Formula One numbers will have to wait. The data of the day is Nevada‘s casino performance in October. It was good for the Las Vegas Strip, up 1%, but even better at the locals casinos, which rose 6% from 2022. Slot play on the Strip was fairly stagnant, with both win ($406 million) and coin-in down 1%. Table games sagged 6% to $219 million, driven by 12% less wagering. Baccarat, however, came to the rescue with $90 million won (+43%) as players wagered $589 million (+20%). Slots were tighter off the Strip, with 1.5% less coin-in still translated to win of $212 million (+5.5%). Table revenue was but $49 million, which represented a 7% increase. Statewide, casinos took in $1.3 billion, a 3% improvement.
Strip casinos grossed $714 million overall, while Downtown jumped 8% to $97.5 million. The Boulder Strip leapt 10% to $88.5 million, North Las Vegas was flat at $23 million, obviously not suffering from the subtraction of Texas Station and Fiesta Rancho. Miscellaneous Clark County banked $149.5 million (+4%) and Laughlin grossed $47.5 million (+5%). Mesquite was up 2% to $16 million. Reno jumped 9% to $70 million, Sparks slipped 7% to $15 million and Lake Tahoe dipped 3.5% to $17.5 million. Reliable economic weathervane Wendover was a mite negative last month, down 3% to $22 million (still better than Sparks or Lake Tahoe).
Sheldon “Tex” Adelson may be gone but widow Dr. Miriam Adelson has tried on his Stetson for size and found it a good fit. In her latest power play, she’s selling $2 billion of Las Vegas Sands stock, which she will roll into a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks of the NBA. Not wasting any time, Dr. Adelson hopes to close the deal by year’s end. It will be a far better investment than the Las Vegas Review-Journal has been. We’re surprised Mark Cuban would relinquish ownership of the Mavs but that shows how desperate he is to get into the casino biz with Sands. Cubes will continue to wield operational control of the team, an astute move on the Adelson family’s part. They’re smart enough not to join the ranks of ignorant billionaires who play with sports franchises like toys and almost invariably break them. (The Adelsons aren’t getting out of dabbling in politics, by the way, as the matriarch has been flirting with both Nikki Haley and Donald Trump.)
Doc Adelson’s stock won’t be traveling very far. $250 million of it will be repurchased by LVS itself, hoping to juice a share price that has been flat this year, as the market remains skeptical of the Far East. Some have taken the Adelson/Cuban alliance as a sign that casinos in Texas are just around the corner. This would be premature. They haven’t been for some time, largely on account of Sheldon and Miriam’s attempts to strong-arm the Lege. In consecutive legislative sessions they have parachuted scores of lobbyists into Austin, in an effort at carpetbagger capitalism, while Texas-born gaming moguls like Tilman Fertitta have led from the rear. Putting hundreds of millions into the Mavericks, thereby investing in the Lone Star State, finally makes them true stakeholders in the casinos-for-Texas debate. We still think the overall idea of sprinkling isolated megaresorts far across the state is cockamamie. Texas politicians should settle on one city (preferably Dallas) and put most of their eggs in that gaming basket. Speaking of which …
Tribes in the nearby Sooner State aren’t taking the Adelson/Cuban nuptials lying down. They recognize damn well the economic threat posed to them by a megaresort in Dallas and they want action from Gov. Kevin Stitt (R). Specifically, they want to be dealt in on Stitt’s attempt to bring sports betting to Oklahoma. He didn’t even offer them half a loaf, earmarking mingy retail wagering for tribes while reserving lucrative online betting for the private sector, a patently racist move (and a dick move, at that). Indian Gaming Association Executive Director Jason Giles was right on the money, so to speak, when he said that Stitt’s proposed tax rates—15% for retail, 20% for mobile—had been “pulled out of thin air.” Or perhaps from some bodily orifice.
“It’s time to be forward-thinking for once, not depend on the boom-and-bust cycle of high oil and energy prices, work out a deal, and start diversifying the economy,” Giles added, laying out an agenda that is beyond the capability of Stitt’s brain to absorb. As others pointed out, Oklahoma has a chance to steal a march on Texas, where the Lege can’t bring itself to approve sports wagering. Added Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association Chairman Matthew Morgan, “We’re not going to do anything that blows up the compact and we’re not going to do anything against our economic interest. We’re the ones that take on all the risk and make all the money here. It has to work in our benefit as well and we need to be at the table.”
Why is Stitt so hell-bent on legalizing sports betting? It could have something to do with bloodlust. The governor is an avid proponent of a barbaric “sport,” cockfighting. Let it be known from the outset that we helped rescue a rooster that had been the victim of cockfighting in Las Vegas and found him a good home. So we’ve got as much use for Stitt on animal rights as we do for something unpleasant stuck to the bottom of our shoe. The cretinous politico clearly can’t wait to put some of his money down on the spectacle of roosters tearing each other to pieces. Kudos to Wayne Pacelle and the good folks at The Center for a Humane Economy for exposing this oughta-be scandal. It even got in a good dig at Stitt’s colossal ego by describing him as “one of the nation’s most obscure governors.” Ouch!
It seems to some comparably cretinous Sooners were rallying to bring cockfighting back to the state. Too cowardly to address them in person, Stitt sent a videotaped message. “I wanted to take a moment to cheer you on from the sidelines,” he grinned. “You all know Oklahoma’s long and storied history with game fowl, from statehood to today …your work helps to make sure our game fowl traditions are instilled in our culture for decades to come. In less than two years, 15,000 Oklahomans have joined your ranks. We need to protect the nearly 5,000 game fowl farmers across Oklahoma and lift up our rural and municipal economies. I can’t wait to see what we accomplish together in the next legislative session.” Given Stitt’s sketchy record of legislative accomplishment, we’re doubtful he can achieve anything on behalf of cockfighters. But it’s the most appalling public speech from a chief executive that we’ve heard since Jan. 6, 2021.
Stitt may be spitting into the wind. Polling shows 87% of Oklahomans opposed to his barbarity on this issue. But, as Pacelle writes, “We can only hope that he doesn’t wish to bring back other 18th- and 19th-century enthusiasms, such as bullbaiting and dueling and putting people in gallows in the public square.” We’ll conclude with the words of a different Republican, ex-governor Frank Keating, who said “it is an embarrassment to me that any elected official seeks to turn back the clock on this morally settled issue … talk of decriminalizing cockfighting is toxic to the idea of economic development and forward progress for our great state.” Amen.
Quote of the Day: “This was my Diamond Elite trip and it was awful … It wasn’t F1 or that my knees are bad or the food poisoning. It’s just common at Caesars [Entertainment] properties for longtime customers to be treated poorly. In my long experience it is part of the corporate culture of Caesars to disrespect us It is management, not ‘team members’ like you that are the root of the problem. I get endless surveys asking me to rate ‘team members’ but never about concerns with management. I first went to Caesars in 1990. There were long lines and long hallways even then. The difference was that I felt like a valued customer, not like a fool caught in a crowd.”—a Caesars Palace customer who will evidently be patronizing Circa and The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas from now on.