right after Criss F. Angel laid an $85 million egg with Believe? Burton out and Angel in? That's just not right.

"IUER"? WTF? Don't call Melco Crown International's new City of Dreams a "casino." Melcospeak for the new pleasure place is "integrated urban entertainment resort." At least Steve Wynn's "casino-based destination resort" coinage rolled off the tongue a little more felicitously. On second thought, just call it "a casino."

Holy cow! The husk of the late, lamented Holy Cow Brew Pub & Casino (home of the best beer in Las Vegas) is proposed for redevelopment -- again. It was briefly the site-to-be of the phantom Ivana condo tower, one of the more egregious examples of condo "vaporware" during the recent bubble. Arizona- and New Mexico-based developers intend to tip the old Cow and replace her with a low-rise, low-cost (no hotel) casino.

The Strip needs some fresh mid-market casinos and this one could be it. But why make your anchor tenant a Walgreens when it's the flagship retailer ... of Palazzo. We sure could use the jobs, too, what with unemployment hitting record levels in Nevada. A good thing that Gov. Jim Gibbons was shamed into accepting federal funding for the jobless.

No Surprise Dept.: So the Moulin Rouge is (literally) toast and arson is suspected. The fire happened the day after a bankruptcy auction found no takers for the property.

Obama backpedals (sidepedals?) on gay rights. If he wants to give the country change it can believe in, how about revoking the profoundly un-American policy of throwing our LGBT brothers and sisters out of the military? If they've volunteered to lay down their lives for Old Glory, they're better people than me. And if Harry Truman is remembered for nothing else, he'll always be the president who integrated the military with a stroke of a pen. Does President Obama have Truman-like intenstinal fortitude?

One of the vilest of major-league baseball players back in the Eighties was slow-moving, philandering, showboating slugger Mel Hall. But we never knew just how loathsome he was. Good luck in the slammer, Mel.

Responding to readers

Tue, 19 May 2009 15:46:00 -0700

As you probably know, Huntington Press has been branching out into e-books. An S&G reader asked if any were compatible with Kindle. I'm told the following titles are available in Kindle-ready format:

Casino-ology by Bill Zender

Confessions of a Stripper by Lacey Lane

Cullotta by Dennis N. Griffin

Golf Las Vegas by Ken Van Vechten

Tax Help for Gamblers by Marissa Chien & Jean Scott

Video Poker for the Intelligent Beginner by Bob Dancer (who else?)

Whale Hunt In the Desert by Deke Castleman

But wait: There's more! We're putting the finishing touches on our first e-book-only release, Topless Vegas. We were in the midst of page-proof corrections when Forty Deuce up and died, so we really dodged a bullet there, I tell ya.

He knows jack: An LVA member has alerted us to some Down South scuttlebutt that had Jack Binion lined up to take over the Gold Strike in Tunica. If that's the case, MGM Mirage's recent encumbrance of the Mississippi casino as debt security runs a cart and horses through that notion, I guess. Which would be a pity, if true. The casino industry needs Jack Binion and entrepreneurs of his ilk right now -- a lot more than Jack Binion needs the industry, one might add.

Harrah's saves $$, hires robots

Mon, 11 May 2009 12:38:00 -0700

No shit, man. This comes straight from the mailbag, courtesy of Dennis Conrad's daily news flash: Harrah's Seven Stars members (the highest-tiered customers) received a unique gift as part of special invite to Harrah's Grand Biloxi casino resort. Invitees could pick up a free iRobot Roomba® (the self-operating intelligent vacuum system that roams your floors and cleans as it goes). Guests also received a complimentary two-night stay and up to $800 in reimbursed airfare.

What Dennis is too great of a gentleman to mention is that if you're hoovering your own hotel room, Harrah's Entertainment potentially saves on maid service. Thrift, Horatio!

CityCenter update

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:20:00 -0700

One not-so-small I detail that I omitted in my report on yesterday's declaration of detente between MGM Mirage and Dubai World: The latter is released from its completion guarantees. Which puts the onus for finishing the project squarely on MGM's shoulders. As we on the Vegas Gang collective (like the Borg, only nicer) predicted a good ways back, MGM's future is inextricably entwined with CityCenter.

From the glass half-full perspective, the mortgaging of MGM Grand Detroit and Gold Strike ensures at least a modicum of regional diversity in the lion's den. A week ago, it looked as though the company might very well circle its wagons around Las Vegas, while maintaining a small beachhead in Macao. But with the search for the last last, elusive $1.2 billion in bank loans having evidently been abandoned, asset sales are becoming imperative.

What a tragedy that, at the very moment the casino industry is ripe for "unbundling," reversing mega-consolidations that should never have been attempted, the banks are too afraid to part with their precious TARP money to help bring it about. Unless you can do a Phil Ruffin and basically pull $600 million in cash out of a drawer, it's no casino acquisition for you!

Dubai World wins, MGM doesn't lose

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:14:00 -0700

The "CityCenter six-pack" lives on, thanks to a late-breaking accord between MGM Mirage and bickering spouse Dubai World. It's a tactical victory for MGM, in that it -- among other things -- keeps the project moving forward and forestalls the prospect of bankruptcy. But it looks as though, when the points are tallied, Dubai World comes out ahead.

CityCenter: Is it too late to bring back the Boardwalk?

Dubai World's biggest concession is to drop its March 22 lawsuit against MGM, which was endangering completion of the metaresort. Lenders also yielded significant ground by agreeing to immediately release $1.8 billion in credit which had been heretofore contingent upon several hundred million dollars' worth of put-in by MGM and Dubai World. Both debtors agreed to a 2% interest-rate hike but MGM was able to gain a temporary waiver of certain debt covenants.

The days of getting $7 billion with no strings attached are over, though: Instead of selling its Gold Strike and MGM Grand Detroit casinos, the company is pledging them as collateral (along with unspecified raw land, probably the "Project Z" site south of Mandalay Bay) for its senior debt. Beau Rivage's fate remains unknown. Cost overruns at CityCenter will be collateralized by Circus Circus and "certain adjacent land" ... i.e., what was going to be the site of an MGM/Kerzner joint venture. MGM CEO Jim Murren had been maintaining that he wasn't going to tear down the clown castle -- and now he can't, even if he wished.

If condominium sales hit $250 million, that money can go toward construction costs. However, if they don't reach $243 million, then MGM is on the hook for the difference. It's also fully responsible for construction costs that push the price tag beyond $8.5 billion. As a consolation prize, it gets the $135 million that Dubai World should have paid toward the joint venture over the last five weeks -- a shortfall that MGM had to make good out of its own coffers.

As the Las Vegas Sun summarized the pact, "The bottom line is that the most important construction project in Las Vegas and the gaming industry will proceed and open as scheduled, with it likely boosting revenue for MGM Mirage but hurting competitors already suffering from an oversupply of hotel rooms in Las Vegas."

Everybody can now heave a giant, grateful sigh of relief and go back to business as usual, like ...

Look out below! Forty-seven stories of glass at CityCenter's Mandarin Oriental and not a one of them has been inspected. Sadly, that's become par for the course with this project: Another day, another graveyard-humor headline from the former site of the Boardwalk.

Said the MGM spokesman given the thankless task of handling this latest revelation: "In the end, we want to build a structure that's comfortable and enjoyable to the guests and beautiful to behold -- and also meets, to everyone's satisfaction, the highest safety criteria." Until then ... duck!

Regulators brace for crash

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:02:00 -0700

Wow.

I'll say it again.

Wow. It wasn't that long ago that the prospect of multiple major casino bankruptcies was unthinkable to a degree that words cannot convey. Even now, after weeks of bad news followed by worse news, the enormity of the present collapse didn't really sink in until the Reno Gazette-Journal reported that the Nevada Gaming Control Board has formed a special crisis unit to handle an anticipated series of bankruptcies. I daresay the NGCB probably never thought it would have to clear the decks for multiple crash landings like these.

Big deal? The Sun Herald of Biloxi is practically squeeing over the arrival of some A.C. Coin & Slot products that offer communal bonus rounds. (The story reads more like advertorial copy than serious journalism.) What I find interesting here is that the shared bonus round is something I've heard used as a selling point for server-based gaming. So, if it can be accomplished with conventional slot technology, why retrofit your floor for SBG? The casino crash isn't going to smother SBG in the cradle but it's definitely going to subject it to a very prolonged infancy.

A.C. Coin, meanwhile, is making inroads with these slot banks. In the Vegas area, "Super Bankroll Bonus" is in 14 casinos and not a grind joint in the bunch. "Slingo Bonus Deluxe" is on 11 Vegas gaming floors with Bellagio and Mandalay Bay soon to join them.

Meet the New Vegas, same as the old Vegas. Or so one entertainment scribe contends.

