Poor Soo Kim. The Bally’s Corp. chairman is finding rough sledding in the Bronx, where his quest for a megaresort is colliding with political reality. Fortunately for him, Kim has gotten the ear of the media, which has been regurgitating uncritically his claim that his project is languishing because of a trail of gold-plated breadcrumbs that lead all the way to the White House. In case you missed it, the fine print on Kim’s $60 million purchase of the former Trump Links in the borough included the codicil that—should a casino be approved on the site—it would be retroactively revalued at $175 million. (Bet you wish you could get that sort of sweetheart deal when you sell your house.)
The extra $115 million takes the form of a kickback, payable to one Donald J. Trump, address 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This greasy gratuity has added a flatulent whiff of scandal to Kim’s bid. It’s not every casino proposal that comes with presidential payola attached. Ergo, Kim is using this as his excuse for not having his ducks in a row in New York City. To give the wannabe Devil his due, Kim has found a handy sock puppet in the form of Casino.org correspondent Devin O’Connor, who serves up Kim’s spin at face value. Noting that the rezoning of Steve Cohen‘s Citi Field acreage has passed through the New York State Lege, O’Connor whimpers, “Kim hasn’t yet been so fortunate to receive government approval to allow his casino vision to come into focus.” (Maybe the fact that the “casino vision” is apparently out of focus isn’t helping Kim’s case.)
O’Connor is evidently piqued that Bronx City Council President Adrienne Adams (above) nixed a vote on rezoning Bally’s Links. For good measure, he follows with this jaw-dropping paragraph: “NYC councilors receive an annual salary of $148,500. As council speaker, Adams is paid more at $164,500. State lawmakers in Albany are paid $142K per year.” What, one might ask, does have to do with the price of tea in the Five Boroughs? Why not just doxx Adams for good measure? Whatever she makes, it’s chump change next to what Kim and his executive team are pulling down. Whoever’s getting rich off Bally’s Golf Links, it’s not the city council.
For an illuminating contrast, turn to the much more nuanced coverage in the New York Post, which actually strove to be fair and balanced. It lent air to Kim’s whining about political discrimination (a prepackaged excuse for not getting a casino concession, it seems to us). Post sources then alleged that “Bally’s has been slow-footed in lobbying members to woo support for their project and lacks the necessary votes at this time to bring the measure to a vote.” Given how distracted Bally’s has been of late, with Kim haring off to Australia to buy a chunk of Star Entertainment (plus doing damage control on troubled Bally’s Chicago), this has the ring of plausibility. Besides, is anybody for Bally’s doing the heavy lifting necessary to win over the Bronx City Council, let alone the Lege, which would have to sign off on the redesignation of a private golf as parkland? Kim is notoriously unfocused, and he has sidelined CEO Robeson Reaves and President George Papanier, the ostensible public faces of Bally’s. Sweeping its implied red ink under the rug, Bally’s has canceled its last two quarterly earnings calls. This is a company running scared. But we digress …
Before the golf course is “alienated” as a park, the Bronx has to get the Lege to vote through a “home rule” provision, THEN vote on the links. And this all has to be done by June 28 or Bally’s won’t even get considered for a casino license. Still, Kim seems to be trying to put his cart before Adams’ horse (home rule). In politics, admittedly, it’s who you and who your friends are, and Kim’s sense of realpolitik can perhaps be faulted. Snuggling up to someone as toxic in New York as Trump was bound to incur ill feeling and Kim would have been naive to think otherwise. (We’re not ruling out naiveté, however). Still, according to the Post, at least one Democrat in the state Senate thinks $115 million would be a small price to get Trump out of their hair once and for all.
Lost in all the discussion is Bally’s Links lack of curb appeal. It sits right across from the Throggs Neck Houses, which Rep. Ritchie Torres (D) describes as “a crumbling public housing project among vermin, lead, and mold.” (Torres would know: He grew up there.) You have to hand it to Team Trump. They pegged Kim as the mark he was and took him for nearly everything his company was worth. However, given all the obstacles between Bally’s and a Gotham casino, POTUS would do well not to start counting his bonus just yet.
