Given that Oakland is well and truly fed up with the sorry Oakland Athletics, and with their pinchpenny ways, relocation to Las Vegas may be just what the doctor ordered. However, the manner in which the exit ramp is being greased is somewhat offensive, if not unethical. We’ve long said that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has had his thumb on the scale in favor of Sin City. Well, he’s gone from just a thumb to putting his whole fist on the scale, by dint of offering to waive the mandatory relocation fee if the A’s move to Vegas—and Vegas only. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars saved by miserly A’s management and a lot of diñero that won’t be disbursed among other franchises.
Mind you, the Athletics are not drawing a league-low 8,358 fans per game because they’re in Oakland or even in the remnants of what used to be one of the best ballparks in the game. No, they’re making squat because ownership insists on fielding one shitty team after another, all in the sacred name of “Moneyball,” which sportswriters slurp but which never, ever brought anyone a World Series ring. Meanwhile, A’s bosses continue to play footise with the Vegas Valley real estate market. They’ve got their choice of sites down to two on or very near the Las Vegas Strip, which will be a traffic nightmare just waiting to happen. (They were offered free land in Summerlin but perversely chose not to take it.) Whether it’s Days Inn at Wild Wild West or the aging Tropicana, somebody’s casino is almost certain to bite the dust as Las Vegas evolves into a major-league mecca.
“2021 should have been a banner year for American workers,” reports Popular Information. How come? Try a nearly 6% increase in the GDP, the most since the height of the Reagan administration. Or maybe a precipitous fall in unemployment to below 4%. Even wages inched up 4.5%. But inflation more than devoured that. Why wasn’t this newfound prosperity trickling down to the working class? CEO greed, for starters. The Institute for Policy Studies has poked into the matter and found that companies to chose to fork over big bucks to top management rather than share the wealth. (Yes, Big Gaming, we’re looking at you, too.) Per the IPS, the 300 U.S. companies with lowest median wages also saw the biggest markups in CEO pay, from $2.5 million to $10.5 million. A fine way to reward the workforce that sacrificed so you could make it through the Great Pandemic.
Those employees eked out a $3,556/year pay increase to reach a still-penurious average of $23,968. Is it any wonder that Unite-Here and the Culinary Union are riled up at chintzy managerial practices in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, still the two best domestic markets for gaming? Not only do casino companies brag on earnings calls about running with skeletal workforces, they’ve not been shy about putting their money into stock buybacks, their top priority at the moment. (Allowing for stock-based compensation, this is a back-door method of inflating executive pay still further.) As New York Times reporter David Gelles writes, during the “past 40-plus years we’ve been living in this era of shareholder primacy [in which] the gap between worker pay and productivity kept growing wider.” If you’re working for a company with only a 100-to-1 disparity between CEO compensation and average worker salary, you’re lucky. Here’s hoping casino workers in Atlantic City bend the bosses to their will. It’s only their due and maybe not even that.
While on the subject of Big Gaming B.S., research firm C3 Gaming—normally an industry mouthpiece—has studied the subject of smoking in casinos and concluded that the notion of smoking as the lifeblood of gambling is old hat. According to C3, the research was done on its own dime and not at the behest of any interest group. It crunched the numbers of smoke-free and smoking casinos during the pandemic and found little difference. Or, to put it another way, “In fact, non-smoking properties appear to be performing better than their counterparts that continue to allow smoking.” Having been exposed to smokeless casino air during the Covid-19 rampage, customers liked the experience and are unwilling to give it up to palliate a nicotine-addicted few. “The pandemic has had a profound effect on consumer attitudes and behaviors across a wide range of industries, including casinos and casino-hotels, and customers have come to accept certain changes once thought unthinkable,” as C3 put it.
C3’s findings were ratified in Indian Country, where 157 casinos have gone smokeless without untoward effect. Even MGM GameSense made an oblique statement that can be read as favoring smoke-free environments, noting that the gambler who has to step outside to pleasure himself has the chance to think over his gambling habits. Player advocate John L. Smith was quick to pounce on the C3 findings, particularly as regards Nevada‘s smoke-happy status quo, opining that “I suspect it has a little to do with tradition and a lot to do with competition.” He noted that virtually the only response to smoking’s unpopularity is to hype bigger and better HVAC systems, as though this were the definitive be-all and end-all to the problem. Even someone as industry-friendly as publisher Roger Gros has been out front and vocal on the topic, noting how insupportable Big Gaming’s position is, especially with the increased maintenance costs and depreciation caused by maintaining a smoke-ridden environment.
Adds C3, “It was also known that a slot machine in a smoking area generated more money than a machine in a non-smoking area. In fact, there is not a slot director in the industry that would have refuted that statement prior to the pandemic. Electronic gaming devices in non-smoking areas have consistently underperformed compared to machines located in smoking areas. What is never mentioned are some of the underlying factors, including the mix of games found in non-smoking areas, their location of non-smoking areas within the casino, and their general lack of energy compared to gaming areas in the center of the casino.” State governments can—and in New Jersey probably will—take the matter into their own hands. But how much better would it be if the industry came into the 21st century of its own accord, instead of sacrificing employee health on the altar of the almighty dollar?
Jottings: Predictably, Macao‘s new gaming laws were a “done deal.” The six concessionaires sang a pro forma chorus of praise. That was overshadowed by a near-total lockdown of visitation to the city although casinos, nonsensically, remained open. Trying to support Macao’s gambling industry off locals play is a loss leader on the face of it. Warned Sanford C. Bernstein analysts, “Visitation into the city will be severely limited—perhaps being almost completely blocked—and revenues are set to plummet close to zero for at least the next week, and quite likely several weeks.” … They may have been physically removed from office but the Okada Manila board of directors isn’t going quietly. It has frozen the casino’s bank account … Kansas sports betting becomes legal on July 1 but implementation may not be possible until after football season. Ouch … Fearing an electoral backlash, politicians in Brazil have tabled a vote on legalized gambling until after the next plebiscite … Registration for Global Gaming Expo is now open. Attending it is quite another matter. The cheapest red-eye flight into Las Vegas is $1,100. Oy vey! … Contributing its tradition of generosity to the Vegas community, new-look Palms Casino Resort has disbursed $150,000 to local charities that include Opportunity Village and Las Vegas Indian Center. Keep up the good work, Palms … Despite the heavy taxes they pay in New York State, gaming companies have decided to dance with the gal that brung them, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D). Oddsmakers give Hochul a 94% chance of being elected in November, and MGM Resorts International, Genting Group, Rush Street Gaming, Wynn Resorts, Hard Rock International, Bally’s Corp. and even GOP-friendly Las Vegas Sands have swung into line (although Sands only ponied up a token $5K). All of them seek a New York City casino and clearly have seen the handwriting on the wall. The most george donor is Tioga Downs owner Jeff Gural, in for $47,500 to date.
Quote of the Day: “No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.”—author Alice Walker
I recently read an article in The Atlantic by Caitlin Flanagan called Sheryl Sandberg and the Crackling Hellfire of Corporate America. Here is part of it:
Today’s young people people have been forced to learn the old lesson, because they are inheritors of 40 years of corporate greed, private equity’s smash and grab, bank deregulation, and the collusion of the very rich and the US government to squeeze every penny it can from the middle class and move it into the counting houses of billionaires. They know the game isn’t rigged against them; they know the game was lost long before they were born. Corporations are now faced with labor shortages, and there are rumblings from the owner class about the demise of the of the great American work ethic. But corporations are the ones who killed it.