Case Bets: MGM Mirage, Harrah's, Wynn, Shuffle Master, Taxes

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:05:00 -0700

As we wait for the MGM Mirage earnings report, signs of desperation mount. If the company is willing to cast away a pearl like new, costly and high-yielding MGM Grand Detroit, what isn't sacred? Not even the corporate jet, provided the buyer doesn't welsh on the deal. (Guess those high rollers won't have to fly commercial for a while yet.) Whoever made that offer for MGM Detroit, though ... (s)he's one smart cookie, methinks.

Dumping regional properties at a time when that's where the strength of the casino industry is just doesn't make sense -- although you could probably make a case for ditching the already written-down Gold Strike in Tunica or the Grand Victoria riverboat in casino-killing Illinois. Actually, getting the hell out of the hellacious Illinois market seems like the best idea since forever.

Congratulations, Gary Loveman! You took home $39.6 million last year, while your company was crashing and burning -- not to mention pink-slipping 8% of your workforce. Don't say Loveman isn't feeling Harrah's pain: He's forfeiting a whole $100K in salary for 2009. There goes the college fund!

The casino giant is one step from the bottom of the Moody's bond-rating ladder. In a memo to the SEC, Harrah's Entertainment announced that managers were taking a 5% pay cut and that "it might have to delay expansion, sell assets or restructure debt." Delay expansion? No! Really? That was off the table the minute the ink was dry on the LBO. Refurbishment is also a low priority, as capex costs will be trimmed by as much as 59%.

Meantime, the guessing game begins over which assets might be on the block. In one of the busier threads over at Hunter Hillegas' Two Way Hard Three, fellow blogger Chuck Monster synopsizes the reshuffling of Harrah's properties between various holding companies, which includes a possible abandonment of the volatile (read: shaky) Lake Tahoe market. Sometimes I think Harrah's does this jiggery-pokery just to amuse itself watching the blogosphere try to determine What It Really Means.

In a regional update, most Lousiana markets were slightly down last month -- except Lake Charles, which Harrah's pulled out of, leaving Pinnacle Entertainment in possession of the field. Oops.

Pssst! Don't tell anyone! It's stashed as the second item of "In Brief" but Wynn Resorts is floating a stock offering to the tune of over nine million shares. (Other sources say seven million.) Wall Street had an understandably adverse reaction -- at first blush -- to this 7% dilution of Wynn stock, which closed up $1.07 today. Given that it's a proactive move to retire debt, it's tough to quarrel with Wynn.

Update: Clarification of the Wynn stock float comes by way of Forbes.

As for the undying speculation that Steve Wynn might want to buy back Bellagio or golden oldie The Mirage, one analyst -- Goldman Sachs' Steven Kent -- says he "would be surprised to see Wynn pursue this," given that Wynn is a builder, not a buyer.

Parenthetically, in the above-mentioned blog thread, Brian Fey makes the following, extremely trenchant observation: "Its pretty bad, that here we are almost 10 years later [following Wynn's ouster from Mirage Resorts], and Steve's biggest competition is still Steve's old properties. Just shows you how far behind everyone else is when it comes to the game."

Shuffle Master wins? Rival company Elixir Gaming settled litigation by selling its Asian shuffler business. The Las Vegas Review-Journal sees it as a win for Shuffle Master, while the Las Vegas Sun takes the opposite take, implying that Shuffle Master got its pockets picked -- which could mean an ignominous curtain for just-departed CEO Mark Yoseloff, if that's indeed the case. They report, you decide.

More of the Same Dept.: Democratic leadership in the Nevada Lege is going to do exactly what (little) is expected of them -- jack up existing taxes to onerous levels as a cop-out solution to our budgetary crisis. Booze and cigarettes are the low-hanging fruit of taxation but Nevada casinos better get ready to bend over and grab their ankles, as they're probably the next target of opportunity. Oh, and brace yourself for a much bigger beer-and-wine tab at the casinos if this goes through ... as though casino booze wasn't costly enough already!

Never let it be said that S&G didn't at least once have a kind word for Columbia Sussex. The former Tropicana owner is reducing its carbon footprint. Amen to that.

The silence

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:59:00 -0700

That gurgling sound you hear from up north is Gov. Jim Gibbons (R-NV) trying to drown the state government in his bathtub. And if the casino industry gets soaked in the process, fine by him.

What you're not hearing is a peep of protest from gamers who, you'd think, would be tired of acting as the milk cow for the rest of Nevada. Whether it's revoking tax emptions on comped meals, raising the room tax for the umpteenth time or collecting taxes on dishonored markers, the casino industry is the one sector of the Nevada economy that can be singled out for additional levies without any fear of polical repercussion.

Maybe the fellows in the executive suites have tired of being a doormat, but they're giving scant evidence of it these days. After all, it might be awkward to say, "Hell no, we won't" to Midnight Jim after J. Terrence Lanni and friends invested so much capital installing Gibbons in the governor's mansion -- and precious little thanks have they received. By this point you'd think they'd be ready to kick Gibbons' butt up one side of Carson City and down the other. However, they seem more inclined to absorb an(other) ass-kicking than administer one.

As for Gibbons, he seems mesmerized by the logic of those anti-tax obssessives who incessantly repeat the mantra that even the measliest tax burden upon big-box retailers and mining conglomerates will translate into catastrophic job losses. If we subscribe to that line of thinking, should taxes on Nevada's casinos be repealed, employment in the gaming sector would explode!

Actually, no, it wouldn't. When the casinos in Midnight Jim's own backyard have collectively lost money for two fiscal years running, they've got priorities considerably more urgent than expanding their payroll.

More about Siegel. No, not Bugsy. S&G was contacted by Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Benjamin Spillman to draw our attention to a piece on Stephen Siegel's expansion into the Mount Charleston market. It features commentary by LVA's Anthony Curtis, who -- although we haven't discussed the matter -- is of the same mindset as yours truly. Namely, that as smaller operators continue to struggle and (are expected to) shed properties, Siegel will be nicely positioned to move in and start sweeping them up.

Harrah's vs. Harrah's. I apologize for some confusion that was inadverdantly sown amongst the readership. The dilapidated Harrah's Entertainment Web site to which I was referring was not Harrahs.com but the press site, media.harrahs.com. Not only are some Harrah's properties altogether omitted from the site, other pages -- like the one for Grand Casino Biloxi -- have clearly been neglected for a long, long while. (Web site as corporate metaphor?)

The contrast between, say, the aggressively well-maintained Atlantic City pages and who-cares attitude regarding other ones is a reminder that, nearly four years after completing its absorption of Caesars Entertainment, Harrah's media-relations operation is still "siloed" into a hodgepodge of fiefdoms -- a patchwork of principalities that resembles pre-Bismarck Germany. For efficiency, it doesn't begin to compare with the equivalent MGM Mirage operation down the street.

'Gang' at Encore

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:49:00 -0700

Yesterday saw an unusual -- but altogether pleasant -- change in the Vegas Gang routine, as we taped "on location" from a seventh-floor room in Encore, overlooking Echelon and the increasingly ominous Fontainebleau (so disproportionately massive it looms over its neighbors like Godzilla or Gammera over mere mortals). Both David G. Schwartz and Jeff Simpson joined us by speakerphone, giving the conversation a certain Charlie's Angels vibe.

It's Fontainebleau ... coming to stomp us all! Run for your lives!

Spoilers ahead ...

I'm clearly very much in the minority on the likelihood of a Mirage or Bellagio sale. Cash cows they may well be, but there seems to be a strong consensus that their tires are being kicked and serious talks are underway, as well as that The Mirage has become a stodgy property.

Also that MGM Mirage is a Vegas-Vegas-Vegas-obsessed company and would be willing to sacrifice the Gulf Coast and Detroit markets -- the latter of which it utterly dominates -- to keep the CityCenter bucks a-flowin'. (And why would MGM bail on Detroit and not on the sickly Illinois market instead? Or Tunica? Or ... ? If Alex Yemenidjian would pay $435 million for an Illinois license, what might he put down on actual, operational asset?)

Such a strategy would fly in the face, if not of sense, at least of recent casino industry thinking, whereby you try to maintain strong footholds in the second-tier markets and not put all your chips on Vegas (unless you're Steve Wynn and even he tried it once). It would be like Harrah's Entertainment evacuating Atlantic City to raise money for its stalled Octavius Tower.

And you could knock me over with a feather if MGM sells its Macao demi-concession to partner Pansy Ho or back to her father Stanley, especially after all the hoops MGM had to jump through to get into Macao. Bailing on the world's #1 casino town would be an indicator of extreme desperation bordering on insanity.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to get into the provenance of the urban legend that Phil Ruffin's Treasure Island purchase was just a big-ass/short-term loan to MGM, with "T.I." serving as collateral -- and at 55% interest, no less.