From realpolitik to realism. On his way out (by choice) as CEO of Las Vegas Sands, Rob Goldstein has some choice things to say about China and doing business there. Not criticisms but rather lamentations. He finds that $28 billion a year is about all Macao is good for, at least for the foreseeable future. (That number throws the late Sheldon Adelson‘s hallucinatory ‘Texas is a $12 billion-a-year market’ rhetoric into a harsh light.) Visitation to Macao, he says, keeps increasing—and spending is decreasing. “We had, I had, a false belief a couple of years ago that Macao would just keep moving up into the 30s and beyond and I think it’s a couple of factors. They include consumer sentiment—obviously global economic issues and tariffs don’t help—but there are other factors too,” Goldstein confessed.
“Long-term I still believe Macao will be $32 billion to $34 billion [a year] but it’s not happening imminently, it’s not happening today or tomorrow, and we are kind of struggling in Macao with visitation having recovered while spend has not,” Goldstein sighed. He even admitted that the competition was outperforming Sands. In the meantime, he’s pinning his hopes on the “inevitable power” of China’s economy.
He blamed the rise of iGaming (OK, we’re a bit skeptical but we’ll give him that one), Covid-19′s decimation of revenues and tourism, and the near-annihilation of the all-important junket business. At least Sands’ China-facing butt is covered by being mostly reliant on mass-market gamblers, although Goldstein seems to rue that orientation. (It’s kinda hard to be selective about your customer base when you make a habit of building gargantuan casinos—and Venetian Macao is the world’s most mammoth.) Alas, nobody seems to have queried Goldstein about Sands’ $400 million calamity in New York City (it seems DraftKings has declined to bail them out, too), nor the state of affairs in Texas, nor even Sands’ club-footed attempt to pack the Irving City Council. In the latter instance, two Sands-funded candidates were defeated and a third must survive a runoff, despite a heavy financial advantage.
We’ll move on with these sage words from the CEO: “I believe if you don’t have a relationship with China and the U.S. working together, the world economy suffers. We all suffer. This ridiculous idea that we’re going to exist on our own is insane. We’ve got to have trade and we’ve got to have a relationship with China and a relationship with the world. It can’t be America only or China only.” Amen, brother Goldstein.
Whoops. Legacy media outlets are ignoring the story but MGM Resorts International has stepped in it again. Aria is using some of its table felt to advertise crypto-only iGaming site PokerTilt. Trouble is, PokerTilt isn’t licensed to operate in the United States. And it competes (illegally) with BetMGM. See the problem? Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman Kirk Hendrick doesn’t. When ace reporter Dana Gentry caught MGM red-handed, Hendrick preferred to look the other way. He sniffed that the NGCB’s rule book does “not specifically address what types of advertising are allowed by those approved to participate in Nevada’s gaming industry.” That’s a big-ass loophole that MGM is sure to exploit, as it already has done.
Hendrick might want to look up—as Gentry did—the Nevada Revised Statute that says it’s against the law for “failure to conduct advertising and public relations activities in accordance with decency, dignity, good taste, honesty and inoffensiveness, including, but not limited to, advertising that is false or materially misleading.” Sounds like MGM has been caught red-handed. (The company did not offer any defense when the Nevada Current came calling, preferring to run and hide. Former MGM spokesman Alan Feldman was anything but circumspect, saying, “What you’re talking about sounds more sloppy than anything that would require a regulator to get involved.”
Seriously. Somebody in a position of responsibility at Aria (if not a whole bunch of someones) had to know about this sleazy promotion and approve it. We know Hendrick is out the door in June and no longer pretends to give a damn. But the Control Board needs to get off its overpaid ass and do something. Why even have regulators?