Question of the Day - 03 December 2018

For starters, there’s a big difference between an independent website like ours and a major news organization. When the Wall Street Journal comes calling, most casino companies, especially publicly traded ones, have more than a little incentive to respond, if only to spin things their way. 

There's also a difference between comments for the record and off the record. From time to time, we hear something from someone, but we're asked not to attribute it or even repeat it uncited.

In addition, since we're a consumer-oriented publication that isn't beholden to the casino industry and its huge advertising budgets, we can tell it like it is. Obviously, that can set up a somewhat antagonistic relationship with casinos we expose for one reason or another, which in turn renders them reticent to cooperate with us.

And personality conflicts always come into play, especially in a company town like this one. Some old-timers just don't like other old-timers, especially on different sides of the fence, so they don't bother to respond. Or brand-new PR people don't know who we are, so we wind up in the email trash.    

But mainly, it's a company-by-company thing. Boyd Gaming answers almost everything we ask them, usually in copious detail and as quickly as possible.

MGM Resorts also deals from a clean deck.

Wynn Resorts isn’t a Chatty Cathy, but depending on which PR person you reach, can usually be counted on for an answer.

Sands is pretty curt with the press, but answers about half of our questions, we reckon.

Caesars Entertainment can be frustrating to deal with at times (sorry, Caesars), largely a function of its PR operation being divided up into myriad “pods.” An upcoming QoD about Cocktail Cabaret at Cleopatra’s Barge, for example, got bounced from pod to pod before landing with a Florida public-relations firm.

Then there are those that never speak at all. We’ve never had anything but positive things to say about the Cosmopolitan since new ownership took over, yet it clings to a stony-silence policy. We saw in a recent QoD how Casino Royale remains mum for all questions. 

At least there’s one Sphinx-like figure with whom we no longer have to deal. When Colony Capital was running several casinos (including the Las Vegas Hilton) straight into the ground, it directed all media queries to a sourpuss named ... well, it doesn't matter now. But no matter what the question, “No comment” was all he had to say. It never made sense to us why Colony was paying this PR flak the big bucks to perform a task a parrot could handle. But few of Colony’s business decisions made sense either. It’s not just happenstance that it’s out of the casino business.