From A(ztar) to Z(ilch)

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:05:00 -0700

If Tropicana Entertainment management's bankruptcy plan is accepted by the courts (one bond analyst thinks otherwise), former CEO/sole owner William J. Yung III will be left with -- what's the technical term? -- diddly squat. (So will his unsecured creditors, alas.)

Actually, he'll have less than nothing because he'll not only be forfeiting the remnants of his Aztar Corp. acquisition but also six TropEnt properties whose purchase predated the ill-starred Aztar buy. A portfolio cobbled together in bits and pieces over several years will be gone with the thwack of a gavel.

In which case, it will essentially close the book on The Worst Casino Acquisition of All Time, Bar None. Since Yung swung the Aztar deal by cross-collateralizing his motley fleet of casinos and riverboats, losing the Tropicana Atlantic City meant putting the whole kit 'n kaboodle up for grabs. Yung's dismissive attitude toward New Jersey casino regulations came with a $2.8 billion price tag.

Lighthouse Point: Last voyage departs soon.

I was going to write that no one in the casino industry will miss Yung, but he still owns the odd non-Trop casino, like the Westin Casuarina. So he's not going anywhere anytime soon.

The plan being for the secured creditors to roll their debt into TropEnt equity, one can see why CEO Scott Butera was at pains to complicate, stymie and/or outright thwart various asset sales initiated either by Yung or the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. As a Jan. 2, 2008 Morgan Joseph report pointed out, casino companies sell for higher cash flow multiples when peddled en masse, not piecemeal. For instance, Yung paid a whopping 11.3X EBITDA for Aztar, as compared to the 8.4X he plunked down for a Penn National castoff, the Belle of Baton Rouge.

So maybe Butera really thought he could land a higher price for Casino Aztar than Eldorado Resorts was offering or perhaps he just wanted to queer the deal that was on the table. Either way, the endgame was the same: more money. Since his plan hinges partly on regaining control of cash cow A.C. Trop and Casino Aztar, neither of which is a given (and one of which is exceptionally unlikely), TropEnt is still a long ways from being out of the woods.

Tropicana Las Vegas: Same this year, same next year, same in 2013.

Thinking positively, if Butera can't -- as seems inevitable -- get the Boardwalk property back, he can redirect money planned for Atlantic City upgrades into that eternally deferred Tropicana Las Vegas facelift. There's a case to be made, if not much of a case, for New Jersey to brush aside the $550 million offered by Cordish Co. for the A.C. Trop -- particularly if Butera were bound to the same conditions the Division of Gaming Enforcement recommended imposing on Yung 14 months ago: a one-year probationary license and a 26-point set of benchmarks.

But the Garden State is so revenue-parched that it's unimaginable it will tell Cordish to keep its money. And whatever tenuous faith the NJCCC might have in Butera won't necessarily be bolstered by his turnaround plan. The document makes some concrete promises (including $153 million in A.C. Trop upgrades), and its property- and market-growth projections are mostly conservative. For instance, Butera clearly harbors no illusions about the difficulties ahead in Baton Rouge, where Pinnacle Entertainment has a new riverboat coming over the horizon. God bless him, he's an optimist, though: Who else would postulate five straight years of single-digit revenue growth in Atlantic City?

But Butera's strategy posits revenue growth within the context of relatively flat operating and maintenance budgets. Some outright reductions, at least, can be attributed to the cessation of operations at Lighthouse Point in 2009 and Horizon Tahoe two years later. Were it not for that, Butera's numbers would look like something out of the Bill Yung playbook. In fact, certain of the promised reforms, like "Optimize [read: "tighten"] ... slot hold," centralized corporate purchasing and "utilizing third parties for certain services" are purest Yung. Others, such as a Nevada-wide loyalty-card program, appear to be new. (But why stop at Nevada?)

As for a reinvention of the Vegas Trop, don't expect anything before 2014, at the earliest. Likewise, the overdue replacement of Casino Aztar just isn't in the budget. It's a lean regimen for grim times, but give Butera this: He's not spending money he doesn't have and now the creditors to whom he is answerable will be literally invested in improving TropEnt's performance ... if they hope to see their money again.

MGM kisses $1.2 billion goodbye

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:44:00 -0700

Sneaking the news out late on Friday (after the markets close, heh heh), MGM Mirage is writing off $1.2 billion in 4Q08. So the the fourth quarter is down the toilet ~~and perhaps the whole fiscal year along with it~~. MGM is attributing $1.2 billion of the writeoff to "goodwill" from its Mandalay Resort Group purchase. ~~plus $47 million toward Mirage Resorts. (I'd say if you "only" overpaid $47 million for six-pack of Steve Wynn properties, plus beaucoup land in Atlantic City, you got a good deal.)~~

MGM Mirage shareholders watch their money go up in flames.

"Goodwill is the amount exceeding fair market value that is paid for an acquisition," reports The Associated Press. Which is MGM's fancy way of saying, "We overspent" (big-time, in the case of Mandalay) and that it's having buyers remorse about Mandalay Bay, Excalibur, Luxor and Tunica's Gold Strike. One of the most famous "goodwill" writeoffs -- perhaps the most famous -- was the bath taken by stakeholders in the AOL/Time-Warner conglomeration, after AOL's value proved to be nowhere near as high as it had been talked up.

At least the Herbst Gaming fraternity can take some cold comfort from today's news. After all, they just had to jettison all the "imaginary value" ... er, "goodwill" associated with their acquisition of three Primm Valley casinos from MGM, a deal in which Herbst got taken to the cleaners and then put through the trouser press for good measure.

Could this revaluation of six of its 10 Strip properties (including Bellagio, The Mirage and the soon-to-be-Ruffinized Treasure Island), plus one in Mississippi, be CEO Jim Murren's way of hanging out the "For Sale" sign? I'll leave that debate to wiser heads than mine.

Is Blu-Ray worth it? I dunno but maybe this guy does. Have a great weekend.

Treasure Island, updated

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:44:00 -0700

Never slow off the mark, Steve Friess has been digging into the Treasure Island deal and has found the following ...

Mystere stays. No surprise there, given Alan Feldman's comments about continued synergies between Phil Ruffin's newly acquired megaresort and MGM Mirage's other Strip properties.

17 acres. That, at most is what Treasure Island sits upon, but Ruffin won't be getting the whole enchilada. If we use Jake Fuller's $15 million/acre valuation from yesterday, we're looking at roughly $250 million for the land and $525 million for the hotel-casino, although I'm willing to bet it's closer to a 200/575 split.

What's next? On the auction block, that is. A strong and informed faction on the Internet argues that probably nothing more will be hawked, now that MGM Mirage is $775 million closer to putting the last few dollars into CityCenter -- the motivator that drove the deal. But we know that The Mirage was on the block and that Bellagio hasn't been.

Bill Lerner of Deutsche Bank suggests MGM Grand Detroit, which seems crazy to me, since MGM has absolutely owned that market since the place opened. (Only Penn National could afford to buy it, but Detroit hasn't been on Penn's radar.) As for the Elgin, Ill., casino being for sale, you'd have to be crazy to buy it, Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-IL) having helped destroy the casino economy in the Land of Lincoln. But if Alex Yemenidjian is willing to pony up over $400 million just for a casino license alone, he could certainly scrape together the going price of MGM's Elgin riverboat.

Some of Lerner's other suggestions make sense, though. (He hints that the long-in-abeyance "Project Z," south of Mandalay Bay, may be toast.) I particularly latched onto his mention of MGM's 50% interest in Borgata. If MGM were shot of that, it would also not have to spend another minute worrying about how much longer the New Jersey Casino Control Commission was going to pore over the suitability of Pansy Ho. It looks like MGM has effectively given up on Atlantic City already and this would simply make it official. And if there's any casino in Atlantic City -- other than Harrah's Marina (or whatever they're calling it today) -- that has "curb appeal" in these straitened times, Borgata is It.

Isle of Capri Biloxi previewed

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:07:00 -0700

Ironically, now that Isle of Capri has put its Biloxi plans on hold, we finally get a look at what the revamped Isle (minus the "of Capri" and the parrot) would look like. It's not beauty-contest winner but, if it can be financed, would be an improvement on the very sparse-looking hotel-casino presently on the site. The current Isle Biloxi has been dubbed "the Tropicana of Biloxi," which is almost the worst insult anyone can level at the place.

Meanwhile, Isle's market cap continues to dwindle ($88.6 million as of today), as the executive makeover continues. It's difficult to foresee a turnaround scenario for Isle that doesn't involve a stopover in Chapter 11, given the size of the hole dug by previous management, but Glenn Curtis thinks Isle's an attractive takeover target (for whom, I wonder?) and a bargain play among current stocks.

