Spiegelworld is a good name for the Las Vegas-based live-entertainment production company: It’s definitely a world unto itself.
Producers of Absinthe at Caesars Palace, OPM at the Cosmopolitan, and Atomic Saloon Show at Palazzo, Spiegelworld also owns the entire town Nipton, California, 60 miles from Vegas, which it’s in the process of turning into a “circus settlement.” In addition, Spiegelworld operates Superfrico, the “psychedelic Italian” restaurant at Cosmo, and recently-ish opened No Pants at Caesars Palace.
We arrived on a Friday night right at 6 p.m., thinking we might have to wait in line for 20 to 30 minutes to get into the only downtown buffet, which serves dinner Fri. and Sat. nights only. Au contraire! We didn’t have to wait even 20 seconds. We just walked right up to the cashier, paid, and had plate in hand within a minute.
Despite only grossing $7.5 million last month, Horseshoe Lake Charles was the difference between an unadjusted, 6% decline in gambling revenue for Louisiana and a same-store, 10% declivity (lagging prosperous 2019 by 4%). Even so, the country’s most adverse casino state was led by L’Auberge du Lac ($27 million, -13%), enjoying a temporary edge on Golden Nugget ($26 million, -18%), although Horseshoe is taking a big chomp out of both their backsides. Delta Downs didn’t get through unscathed, either, down 12% to $14 million. The reinvention of Harrah’s New Orleans into a Caesars continues slowly, very slowly, with the casino raking in $17.5 million in July, a 23% plunge. Nobody else seems to have picked up significant business, given that Treasure Chest was off 14% to $7 million and Boomtown New Orleans faded 13% to $9 million. Fair Grounds racino grossed $3 million (-14.5%), Amelia Belle did the same (-12.5%), whilst Evangeline Downs actually went 4% higher to $6.5 million. It’s good to see somebody improving in the Bayou State.
This is a brief episode with our favorite gambling attorney Bob Nersesian. Bob is on with breaking news for professional gamblers regarding the trespass statute in Nevada.
You can reach me at [email protected], or find me on Twitter @RWM21 or @lifeisagamblepod on Threads. If you like the show please tell a friend you think might like it, or if you are really ambitious leave a review wherever you listen.
I recently posted a few blogs concerning some fine points for the strategy of 9-5 Triple Bonus Poker Plus. They discussed somewhat complicated decisions with relatively small financial impacts. After the second blog came out, a reader posted the following:
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.
Gambling revenues have been so overheated since the pandemic that some kind of market correction was overdue. The much-vaunted recession having failed to manifest itself, the gloom-and-doom crowd on Wall Street must content itself with small retreats in casino winnings. Case in point, Atlantic City. The Boardwalk was down 3% last month to $290 million—but still comfortably 5% higher than it was in July 2019, a halcyon period. The month was highlighted by a rare reversal of fortune for Ocean Casino Resort (pictured), down 6.5% to $38 million.
Overall, casinos were carried by usual suspects like Borgata ($78.5 million, up 2.5%) and Hard Rock Atlantic City ($53 million, flat) and an unusual one: Bally’s Atlantic City, up 2% to $17 million. The doghouse was occupied by Golden Nugget, down 3.5% to $14 million, though not for lacking of trying by Resorts Atlantic City, plunging 16% to $15 million. That leaves the Caesars Entertainment threesome, wherein Caesars Atlantic City ceded a percentage point to reach $25 million, just a hairsbreadth behind Harrah’s Resort ($25 million, -4.5%), while Tropicana Atlantic City tumbled 13.5%, landing at $24 million. Incidentally, Caesars has long since eliminated the volatility at its eponymous casino, whose revenues used to be as elastic as a Slinky.
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.
I’ve borrowed the late Merle Haggard’s 1981 song title to describe a conversation video poker players have heard hundreds of times. It’s often expressed as an argument where the premises go something like the following:
In this episode of the podcast, I chat with Don “The Dragon” Wilson, one of the most iconic martial artists, and action stars of the 1980s and 1990s. Don talks about his fight career, and his transition from fighter to action star.
You can reach me at [email protected], or find me on Twitter @RWM21 or @lifeisagamblepod on Threads. If you like the show please tell a friend you think might like it, or if you are really ambitious leave a review wherever you listen.
