Category: Las Vegas Advisor

Dateline: O’Hare International Airport, land of crappy wi-fi.

We’re not back at the office yet but there’s so much news it just can’t wait. Let’s start in Atlantic City, where casino revenues slumped 7% to $220.5 million last month. Everybody was revenue-negative with two happy exceptions, Borgata (+1%) and Hard Rock Atlantic City (+4%). The latter’s Joe Lupo definitely has some secret sauce for attracting players. Borgata raked in $62.5 million to Hard Rock’s $39 million. Ocean Casino Resort had an abnormally poor month, down 6% to $28 million. Even so, Ocean still outperformed all of the Caesars Entertainment properties, with Caesars Atlantic City tumbling 17% to $17.5 million and Harrah’s Resort also falling 17% to $20 million. Tropicana Atlantic City slid 18% to $17.5 million. Golden Nugget ($12 million, -16%) and Resorts Atlantic City ($13 million, -11.5%) duked it out for last place but were aced by Bally’s Atlantic City ($11 million, -13.5%), which means we look forward to hearing the Bally’s Corp. braintrust spin that on their next earnings call.

Caesars Entertainment formally took the Flamingo off the sale block yesterday, at least for the foreseeable future. CEO Tom Reeg cited ‘market conditions‘ (odd when the Las Vegas Strip keeps breaking records). There is also the complication that Vici Properties has right of first refusal on a sale, throwing a cock-block on any big spender the Flamingo might attract. Chances are, having knocked the price down from $2 billion to $1 billion to $800 million, Reeg is still having trouble finding takers for the property. Planet Hollywood theoretically remains in play but Reeg’s preposterous insistence on keeping the conjoined Zappos Theater (Or have they changed the name again?) is a serious deterrent. “There are plenty of interested parties,” Reeg claimed, blaming his inability to cut a deal on “the financing environment is what it is. If that’s going to impact what someone will pay, there’s a level I’m not going to chase, and I’m very happy to just clip the free cash flow and come back later.”

Although gambling revenues in Maryland decelerated somewhat from May, they were still 1% higher than last June and 14% more robust than 2019’s, for a total haul of $163 million. It was basically a two-horse race, with MGM National Harbor controlling 42% of market share to Maryland Live‘s 34.5%. MGM’s category killer grossed $68 million (up 7.5%) while Cordish Gaming‘s rival powerhouse brought in $56 million (down 4%). Horseshoe Baltimore was a distant third with $17 million but achieved a victory of sorts by being flat with last year. (Any month in which Horseshoe is not sliding downward is a good month.) Best of the rest was Ocean Downs with $8.5 million, despite being 3% off its feed, while Hollywood Perryville brought in $7.5 million, a 4% dip. Hardest hit, relatively speaking, was Rocky Gap Resort, down 7% but good for $5 million.