The fix was in

That $10K which Resorts World Las Vegas donated to Joe Lombardo‘s gubernatorial campaign in 2022 was money well spent. It might be the best investment Resorts World LV ever made. How else to explain the incredibly lenient penalty handed down to Resorts World after it got caught laundering money and consorting with criminals? If the Lombardo administration wanted to go easy on Genting Group, the Nevada Gaming Control Board sure obliged.

After misdeeds for which Genting could have—and probably should have—lost its license, it will be fined a mere $10.5 million. Defenders of the Control Board will say that it’s the second-largest fine levied in Nevada history and they’d be right. But it falls almost 100% short of the $20 million levied against Wynn Resorts (plus another $10 million extracted from Steve Wynn himself) for its culture of sexual harassment in the C-Suite. Without excusing the latter, we’d say the message the NGCB is sending this weekend is that breaking the law is bad but fondling your secretary is much, much worse. Also, the disclosure of the fine was snuck out at the end of the weekly news cycle, as though out of embarrassment.

To give the devil its due, the Las Vegas Review-Journal had an excellent breakdown of the calamity, including the steeplechase of remedial actions that, to its credit, the NGCB is going make Resorts World take for the next five years. If “compliance” hasn’t been a watchword at the gilded Malaysian megaresort, it will be now. So there’s that. However, there’s no denying that Genting played the NGCB like a Stradivarius. After the Control Board penalty phase became known, Genting began going public with Resort World’s anemic financial performance, essentially pleading poverty. (Last quarter, the megaresort generated no return on investment.) That was sure to put a scare into Silver State regulators, who live in fear that they’ll cause a casino to close.

Genting also ostentatiously brandished it’s (not so) new broom, Jim Murren. Never mind that it was on Murren’s watch at MGM Resorts International that scummy Scott Sibella was initially allowed to run riot, before doing the same thing at Resorts World. But Murren and his crew of former MGM colleagues were intended to disarm the NGCB and that they did. The jury’s barely out on new CEO Alex Dixon and his team but at least they’ll be operating on a much shorter leash than Sibella ruinously did. (Like the worm that he is, Sibella took no responsibility for the Resorts World verdict, pointing the finger at other casinos in town.)

Still, $10.5 million is walking-around money for a multinational conglomerate like Genting. If the NGCB really wanted to deter the next generation of Sibellas, it would have opted for much harsher penalties than writing a big-ass check to the State of Nevada. And don’t for a moment think that Genting won’t whinge and beg the Nevada Gaming Commission to fine them even less. The one encouraging thing in all this mess is that the Commission recently took the unusual step of rejecting a lenient NGCB settlement with bagwoman Nicole Bowyer, who was actually on the Resorts World payroll while hubby was gambling there with his ill-gotten gains.

As the initial Control Board report said (before it was watered down), “Resorts World allowed a culture to exist at its gaming establishment where individuals with suspected and actual ties to illegal bookmaking, with histories of federal felony convictions related to illegal gambling businesses and with a history of ties to organized crime are welcomed at Resorts World, provided comps, gifts and discounts in an effort to obtain their business and allowed to wager and lose substantial sums of money at Resorts World.” Sounds like an outlaw culture to us and one about which Nevadans should be alarmed.

While casinos in the rest of the country are in the crapper, Louisiana was enjoying a belated burst of success in February and was on the upswing. Pelican State casinos grossed $198 million, up 2% from last year, if still 2% shy of 2019. Deutsche Bank analyst Joseph Greff was inclined to credit new product in the New Orleans area for the uptick and who are we to argue? Let’s go to the numbers.

Powered by Super Bowl proximity, Caesars New Orleans shot up 29% to $30.5 million, while newish Treasure Chest rocketed 81.5% to $12.5 million. Others lost ground. Boomtown New Orleans slipped 7% to $10 million while Fair Grounds racino dipped 2% to $3.5 million. Amelie Belle ceded 9.5% to $2.5 million whilst outlying Evangeline Downs was down 4% to $6 million. In bustling Lake Charles, everybody was OK except Delta Downs, down 7% to $13 million. Horseshoe Lake Charles had an aberrant good month, hopping 11% to $7 million. Golden Nugget was flat $25 million, just nosing out L’Auberge du Lac, also flat at $24.5 million.

You’d think decrepit Belle of Baton Rouge would have no farther to fall but it slid 19.5% to half a million bucks. Sister property Queen Casino, meanwhile, leapt 15% to $8 million while L’Auberge Baton Rouge slipped 7.5% to $14 million. Up in Shreveport/Bossier City, everybody took a dive. Margaritaville fell 12% to $14.5 million, as Horseshoe Bossier carmoned 18.5% to $8.5 million. Even the good luck of Louisiana Downs ran out, as it plunged 28% to $3 million. Boomtown Bossier slid 11.5% to $3.5 million and Sam’s Town tumbled 14% to $3 million, as Bally’s Shreveport dropped 12% to $8 million.

Things ran true to form in Massachusetts, where gambling grossed dipped 7% to $93.5 million. By contrast, sports betting handle jumped 17% to $618.5 million, for a 26% gain in sports book winnings or $67 million. Of course Encore Boston Harbor led all comers with $59 million, an 8% stumble. Plainridge Park stood even with $13 million (you’ve got to admit Penn Entertainment has hung in really well there) and MGM Springfield dove 9% with $21 million, driven by poor table game play, which is down 16% from February 23 and 44% from 2019. In OSB, DraftKIngs stomped everyone with $37 million won, as compared to FanDuel‘s $19.5 million and BetMGM‘s $5 million. Caesars Sportsbook fell below our Mendoza Line, ESPN Bet garnered a mingy $1.5 million and Fanatics continued to surprise with $3 million.

He hates to deal with investors, by his own admission, but Bally’s Corp. Chairman Soo Kim may find them preferable to potential customers. If Kim wasn’t tarred, feathered and run out of the Bronx on a rail last night, it was darn close. The feckless mogul got shouted down and heckled when he tried to champion his casino plan for the Bally’s Links site. It hasn’t been reported whether anybody asked Kim how he planned to finance a $4 billion (Ha!) casino. Bally’s Chicago costs a fraction of that and Kim can’t pay for it either. He’s dancing as fast as he can, in lieu of having an exit strategy. Anyway, his presentation failed to impress the Bronx Community Board, who ashcanned it 29-5. There are still as many as five more chances for Kim to get this quixotic venture revived (including by New York Mayor Eric Adams [R]), although it would be a real screw-you to the community board if its input were dismissed.