Gamblers in New Jersey sent a very mixed message last month. They went to casinos less, bet on sports much less but hit the Internet casinos quite a bit harder. Atlantic City casinos were down 4%, grossing $203.5 million. Only three were revenue-positive. Harrah’s Resort had a rare good month, up a point to $18.5 million. Hard Rock Atlantic City hopped 2% to $42 million, while Ocean Casino Resort jumped 4% to $32.5 million.
The losers were led by (no surprise) Bally’s Atlantic City, which plunged 13.5% to $9 million. Golden Nugget tumbled 10% to $10.5 million whilst Resorts Atlantic City slid 6.5% to $11.5 million. Not a good month for the grind joints. Borgata had an adverse month, too, down 7% to $50 million. But that was nothing compared to Caesars Atlantic City‘s 15% beatdown, plummeting to $14 million. Tropicana (no need for the “Atlantic City” qualifier anymore) slipped 5% to $16 million.
iGaming was led by DraftKings, narrowly prevailing over BetMGM as punters dropped $208 million on the virtual green felt, a 14% surge. FanDuel came in third, followed in order by Caesars Palace Online, BallyBet and Hollywood Casino. Sports betting subsided 8.5% although handle was still a whopping $989 million. Books held nicely, though, with revenue up 9%. FanDuel clobbered the competition with $34 million, DraftKings faded to $20 million and BetMGM nabbed $6 million. Fanatics ($3.5 million) skunked both ESPN Bet ($1.5 million) and Caesars Sportsbook ($1 million) while BetRivers didn’t even make it across the Mendoza Line.
Faced with mounting public resistance to a casino megaresort in Irving, Lone Star State-craving Las Vegas Sands is rethinking its strategy. Evidently deployed 70-odd lobbyists to Austin was excessively subtle, so Sands is breaking out the sledgehammer: It’s resorting to blackmail. Give us the damn casino or we’ll scrap the whole project, basketball arena and all. It’s the crassest sort of brinkmanship, ham-handed in classic Adelson Family style, and is guaranteed to backfire with an already-recalcitrant Texas GOP. This kind of my-way-or-the-highway stuff didn’t work worth a damn in Florida, when Sheldon Adelson demanded a monopoly on megaresorts for himself, nor is it playing out so hot in New York State. But it’s guaranteed to make Dr. Miriam Adelson even more of a civic villain than she already is.
Opponents of the Miriam-themed megaresort have drummed up 2,600 signatures in opposition. Perhaps they are fueled by outrage at the fact that Sands is proceeding with site work as though the casino were a fait accompli. We don’t share the aversion to casinos per se, obviously, but Sands’ arrogance invites a smackdown. A reasonable objection came from local Clayton Draughon, who asked, “Why the hurry? Texas hasn’t even legalized gambling yet, it’s still up in the air. So why are we setting the precedent of rubber stamping a gambling zoning designation now, instead of waiting to see how the state will handle it?“
Sands tried to pre-empt public comments with a sky-is-falling tactic. It blasted texts to Irving-ites that shrieked, “The future of Irving is on the line,” typical Adelson hyperbole. A pro-Sands petition on Change.org, meanwhile, bombed. It scared up just 107 signatures. A town hall in Irving went no better. Sands lobbyist-in-chief Andy Abboud for once said the right things: “Everyone there was well-intentioned. People of faith. People that are morally opposed to gaming. We’re never going to try to dissuade anyone who is morally opposed to gaming.” No, you’re going to cram it down their throats instead, Andy. The casino industry has spread and flourished because it has made a practice of being a good civic neighbor. Sands is going for the bad-neighbor strategy and we serious doubt it will play. Never has before.
We don’t normally cover Kansas—not for lack of inclination but absence of reportage. However, CDC Gaming is now on the case and we can report that it was a chilly February for Sunflower State casinos, down 5%. Kansas Crossing defied the odds, hopping 4% to $3 million. Everyone else was varyingly down. Hollywood Casino, near Kansas City, fared best with $13 million (-1.5%). Kansas Star, the Boyd Gaming property, was second with $12.5 million but plunged 10%. That left remote Boot Hill Casino, off 6% to $3.5 million.
As we hinted at earlier, business is not so hot for ESPN Bet, the troubled subsidiary of Penn Entertainment. The latter looks like it’s headed for one more massive writeoff after blowing $585 million on cloacal Barstool Sports. Confronted with another set of disappointing quarterly numbers, Penn CEO Jay Snowden babbled vaguely about “levers” that would enable him to address the problem. More concretely, he said that “if for whatever reason we’re not hitting the levels that we need to, then obviously as you’re approaching that third anniversary, you have a three-year clause in the contract that both sides will have to do what’s in their best interests. And so that’s always out there.” Which means that ESPN Bet is living on borrowed time … until August of next year, to be exact. We honestly thought it would work, or at least work much better than Barstool did. But Penn has precious little to show for this once-promising venture into sports wagering. We now sympathize with those investors who say Penn should stick to its brick-and-mortar knitting.
“Tropicana (no need for the “Atlantic City” qualifier anymore)”
Tell that to ESPN. The baseball Giants left New York for San Francisco after the 1957 season, and the pompous announcers at “the network” still refer to the NFL team as “the New York football Giants”. After 67 years, I think the viewers/listeners know it’s a football team when the so-called talent refers to the New York Giants.