Casino bailout no joke

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:53:00 -0700

American Gaming Association President Frank Fahrenkopf may have made light of it at G2E. But the days of joking about a federal bailout are officially over. New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D), during an Atlantic City visit, made some vague rumblings about the necessity for aid which "stops this slide ... I mean, we don't need to wait until there's a 30% decline in revenues and there's another series of layoffs in Atlantic City or in the financial services industry that undermine the overall health and well-being of the American people."

So it begins; not with the ringing of a bell but the rattling of a tin cup. But remember, when federal business-relief money was being directed at the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, bluenoses in Congress made sure to 'redline' casinos out of the list of intended beneficiaries.

Isle slows down. Expansion of the Biloxi Isle of Capri Casino is on the backburner again, in another manifestation of the company's newfound prudence. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to save Isle from having its credit rating cut.

Herbst Watch, Day One. Yesterday was D-Day for overextended Herbst Gaming. Still no word on what went down.

Butera up to old tricks; Dog days for Ruffin; Fowl play

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:07:00 -0700

Grasping at straws in his attempt to wrest control of the Tropicana Casino & Resort back from the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, the CEO of Tropicana Entertainment, Scott Butera, has seized upon a letter from state Sen. Richard Codey. In his Nov. 14, 2007 missive, Codey requests that Unite-Here Local 54 be allowed to intervene in NJCCC hearings against TropEnt owner Columbia Sussex (which, back home, was the beneficiary of some rare -- but no doubt welcome -- good news).

Codey's letter, Butera's lawyers contend, smacks of "political interference" and tipped the scales of justice against ColSux.

But Local 54 was only allowed to make a statement toward the proceedings' end, not be an active participant, as Codey wished. ColSux lawyer Paul O'Gara was given the opportunity to object to this at the time -- and didn't. TropEnt also revives the old Bill Yung whine that it doesn't understand what New Jersey law means when it requires every casino to have an independent audit committee.

Let's see ... Independent. Audit. Committee. Not a difficult concept to grasp, save possibly for ColSux, which ultimately formed a committee of one, that one person being a lawyer it already had on retainer (which shoots the "independent" requirement right in the ass). Sounds like the New Jersey Supreme Court isn't buying it, either.

Those must have been some NJCCC hearings, too. According to The Associated Press, they "presented evidence of roach and bedbug infestation in hotel rooms, floors and appliances caked with mud and dust, and long waits for slot jackpot payouts following massive job cuts ..."

Is that what Bill Yung meant about his being "ahead of the curve"?

Phil Ruffin is back in the news. Like other dog track owners -- and the State of Kansas -- he's in a financial bind. He contends it's not a viable economic proposition to run races at this two Kansas tracks. Ergo, he'd like his cut of the dog-running revenues upped to 58% from the current 40%. But a cash-strapped Kansas Lege may not want to dicker -- or, worse yet, Topeka-bound lawmakers may see this as opportunity to repeal Kansas' casino law. That alarming prospect alone should make gambling advocates wary of Ruffin's proposition, even if you don't think dog racing should be abolished.

Poultry in motion. In "I hate G2E," I sang the praises of the tic-tac-toe-playing rooster, late of Atlantic City. Seems he was furloughed a while back from the A.C. Trop (no, Bill Yung didn't fire the chicken). But Harrah's Entertainment was astute enough to snap up our feathered friend and install him at Tunica's Sheraton Casino Hotel. According to Raving Consulting, Harrah's staked $100K and sent out a "Chick Tac Dough" mailer, inviting all comers to try their luck against the mojo-bearing bird in the "Final Chicken Challenge."

No sightings of the rooster at G2E, though. I'll keep you posted.

Aztar sale flops

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:25:00 -0700

Tropicana Entertainment President Scott Butera had a $225 million deal to sell Casino Aztar in hand. Not good enough, he said. Thus, a second round of bids was solicited. The grand total number of offers received: one.

This lays the groundwork for Butera to do what I think he's been meaning to do all along: Declare the lone bid inadequate (maybe even a "fire sale"), much like the previous Eldorado Resorts deal he's trying to vacate. The next step would be to petition the State of Indiana to be allowed to resume control of Casino Aztar.

Whether the state plays ball is another matter. Evansville's mayor, Jonathan Weinzapfel told WEHT-TV he "looks forward to a new owner." Maybe my English is rusty, but that sure sounds like he wants no part of TropEnt, even in its post-William J. Yung III incarnation. Having been singed aplenty ever since the Aztar Corp. sale went through, Weinzapfel's "once burned, twice shy" frostiness is quite understandable. Butera's persuasive skills are going to be tested in the weeks ahead.

Having also scuttled the sale of Horizon Vicksburg, Butera's plan is obviously to reconstitute TropEnt at full strength (including the Atlantic City Tropicana). Not only would this increase the potential for cross-marketing the merged Columbia Sussex/Aztar portfolio to consumers, it's undoubtedly crossed Butera's mind that TropEnt is a much better resale proposition if kept intact ... not peddled off piece by little piece, as Yung was doing.

Winners & Losers

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:52:00 -0700

And now the obligatory post-Election, What's-it-all-about-Alfie roundup ...

Culinary Union 1, Casino CEOs O: True, the Culinary tripped all over its own feet in the early going, leading to Democratic caucuses that weren't so much "Barackular" as "debacular." But D. Taylor & Co. backed the winning horse and did it early, which earns some chits down the road, plus they have a new Capitol Hill friend in Rep.-elect Dina Titus. Messrs. Lanni, Loveman, Wynn, Adelson and Trump made a variety of presidential wagers, losing every one.

Ameristar Casinos/Pinnacle Entertainment: They wanted a protected oligarchy in Missouri and now they've got it -- and at relatively little additional tax burden to them.

Slot manufacturers: OK, so Ohio and Maine didn't come through and the Missouri market is frozen. But 15K new slots in Maryland ain't chicken feed. Plus a West Virginia casino expansion that flew under the radar got voted in. Inexplicably, slot stocks traded downward. Stupid Wall Street.

Colorado casinos: They didn't so much "win" as get a hefty lifeline thrown to them by Rocky Mountain State voters who approved 20X higher betting limits, 'round the clock operations, and roulette and craps. (No Sen. John McCain sightings in Cripple Creek yet, though.)

Freedom's Watch: So far F-Double-U is 6-9-1 (with Sen. Gordon Smith [R] of Oregon momentarily in the "tie" column) in its top-priority races. I'm feeling generous and crediting the Adelson front group with "wins" in the case of self-destructing Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-FL), who continued the scummy tradition of predecessor Mark Foley, and in that of Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), who faces a December do-over, thanks to Georgia law. And veering off at the last minute to spend money attacking not-up-for-reelection Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)? Adelsonian political acumen at its finest. Winner? Loser? Let's call it a draw.

Poker: Just when it looked like the poker phenomenon was about to jump the shark, we've got a poker-playing president-elect. I dunno if Ms. Pelosi and Messrs. Reid, McConnell and Boehner cotton to hashing out legislation over cigars, booze and a deck of cards, but they'd better get ready for a whole new kind of "smoke-filled room."

Online Poker: Chances for a repeal of the UIGEA suddenly look a lot better.

Karma: Bearing false witness and serial adultery remain very uncool. But multiple felony counts and assorted other financial malfeasances remain A-OK with voters of both parties. (Hint: If Ted Stevens has to be forcibly removed from office, start practicing the phrase "Senator Palin." Kinda trips off the tongue, don't it?)

Gays & Lesbians: Voters in California stuck it to one of Vegas' most loyal constituencies big-time, passing the hateful Proposition 8. Were Nevada not so socially conservative (although compassionate enough to have legalized medical marijuana a ways back), I'd say we should vote for gay nuptials here, then sit back and gloat as the bucks roll in.

Tom Tancredo and ilk: Even if you abhor George W. Bush, you've got to give it up for his ability to rally Hispanic voters to the GOP standard. (I can't speak for Biloxi-Gulfport or Atlantic City, but Las Vegas can't function without its Latino labor base and casino CEOs know this; that's why immigration is their "third rail" of politics.) I always thought the immigration issue would be a non-starter in this election -- and it was. But the Tancredos of the GOP, by ginning it up in both '06 and early '08, antagonized Latinos, scored an own-goal and eradicated the gains Bush made with this voting bloc. So, in lieu of a prolonged post-mortem, maybe Republicans should just burn Tancredo in effigy and then turn the page.

