Category: Casino News

It’s getting very difficult to tell the players without a scorecard in the game of the REIT-ification of the Las Vegas Strip. Case in point, Bellagio, which now has three owners. There’s MGM Resorts International, which holds a token 5% stake. Then there’s Blackstone Real Estate, whose ownership has just been diluted to 73%. And now there’s Realty Income, which is paying $950 million for the privilege of owning 22%. $300 million goes toward direct ownership, while the rest is channeled toward yield-bearing preferred equity interest. The deal should be consummated by year’s end and will probably have no discernible effect on your Bellagio experience.

Since taking over Venelazzo, new owner Apollo Management has been behaving itself, with none of the shenanigans that characterized its ill-fated co-ownership of Caesars Entertainment. That, however, does not mean that Apollo has learned to straighten up and fly right. Thanks to a sweetheart deal carved out with the Donald Trump administration, Apollo is reaping megabucks even as it drives the Yellow trucking firm into bankruptcy, costing workers thousands of jobs. In 2020, Yellow received $700 million in government-funded largesse, in agreement structured in such a way that Apollo stood in senior position for bankruptcy repayment ahead of Uncle Sam. Apollo is throwing the scapegoated Teamsters Union under the bus for the bankruptcy, while also potentially leaving such clients as Home Depot, Walmart and a little boutique known as the Department of Defense high and dry.

It just so happens that I share my birthday with the notorious World War I double agent Mata Hari. Hopefully I will come to a better end than she did. I’ve been enmeshed in a huge project for CDC Gaming Reports that’s kept my hands full lately. Also, today is my birthday, so I’m taking it slightly easy. Tomorrow will bring dispatches from Atlantic City and Massachusetts, as well as a ranking of the best movies set in casinos. See you then.

Like bad sex, the connubial bliss between Penn Entertainment and Barstool Sports ended abruptly. Cretinous Dave Portnoy becomes someone else’s problem child following the second-quarter-earnings revelation that Barstool was being sold back to its founder, jilted in favor of much comelier ESPN. Considering Penn’s down-market image, ESPN is doing the company a favor by lending its prestige to a company that has dragged its own name through the mud in pursuit of a sadomasochistic marriage to Portnoy.

“Well, it was fun while it lasted, but, in our view, the handwriting has been on the wall for some time,” wrote Deutsche Bank analyst Carlo Santarelli. “The Barstool partnership was not working, the risks were too significant, and PENN was at a crossroads.” Penn chose to “double down with a new strategy,” opined the pundit. He explained that Penn’s reversal “likely speaks to what is presumably a tough road for its core [brick-and-mortar] business on the horizon, as regional gaming rationalizes from post pandemic peaks and competition hampers performance at core PENN assets.” Barstool Sportsbook will become ESPN Bet. Santarelli believes this is in itself a positive, as the Barstool brand wasn’t what it was cracked up to be as a customer-acquisition tool. (Just a bunch of tools.)

Developer Larry Silverstein‘s PR peeps released additional renderings of The Avenir over the weekend and they are certainly impressive. Few additional details of the proposed resort have been made available but the striking exterior is the work of veteran casino architect Paul Steelman, far outdoing his work for Resorts World New York. For our money, it’s pretty much a tossup between this and Sands Nassau for the most curb-appealing design statement and we hope that New York State authorities will have a hard time choosing between the two. If a casino simply must go into Manhattan, Silverstein gets our vote hands down. More pretty pictures after the jump.