Category: Casino News

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Whiners & Crybabies

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You’ve got to hand it to the operators of Missouri‘s black-market slot routes. They’ve certainly got nerve. It doesn’t matter that a federal judge ruled the machines to be illegal, nor that state Attorney General Catherine Hanaway ordered the games removed nor that the FBI is lurking in the wings. No, by golly, they’ve got a right to break the law, they say. The brassiest litigant is Tuners Bar & Grill, which is demanding immunity from prosecution if it doesn’t unplug its illicit machines.

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Embracing the Dark Ages

Organized crime and offshore casinos are about to get a huge in-kind contribution from the Ohio GOP. The Orwellian-slugged “Save Ohio Sports Act” would roll back sports wagering in the Buckeye State to the Dark Ages of gambling. Reps. Jonathan Newman (R) and Beth Lear (R) have coupled to produce this monstrous afterbirth. Right off the top, it would ban online sports betting. Period. No more. The overwhelming majority (more than 95%) of sports bets are placed online, so you can basically take a shovel to sports wagering in Ohio. After all, there are fewer and fewer Buckeye State retail books … and it’s not like DraftKings or FanDuel is going to open a walk-up book in Akron or Youngstown. Not gonna happen. If you can’t get to a casino to place that wager, you’re going to be shit out of luck, friend.

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Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

You may think that building above is Sunset Station. It even says it on the side. But, according to the paternalistic Las Vegas Review-Journal, it is just “a Henderson casino.” This uncommon daintiness from a bunch of self-styled macho men came in the context of a thwarted shooting at the Station Casinos gem. Thanks to our nation’s insane infatuation with firearms, Allison Howlett was able to arm herself with24 (!) guns, with which she motored over to Sunset Station, either intent on killing a lot of people or getting gunned down by police—casino security being no damn help in dangerous situations—or both.

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Visitation Hops, Strip Vaults

May was the sort of month of which casinos dream. Although tourism to Las Vegas was flat with last year, a 14.5% boost in conventioneers helped carry Sin City. Attendance overall was up 2% despite what have been reported to be sky-high room rates ($198 a night, on average). Vegas could use that convention business, as visitation has been down in the past year more often than not. Tourists may not be coming back in droves but neither are they deserting a favorite playground.

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Foul Bawl

Our long national nightmare is over. Crybaby QB Brendan Sorsby is set to spend the 2026-7 season where he ought to: on his degenerate-gambling ass. His dreams of cashing in on his football skills came crashing down last week, at the hands of the NFL. Given that his chances of scoring $5 million playing for Texas Tech (his third college team) were looking dim, the solipsistic Sorsby got it into his head that the NFL should hold a supplemental 2026 draft for him and him alone. (And he might have found one taker, the truly desperate Cleveland Browns.) But the stench of Sorsby’s gambling activities was too much for the league, which punted his professional dreams into the 2027 draft. That is, provided he can keep his nose clean in the interim, which is no sure bet, pardon the pun. The Canadian Football League was quick to second that emotion.

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Whistling Past the Graveyard?

We have terrible news … as in Terrible’s is coming back to Primm, to try and revive the corpse of the erstwhile casino town. As you know, Primm and its $400 million price tag was the undoing of Herbst Gaming during the Great Recession. The Herbst boys grossly overpaid for three down-at-heels casinos and never recovered. Herbst got kicked out in 2010 and now is being positioned as the unlikely savior of the tumbleweed magnet. You might say Primm went from having no chance a couple of weeks ago to having a ghost of a chance now.

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Uh-oh, Atlantic City

One news story today bravely tried to spin Atlantic City‘s flat May numbers as “marvelous.” Meh. Glass half-full: They weren’t off 2025’s pace. Glass half-empty: At a time when regional casinos are outperforming Las Vegas, you’d expect Atlantic City to get some love. Perhaps we are starting to see an incremental effect of Class III gambling in New York City, which is bound to skim off some of the Boardwalk’s cream. Let’s agree to say that Atlantic City is holding its own.

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Mixed Signals; Sands’ Good Deeds

It may not look like much from the outside, but new Hollywood Joliet (above) is driving the bus for Chicagoland casino grosses. It will very soon have competition from within the Penn Entertainment family, as even newer Hollywood Aurora opens this month. In fact, mega-kudos to Penn for finishing the newest casino one entire month ahead of schedule. That’s a feat unheard-of in Big Gaming, where the place usually isn’t even complete when it debuts. Let’s hope Penn has set an influential example.

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Oops, He Did It Again

The Nevada Gaming Control Board‘s resident embarrassment, George Assad, would evidently like gaming stockholders to bend over and quietly take it in the shorts. Yesterday, the ancient Assad berated a Penn Entertainment activist shareholder for having the temerity—what sauce!—to defend the value of his stock against mismanagement by CEO Jay Snowden and others. The nerve of the man! Shareholder Parag Vora, that is. You’d think shareholders had rights or something.

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