Gaming's GOP influence: The annihilation of GOP moderates at the national level is largely complete, leaving an electoral map that looks a lot like the Confederacy, plus a horseshoe-shaped chunk of the West. Subtract Mississippi, Louisiana and tribal casinos and you've got slim pickings there. Gambling-friendly Republicans like Govs. Haley Barbour (MS) and Charlie Crist (FL) have made progress, but not easily and not without much expenditure of political capital. It's difficult to see where American Gaming Association boss Frank Fahrenkopf goes within his own party when he needs its support. The casino industry's investment in the GOP has yielded scant ROI.

Gov. Jim Gibbons: With state Sens. Joe Heck and Bob Beers, and Rep. Jon Porter all packed off to early retirement by their constituents, Gibbons suddenly has much less to fear from within his own party two years hence. (Ditto Porter's designs on Sen. Harry Reid's [D-NV] seat.)

Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV): If he opts to challenge Reid -- or Gibbons -- he's now the presumptive frontrunner. (I still think "Gov. Oscar Goodman" has a nice ring to it.)

North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon (R): He's laying the groundwork for an intra-party challenge to Gibbons. Montandon's ably managed growth in NLV and would easily trump Gibbons on the "competence" front. The sudden political demise of Beers, Heck and Porter gives him a clear field of fire.

Tourists: Ever hospitable, Clark County voters gave them the finger, by endorsing a 2%-3% hike in the hotel tax. Thankfully, it's just an advisory vote.

Joe the Player: Winner. Clinton-era tax rates are coming back, which may hurt the "whales" but should be good for the rest of us. The Clinton administration coincided with halcyon years of casino growth, especially in Vegas and on the Gulf Coast. The succeeding eight years were dominated by M&A binges, condomania and a narrowing of the Strip's economic appeal toward the monied elite -- the latter being a very sore point among casino consumers. Vegas-wise, which eight years would you choose?

Jon Ozark: This cardboard dummy was wheeled into Nevada Assembly District 21 by local monied interests, to knock off Asm. Bob Beers -- not be confused with the less-hirsute state Sen. Bob Beers -- for having the audacity to stand up against Steve Wynn, he whose name dare not be pejoratively uttered in Carson City. That much having been accomplished, in the general election Ozark discovered once again that it takes more than a pretty face to win. Good luck in your next district, Mr. Ozark. They say the third one's the charm.

Notes from the South

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:50:00 -0700

From dealer to GM: New Grand Biloxi Casino General Manager Steve Ditchkus worked his way up from the bottom of the casino pay scale to the corner office. Also, Harrah's Entertainment is still shaking the tree for joint-venture partners on its postponed Margaritaville project.

Speaking of Margaritaville: The businessman who's going to re-brand Trump Marina as the newest "parrothead" hangout is among those involved with the Broadwater Casino project, also in Biloxi.

A scuttled LBO means a good third quarter for Penn National Gaming. Elsewhere, a company spokesman says, "No way, José" (or words to that effect) regarding Steve Wynn's claim that Penn CEO Peter Carlino asked his MGM Mirage counterpart, J. Terrence Lanni, if Bellagio was for sale. That story earned Carlino some S&G ridicule and, if Wynn was talking through his hat, I apologize for buying into it.

Smoke-filled room

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:30:00 -0700

Maybe all this fussin' and frettin' (some of it from yours truly) about casino smoking bans is masking the real issue: Casino expansion in the U.S. has finally hit the wall in the form of one big-ass recession. Five states are contemplating adding casinos this November and in all but one (Maine), it's expected to pass. If so, it'll take some brave souls to buck the headwinds that are pushing casino revenues down.

Gambling halls in Colorado just had another crummy month, with Central City down 26%, Black Hawk off 20% and Cripple Creek declining a "mere" 10%. Some of that is undoubtedly smoking-ban-related falloff, but the smoking issue is beclouding one's ability to see just how much of the decline is a recessionary side effect.

It's no easier to get a clear picture in Mississippi. There, you can still smoke 'em if you've got 'em, but casino revenues are also on the downward slope. The view here is fogged by Hurricane Gustav, which levied a double-digit whammy on the Biloxi-Gulfport market. But Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway -- who's been through good times and bad -- isn't going for the easy explanation. He tells the Clarion Ledger, "the real story here is the economy. It’s catching up on us. This is something I kind of anticipated. Las Vegas and Atlantic City have been seeing this for months, so it was just a matter of time before it reached us.” As a consequence, state and local officials are starting to talk in terms of diminished expectations.

As for Louisiana (-23%), it got thwacked twice over, thanks to both Gustav and his bro, Hurricane Ike. Ergo, the entire month's numbers have to be tossed out as an aberration, even the relatively modest 9% decline in Shreveport-Bossier City. ("Relatively modest" only if your yardstick is the -34% declivity suffered by Lake Charles' riverboats.)

Too bad for Pinnacle Entertainment, though: Its L'Auberge du Lac was starting to give Harrah's New Orleans tough competition for the #1 revenue-earning spot in the Pelican State -- only $1 million behind Harrah's in July.

Two of the four lowest-earning properties in the state were Tropicana Entertainment riverboats. CEO Scott Butera's got his work cut out for him. At least Butera's finally driven a stake through the heart of that 10,000-room grotesquerie that predecessor William J. Yung III proposed to build on the site of the Las Vegas Tropicana. Trop Ent needs to maximize what it's got, not chase after pipe dreams.

Kansas, Round 2: It's Cordish!

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:59:00 -0700

OK, I was wrong. Incredibly wrong. As you'll hear on the next Vegas Gang podcast, I stuck by my prediction that Kansas' largest casino contract, the one for the greater Kansas City area, would go to Mohegan Sun. Why? Biggest budget, most amenities, a track record of large-scale casino development. At least I covered my butt by saying that Cordish Cos.' piggybacking of their proposed casino onto the Kansas Speedway gave them "dark horse" status. Also, franchising the casino under the Hard Rock brand was not to be gainsaid.

A racino of a different stripe

So when the winner was announced today, Cordish was it. While Mohegan Sun was willing to put a bigger investment ($740 million vs. Cordish's $680 million) on the table, Cordish's synergy with the Speedway appears to have done the trick. They'll whip up a temporary casino (2K slots, 75 tables) sometime next year, to get the cash flowing while the full-scale project rolls toward a 2011 debut.

Here's the real shocker: Mohegan Sun got zero votes, primarily because state consultants projected its revenues as the lowest of the three proposals remaining on the table. (Pinnacle Entertainment and Las Vegas Sands has already withdrawn from the fray. With a major project underway outside St. Louis, plus others in holding patterns in Atlantic City and Baton Rouge, Pinnacle's chances seemed remote. It's difficult to imagine Kansas being willing to take a place at the back of that queue.)

Which means that three of the seven votes went to -- surprise! -- Golden Gaming, a company whose chances I will freely admit to having severely undersold. It says a lot for CEO Blake Sartini's reputation and for Golden's presentation that it came within an ace of winning, despite having a relatively modest track record -- at least nothing remotely approaching the $662 million casino it proposed to build. With Penn National having sulked its way clear out of Cherokee County and the Kansas lottery board starting to display skepticism toward the Ford County bidders, Golden has at least one, maybe two more opportunities it could pursue in the Sunflower State.

Ten months ago, at the time its casino empire was starting to collapse, Columbia Sussex announced that it had sold the Horizon Vicksburg to casino investor Nevada Gold for $35 million. Seems now that it's yet another William J. Yung III transaction that's (pardon the pun) gone south, following the cancellation of the sale of Casino Aztar to Eldorado Resorts.

Juding from the language that ColSux successor Tropicana Entertainment "have been in discussions regarding a possible alternative transaction" without avail, it appears as though new CEO Scott Butera wants to hang onto the riverboat property (whose on-shore facilities are leased, not owned, by the way -- a common ColSux practice). "(N)o alternatives exist that are suitable to both parties" sounds like a nice way of saying that if any other TropEnt properties were worth having, then they weren't on the table. Then again, given Nevada Gold's current financial situation, it might have been the one getting cold feet, but the formal language doesn't encourage that interpretation.

Either way, Butera's been making some expansionist noises of late and pining for the return of the Atlantic City Tropicana. While Butera has operational experience in that market, from his days at Trump Entertainment Resorts, it's exceedingly difficult to imagine New Jersey regulators letting TropEnt back onto the property so long as Yung has one thin dime of equity in the company.

"A bizarre situation"

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:55:00 -0700

That's how a CNBC anchor describes the boats-in-moats regime that's prevalent throughout the Midwest and Mid-South, and I couldn't put it better myself. I believe the word "hypocrisy" was also deployed, and that's right on point, too. (Analyst Robert LaFleur also has some thoughts regarding Macao, in the online video, that are worth hearing.)

One of the few things that was well and truly put right in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was the relocation of most of the Mississippi Gulf Coast's 11 casinos. It cost Gov. Haley Barbour (R) some political capital and stirred up the ire of the churchy set, but he pushed it through the Lege, and for that he earns at least this vote of thanks.

True, Hurricane Gustav struck a relatively glancing blow at Biloxi-Gulfport -- and when we're talking hurricanes, that's a mighty big "relatively." So we didn't have to find out how the newly land-based casinos would have withstood the brunt of hurricane, thanks be. Still, the fact that what damage was inflicted was but a minor impediment to reopening is vindication of Barbour's initiative.

The perfect is forever the enemy of the good, and Mississippi's casinos still bob in rivers and sit atop pilings in man-made lagoons. Which is damned silly and ought to have been addressed post-Katrina. But I fear the Mississippi solons could only be moved so far and it will take another natural catastrophe or two before the lightbulb comes on.

Same in Lousiana, where neither current governor Bobby Jindal (R) nor his ineffectual predecessor, Kathleen Blanco (D), has shown the gumption to get the state's casinos off the water and onto dry land. In Jindal's case, he's been too busy trying squelch casino expansion instead.

A good thing Gustav wasn't a stronger hurricane, seeing as the Lake Charles market lay in its path. Pinnacle Entertainment gets 80% of its cash flow from Louisana and Isle of Capri Casinos draws 15%, and most of that comes from Lake Charles. Which means that, had this been another Katrina, it could have taken out both Pinnacle and financially ailing Isle of Capri in one fell swoop. If Louisiana's solons are going to continue to predicate their budgeting on casino $$$, or if they see themselves as pro-business or if they just want to preserve jobs, they need to stop shooting dice with Mother Nature and hoping their luck doesn't run out.

Props to Harrah's Entertainment for closing its New Orleans casino on mid-Saturday, exercising the discretion that is the better part of valor. Harrah's also shuttered its Biloxi casino early Sunday morning (4 a.m. to be precise), three hours before the edict came down from the capitol. Others were not so proactive.

First as tragedy, then as farce. It just wouldn't be a cataclysmic weather event without some predictable buffoonery from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, the single most ridiculous figure in the Katrina debacle (beating out some tough competition).

Simply put, Nagin freaked out. (Again.) "This is the mother of all storms. I am not sure we have seen anything like it ... This is worse than Katrina," he overreacted. Then, reverting to Nagin-esque every-man-for-himself form, he proclaimed, "If you decide to stay you are on your own."

Yup, when it comes to abdicating responsibility in the face of a crisis, there's nobody quite like Ray Nagin. (Maybe he'd been listening to the meteorologist Bloomberg News quotes as predicting widespread failure for the Crescent City's levees and having a meltdown of his own.) I kept tabs on Gustav via that normal hotbed of hysteria, cable news, and heard no Nagin-like levels of panic, least of all from the Weather Channel.

And it sure looks as though every responsible agency and public figure performed with both competence and continence. Except Ray Nagin. As usual. Then again, New Orleans voters re-elected this bungler right after Katrina, so they've not much room for complaint.

Case Bets: South Point, Gustav, Monte Carlo, Gold Spike, Excalibur, etc.

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:15:00 -0700

Why does a holiday weekend suck? Because it means that instead of having to dig through three days' worth of the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Monday (a depressing task under the best of circumstances), a Tuesday start means at least four days of windfall from what Hugh Jackson calls "the dead tree of record" through which one must cut brush. Solution? Chop it up into Insta-Blog fodder! Like ...

Horse dies at South Point, in front of 500 undoubtedly traumatized spectators. Leaving aside the equine tragedy, if South Point can only rustle up 500 attendees for a Friday-night event, its equestrian center may be even more of a gold-plated albatross than was originally thought.

Gulf Coast casinos ordered to close. Good grief, has common sense taken a leave of absence down there? Why was Mississippi required to force the issue?

Monte Carlo not up to code, says Clark County. Whereupon neither the county nor MGM Mirage takes responsibility for remediating the situation, each putting the onus on the other.

Wall Street comes around. The Street has a manic-depressive attitude toward gaming stocks and is coming out of its latest episode of depression. Even so, some of these stocks look ridiculously undervalued, especially Las Vegas Sands, which The Street used to think was worth three times as much.

Speaking of Sands, there's confidence and then there's foolhardiness. Then again, given the company's genius at protracting litigation to superhuman lengths, its sanguine attitude may be born of experience.

Somnolent editors awake from nap, find that Nevada's economic model isn't working, call for more of the same, go back to sleep. (BTW, here's one of those "Nevada Democrats" the editorial reflexively derides.)

First Nevada Palace fell and now the Gold Spike is half-renovated. We're going to have to come up with a new shorthand for "bottom-of-the-barrel casino" now that we won't have the Spike to kick around anymore. Stephen Siegel has done more with the place than his predecessors, absentee owners Tamares Group, accomplished in three years (unless you count the offerings they took out, like table games).

Still, Siegel's being a wee bit charitable when he says "most people underestimate the Gold Spike." Stephen, it is impossible to underestimate the Spike, the only Nevada casino for which I would have used "vile" as a description, back in its Tamares days.

Comment threads in newspapers can be a very mixed blessing, but much of the back-and-forth that follows this story about electronic poker at Excalibur is well worth reading, as it provides a great deal of hard information and a player's-eye perspective on the experiment.

Don't tax me, bro!

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:19:00 -0700

Guess who's kvetching about his property tax bill? Why it's our old buddy, Columbia Sussex CEO William J. Yung III -- or at least his surrogates at Horizon Vicksburg. It's been the better part of a year since Yung announced the sale of this riverboat to Nevada Gold, yet the deal still hasn't closed. (Too bad, because the promise of that $35 million was being used to palliate angry debtholders last winter.)

Even though Olympia Gaming and Las Vegas Sands have bailed out of their respective pursuits of casino ownership in Kansas' Wyandotte County, two Vegas-based companies are still in the running. Pinnacle Entertainment has a lot of irons in the fire already and its wait-and-see attitude toward Atlantic City development may not be what the Kansas Lottery Gaming Facilities Review Board (now there's a mouthful!) wants to hear. Golden Gaming's experience, a brief stint at the Vegas Hard Rock Hotel & Casino aside, is of the small-scale variety, which may also provoke skepticism.

While tribal powerhouse Mohegan Sun is hurting on the Uncasville homefront lately, it's coming off a solid performance in Pennsylvania. I like its chances. Cordish Cos., whose pursuit of the Atlantic City Tropicana was recently rebuffed (for no good reason), is obviously itching to get into the casino industry in a big way. Perhaps its proven track record as a developer will outweigh its inexperience in the casinosphere.

Ameristar: What makes sense?

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:45:00 -0700

Perhaps this is what happens when you outsource your business coverage to India, but Reuters had a story yesterday positing MGM Mirage and Harrah's Entertainment as two of the likeliest buyers for Ameristar Casinos.

Uhhh, I hate to break this to Reuters, but MGM just came up $3 billion and change short on CityCenter and Harrah's is debt-strapped. So I'd say they've got their hands full. How either one would be able to swing an Ameristar acquisition is an open question. Harrah's also faces redundancy issues, as it already owns riverboats in three of Ameristar's key markets -- Council Bluffs, Iowa, and St. Charles and Kansas City, Mo. Why MGM would feel a sudden hankering for Black Hawk, Colo., plus a brace of casinos in Jackpot, Nev., is even more of a poser.

Reuters' third suggestion, Boyd Gaming, seems a lot closer to the mark. With Echelon temporarily in the deep freeze and Boyd's Blue Chip riverboat leaking market share, a passel of regional casinos in markets where Boyd doesn't currently operate could provide welcome cash flow, shore up the company against its current non-presence on the Strip, and expand the web of properties from which Boyd could funnel players into its downtown Vegas cluster or (eventually) Echelon. Of course, Boyd may still be smarting from a failed Kansas City venture a decade ago, but Ameristar's assets are proven performers.

Besides, it's a company that could use some helmsmanship, having seemed to drift since the demise of CEO Craig H. Neilsen. Although paralyzed from the neck down and often bed-bound (which I've heard resulted in some very unconventional corporate meetings), Neilsen achieved more from the neck up than most able-bodied people do in their entire lifetimes. His successor, ex-Harrah's exec John Boushy, tried to sell the Ameristar people on a change of corporate culture but they didn't want to hear about it. So, given an evident leadership vacuum, a change of ownership makes sense.

Unless Penn National wants to take its $1 billion-plus in "mad money" and go after Ameristar, there aren't too other many potential acquirers abroad in the land. James Packer has already sworn off. Pinnacle Entertainment would rather build than buy. Tribal giant Mohegan Sun has been flexing its financial muscle of late and rates as a longshot candidate (but just came off a wretched second quarter). Beyond that ... who knows?

Gold Coast buffet

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:19:00 -0700

Our ongoing buffet crawl took us to the Gold Coast last night. After applying a Pocketbook of Values coupon, it came out to $11.80 for two people, which definitely counts as a bargain play, provided you manage your expectations somewhat. For instance, anticipate fewer items per category ... but also a few categories you might not expect, like "Mongolian."

The food offerings aren't identified, unless you count some places where things like "Spicy Carrots" have been scrawled haphazardly onto the glass -- and the scrawling doesn't always match the food that's beneath it. I'm forever trying to lose a few pounds, so I hewed mostly to the fish and seafood offerings, and you can't go wrong there.

So many iterations of chicken were on offer, across the board, that it was pretty surprising to arrive at the carving station and -- in lieu of turkey or ham -- find, yes, more chicken. The alternative was (very salty) corned beef, which makes me wonder if economic stringencies aren't taking a toll here. My better half loved the ribs, although I respectfully dissent.

With so much good Mexican food in town, I'm not sure why you'd go to a casino buffet for it. What Gold Coast had in that department lacked "curb appeal," particularly the industrial-strength guacamole. Only the mashed-potatoes, which had that school-cafeteria appearance, looked comparably off-putting.

Anyway, you'll want to pace yourself, because the Gold Coast buffet's greatest strength is its dessert counter. The sheer variety was impressive and I can vouch for the espresso cake.

As Boyd Gaming buffets go, Suncoast is still the leader of the pack, IMO, but Gold Coast's -- while obviously not in the class of either of The Rio's buffets -- is a better deal that the distinctly underwhelming one across the street at the Palms. Besides, you'll work off some of the calories making the long trek from the parking garage and back again.

Isle of Capri Casinos inched up a bit today, on news of a large buy-in. So somebody out there likes the stock.

Nice Try Dept. The lead story in today's Biloxi Sun Herald [registration req'd] concerns the Mississippi Gaming Commission's unanimous rejection of the proposed South Beach Casino. The would-be casino owners' land didn't reach clear down to the water's edge and, in a smooth move, they argued it didn't matter: The seawall consituted the "water's edge," whether any waves dampened it or not.

Give 'em credit for ingenuity. The commissioners weren't biting, though, pointing out that such an interpretation would run a cart and horses through the law that brought casinos onshore in the first place. Besides, if there's anything that would unravel the fragile detente under which Mississippi casinos exist, it would be this kind of creative circumvention of the law, and the sudden growth spurt that might ensue. (And it sure sounds like Biloxi could use the economic stimulus, judging by the comments of Mayor A.J. Holloway, who says he's seeing investors losing interest in the area.)

Mind you, it's a silly law. In fact, the whole 'boats in moats' concept that prevails through the Midwest and Bible Belt is profoundly ridiculous. It's just a way for the bluenoses to accept {shudder!} that icky gambling money while keeping the industry at arms' length and holding their noses simultaneously. This preposterous, hypocritical fantasy allows state legislatures to pretend that casinos aren't in the state, they're "on the water" -- but subject to taxation all the same, natch.

But if you're going to challenge that ridiculous regime, make a frontal assault (as is being done in Missouri with the loss limits). Don't go trying to tiptoe in through the back door, because it's just going to set off a backlash.

Good riddance at Boyd

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:38:00 -0700

Former Nevada Athletic Commission chairman. Former Boyd Gaming director. Member of the 197-person "Midnight Jim" Gibbons transition team. Out-and-out disgrace. That'd be Luther Mack, who walked the plank at Boyd Gaming last week, not (as I speculated at the time) on account of company politics, but because his company, Mack Associates, was engaged in a criminal enterprise.

For a prominent Nevadan, Mack did an excellent job of keeping his legal troubles out of the newspapers -- at least until The Associated Press broke the story, two days ago. Considering that Mack Associates actively connived at encouraging and facilitating the employment of illegal aliens, if somebody was going to have the book thrown at them, it hit the right target.

There really ought to special circle of jurisprudential Hell for companies that conspire to screw citizens of their own country out of jobs in favor of illegal immigrants. The latter are going to try and get those jobs -- that's why they snuck in here, after all -- but what sort of boneheaded businessman decides to engage in the facilitation and furtherance of the crime? And if the government is correct in its allegation that Mack Associates was providing its illegal burger-slingers with Social Security numbers that rightly belonged to other people, well, that'd be one of the scummiest sorts of fraud imaginable.

Mack wasn't indicted personally and he might try to push mid-level managers under the bus. Yet the fact that guilty pleas were entered by a vice president, director of operations and controller is hardly a vindication -- unless Mack's preferred line of defense is that he was a clueless bozo who didn't know what was going on at the company that bore his name. In which case, one might ask why he felt competent to serve as an officer of Boyd Gaming.

Maybe Boyd was as blindsided by this as the rest of community. Considering that Mack's fast-food joints got busted by the feds last September, if Mack didn't clue Boyd in on his legal troubles sooner, he should have -- as a matter of directorial responsibility if nothing else. In fact, he should have stepped down as soon as la Migra came knocking. And if Boyd didn't demand his resignation the moment Mack's problems became known to them, they should have.

It cannot be said too often that, given its past, the casino industry is like Caesar's wife and has to be above even the appearance of impropriety. There's a widespread perception (undoubtedly with at least some basis in fact) that illegal immigrants form a sizeable percentage of the Vegas casino labor pool. Under any circumstance -- and especially that one -- Mack is baggage that Boyd did well to throw overboard, and should have done at the first whiff of trouble.

Update: Given the opportunity to clarify the timeline on l'affaire Mack, Boyd Gaming balked at doing so and put the onus Mack himself to explain matters. The company was at pains to characterize the event as routine.

No free lunch -- or coffee. A latté-sipping local publisher whines about the closure of 17 Starbucks outlets and how it will force him to drive a few blocks farther for some $5 espresso. Hey, them's free-market economics in action, baby.

(It looks like the Gulf Coast of Mississippi is a stronger bastion of Starbucks than is Las Vegas: 0 closings to our 17. Who knew?)

Isle of Capri: The song remains the same

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:31:00 -0700

Whatever improvements the new management team at Isle of Capri Casinos can be expected to effect, they can't be blamed if the latest quarterly report was more of the same. Once new properties are excluded, same-store revues are down almost 10% and the company's ill-advised move into Great Britain has proven to be a vast, black hole into which nearly $80 million has been sucked. And Isle's commitment to a Florida racino appears to have cut the legs right out from under its Bahamanian market.

To be fair, this particular quarter was further hammered by a cluster of events, some predictable, some aberrant (Mississippi flooding, the Colorado smoking ban, increased competition in Biloxi). However, despite some gloomy prognostications and even gloomier numbers, Isle is sending the right message by rebranding its smaller casinos under the Lady Luck imprimatur. And the decision to commit $175 million-plus to refurbish casino-hotel product that is perceived as tired and out of date is welcome under any circumstances.

Isle's story looks like one of the "things will get worse before they get better" genre. And Wall Street appears to understand this. Besides, it took many years for Isle to dig this hole for itself, so a dose of patience is probably what the doctor ordered.

The sooner Isle can extricate itself from its British fiasco, the better. Let's hope that when the company talks about exploring strategic options that's a nice way of saying, "Let's sell this boondoggle and not be too picky about it."

Casinos Austria says 'Buy American!'

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:56:00 -0700

"You don't sell the dream of a lifetime," quoth the Man with the Harmonica (Charles Bronson) in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. Maybe not, but there's nothing that says you can't sublease it.

In effect, that's what Diamondhead Casino Corp. has elected to do. It was in the predicament of being land-rich and cash-poor, sitting on 404 acres betwixt I-10 and the Gulf of Mexico, along the Mississippi coast. Diamondhead had bought the land 16 years ago, with money borrowed from Casinos Austria (subsequently repaid). Even when offered $100 million to sell the land outright, Diamondhead stood its ground.

Despite a slick sales pitch, joint venture partners weren't to be had. Re-enter old friend Casinos Austria, which will get development rights on an eighth of the acreage, while Diamondhead collects a cut of the casino revenue.

"While other casino projects are struggling to get financing, Peter Lux with Smith Barney pointed out that Casinos Austria is dealing in the stronger Euros. The hotel and other amenities could qualify for Go-Zone tax incentives, he said," according to the Biloxi Sun Herald. And with 77 casinos scattered around the globe, Casinos Austria is not be sneezed at.

However, Casino Austria's idea of a casino and the American market's concept of one are two vastly disparate things. Attempting to crack the U.S. market was disastrous for Swiss Casinos and the complete undoing of London Clubs International. Let's see if the third time is the charm.

A good question

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:21:00 -0700

Math was always my worst subject, so it's a good thing I've got sharp-eyed readers who keep me honest. One of them asks how MGM Mirage is going to save $75 million (later restated by the company as $200 million) by showing 400-plus managerial employees the heave-ho. "What," the reader asks, "is the annual salary of the 400 managers? [$]75,000,000/40 = $187,500 [...] pretty good gig for middle management!" (Can't argue with that last point, for sure.)

To be fair, let's re-divide by 440 (the precise number of mid-level people MGM has said it let go), which gives us $170,454.54. But I'm still foxed for an answer -- unless the value of employee benefits, like health insurance (possibly including dependents) is being factored into MGM's equation. Asks the reader, "is somebody fudging some numbers?"

Well, considering that those numbers increased by $125 million in the space of a day, I'd conjecture that despite "months of research" MGM is itself unsure as to what they are. Maybe it just threw a ballpark figure out there and then, when Wall Street reacted with a sell-off, tossed out a bigger one. But that's 101% speculation.

Speaking of MGM Mirage, it must be feeling pretty confident that server-based gambling in Nevada is a "go" because it's inked a memo of understanding with IGT for the latter to set up a all-server-based casino at CityCenter. (Yes, even table games)

Although, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Howard Stutz once observed, server-based gaming is forever 'a year away,' it makes more sense to put the infrastructure in beforehand than to retrofit. Plus, with CityCenter's opening night a year and two-thirds away, Nevada has plenty of time to sign off on the technology. It also provides a distinctive selling point for a casino that's been overshadowed by all other aspects of CityCenter so far.

Unfortunately for IGT, the good news was upstaged by 2Q08 results that came in 35% lower than expected. The recession also cast a pall over the outlook for the rest of the year. Here's the full report.

There's got to be some good news, right? Indeed. Tourists visiting Macao are spending 15% more than last year. I wish they were spending it in the good old U.S. of A. But at least they're still spending.

Oh, and CotaiNews.com has launched an offshoot, devoted to worldwide casino developments. The lead story? Myriad Botanical Resort (above) -- what else? According to the blog, Myriad's snow park is still part of the plan. Wacky! Like I said, it's the Dixie Dubai.

Is Eisenhower still president? That's how I felt last night after a BoSox/Yankees game that ran a mind-numbing 4.25 hours and ended with a football score (9-15) ... which didn't preclude Joe Girardi from having Mariano Rivera warm up to protect a six-run lead (had it been a mere five runs, I'm sure panic would have run rampant). The Yankees are aging better than the BoSox, who look ancient and cement-footed, but it took them a week to steal their first base, so don't expect much excitement out of either team. Just mediocre pitching vs. worse pitching, while they take turns clubbing each other into submission.

Resort poses 'Myriad' questions

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:29:00 -0700

You've got to love the casino industry, not least because it provides us every day with Tales of the Bizarre like this one. Big-thinking entrepreneurs with a few bucks and a crazy idea may seem like anachronisms in today's casino industry (Bob Stupak, come back! All is forgiven!), that doesn't mean they're not out there.

Take Canada's Scott Hawrelechko. He's trying to scrape together the capital to build a six-casino complex in Tunica, Miss. That's right. Six casinos. In Tunica. Oh, and he needs $70 million just to keep the dream alive through the end of the year. And he just sacked his CEO. And the chair of the audit committee resigned abruptly last December. Other than that, everything's fine.

But there's this small -- trivial, really -- matter of Myriad Botanical Resort's budget having doubled from $1.62 billion a year ago to almost $3.2 billion today (and even that may not be enough) for the first two casinos. Maybe Hawrelechko shouldn't have bought his tribal partners out. And perhaps it wasn't necessary to purchase a marketing firm instead of just hiring one.

True, some of the planned metaresort's goofier features (like an indoor golf course and snow park) have been jettisoned. And Myriad is targeted for a market whose casino market could probably use some new blood. A Fortune article archived on Myriad's Web site questions, though, whether the Tunica market can support more casinos, particularly in the absence of economic diversification.

It might help a bit if Myriad's proposed location weren't far below the southern end of Tunica's casino strip -- meaning that Memphis-area customers driving in will get nine bites of the casino apple before they even get within eyeshot of Myriad. Plus, "Myriad executives still have visions of high-rollers betting big on the resort's casino floors, tourists filling its hotel rooms and big-name entertainers performing in its arena space, among other things."

High rollers? Um, you did know you're building in Tunica, right? But hey, they've got a cool water feature planned. And did I mention you can snap up Myriad stock for just pennies (17.6 cents, to be exact, when last checked)?

So if you're still bummed about the deflation of the Crown Las Vegas tower or have some extra scratch after Dubai World bought out your shares of MGM Mirage -- $70 million would do the trick -- I'm sure Scott Hawrelechko would love to hear from you ... and if not, there may be a few Arab petrocrats with a surplus dollar or two who'd be receptive to his pitch.

After all, Myriad has some of that over-the-top Crazy Quotient they just love over there. It could be the Dixie Dubai.

MGM Mirage: What's it all about?

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:19:00 -0700

By now it's old news that MGM Mirage took a paring knife to its personnel roster and gave 440 staffers the sack on Monday. Admittedly, saving $75 million seems like trimming a fingernail off a company whose 2007 profit was $1.58 billion (nor has the company acted as though in peril of dire penury).

Then again, MGM Mirage didn't do a Columbia Sussex and take it out on service-level employees, choosing instead to thin the ranks of middle management. And, truth be told, I've run across some bureaucracy there that might be fairly described as "bloated."

But MGM Mirage must have decided that Version 1.0 of its downsizing didn't play so well, especially with its target audience, Wall Street. A downward skid in MGM stock accelerated before stabilizing today.

Hence, President Jim Murren rolled out Version 2.0: No, it wasn't a reaction to the darkening economy (which at least Sen. John McCain is willing to call a recession, even if the occupant of the White House is boating on DeNile), contrary to what Alan Feldman had said previously. And the projected savings had risen overnight to $200 million.

OK, Murren's the numbers guy, so let's go with the larger figure. But what about this spin that the sudden exodus (abruptly announced to the affected employees mid-Monday) was the elimination of "redundancies" from MGM's takeover of Mandalay Resort Group?

Does it really take three years and "months of analysis" (at God only knows what cost) to identify a few hundred redundant employees (a seemingly disproportionate number of whom are in the Mississippi market)? Then again, if you're trying to make the case to your shareholders that you're running an less-than-optimally-efficient company, "streamlining" that moves with the speed of a Galapagos tortoise constitutes mighty convincing evidence, IMO.

(Steve Wynn is right on the money, I think, both in terms of the deleterious psychological effect and the failure to use subtler methods, like attrition.)

MGM is far from alone in this situation (even if its newly restated motives may be disingenuous) and -- given the alarming erosion of gaming stocks in the last six months -- perhaps we should heave a sigh of relief that the cuts haven't come sooner and in larger chunks. That's not much comfort if you're among the newly unemployed or contemplating the ripple effect on the local economy, but the industry is reacting with much greater circumspection than it showed in its panicky overreaction to the 9/11 crisis.

MGM Mirage will probably continue to be about as profitable as it is now. And if there's any villain in this scenario, it's those shareholders who whinge if their EPS is off by so much as a fraction of a penny (it does look as though MGM is going to miss its quarterly target) and devil take product quality. Fortunately, MGM is run by people for whom quality matters.

Speaking of Columbia Sussex, new Tropicana Entertainment President Scott Butera (no stranger to financially troubled companies, having served at Trump Entertainment Resorts and the Cosmopolitan), has been making the rounds and putting a friendlier face on his company's oft-truculent public posture. He places the best spin possible on the collapse of his company's Lake Tahoe lawsuit (in which Columbia Sussex at least eked out a three-year stay of execution, with hope of an eventual pardon).

He's also managed to gain a 25-day reprieve from Wilmington Trust Co., contingent upon various conditions which include essentially pledging the Las Vegas Tropicana as collateral. I'm not sure that 25 days counts as "significant" given the number of things which would have to happen in order for Wilmington Trust to be assured that its $960 million was safe.

The proceeds from the sales of the Horizon Vicksburg (above, $35 million), Casino Aztar ($220 million) and Atlantic City Tropicana (unknown) have already been pledged to other debtors, and the pace at which the latter two sales close is now up to regulators in Indiana and New Jersey. Columbia Sussex's cut of the A.C. Trop sale will have to come to $747 million to reach even the bottom of analyst Barbara Cappaert's $982 million-$1.34 billion aggregate price. It'd be a heck of a time for Butera to have to hang the "For Sale" sign on the LV Trop, but with Wilmington Trust breathing down his neck, he may have little choice.