It’s the easiest thing in the world to build a casino megaresort if you don’t plan on paying for it. We learned that from Sheldon Adelson, who erected The Venetian out of other people’s pockets. By dint of releasing a new rendering of failsino Bally’s Las Vegas, Chairman Soo Kim scored himself a great deal of free media last weekend. The deck chairs on the Titanic have been duly rearranged.
Even Howard Stutz was too polite to ask the obvious query, “Using WHAT for money?” Neither he nor a fawning Las Vegas Review-Journal scribe popped the question, even though Bally’s is too hard up for credit to pay for its eponymous megaresort in Chicago, let alone Bally’s New York, which goes before its Community Advisory Committee today. Perhaps Kim’s sudden loquacity was prompted by a previous Stutz story, one that pointed out the all-hat, no-cattle status of the Las Vegas project. Kim seems to be assuming that Gaming & Leisure Properties will pick up the tab, but the relationship between the two has been cooling for a while. At the most recent GLPI earnings call, CEO Peter Carlino said the REIT would “determine how much, if any, additional funding we may provide to support the construction.” (Emphasis added)
GLPI is emphatically, deliberately not in the casino-building business and its having to bail out Bally’s Chicago (even to extent of supervising construction) is surely what’s been responsible for the chillier temperature between the two firms. The thought of having to constantly underwrite Kim whilst he takes all the credit is perhaps galling to Carlino. The former has said nothing of how he’s going to finance Sin City development (and he probably doesn’t intend to) and precious little about how he’s going to do it in New York City either. Bally’s recently sold a Rhode Island casino for $735 million, money that has been earmarked for paying down debt. The feckless Kim is going to need some generous lenders, because Bally’s is but tepidly liquid.
As for the newest rendering, it’s an improvement on the previous one (above) but it’s still an architectural clusterfuck. Jimmying a baseball stadium (for a team that may be staying in Sacramento after all) has compromised everything else. The construction will belly right up to the sidewalks, with medium-rise buildings obscuring street-level views of the ballpark. A penile video marquee remains, in spite of Bally’s difficulty in getting it up financially.
However, Kim has learned to play the Las Vegas media like a harp, as the release of one measly rendering and some vague promises has been enough to motivate a hosanna chorus of worshipful coverage. No one even seems to have queried Kim’s preposterous assertion that he could—by dint of the dreaded soft opening—have Bally’s LV up and running before the start of the 2028 baseball season … despite being half a year behind the stadium in the construction process. Tell us another one, Soo.
Kim’s business plan is to dribble the megaresort onto the market in phases (hardly an augury of success), leading with retail and dining, casino to follow. Or, as he put it to Stutz, “It’s not lost upon me that 75 percent of Vegas revenues are non-gaming.” Or: We don’t need no stinkin’ casino. The next act in this kabuki theatre will be for Kim to name an operator for his vaporware showroom. Expect compliant media to slurp that one up, too.
There seems to be no existential crisis from which Big Gaming cannot extract a silver lining, be it 9/11 or Covid-19. The industry is using Las Vegas‘ current economic tailspin to screw its employees. The newest, insidious stratagem is put workers “on call” and then leave them there until the cows come home. They can’t quit and they can’t draw unemployment benefits either. It’s diabolical. One brave Caesars Entertainment vassal went on the record as saying she’s on standby for two months without drawing a shift. As far as the C-Suite is concerned, her bills will just pay themselves. This seems to be Big Gaming’s fiendish payback for having to fork over George salaries and benefits in the last collective-bargaining agreement.
As Moneywise explains, “Scheduling practices also affect benefits. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), employees who average 30 hours a week may qualify as full time and gain access to health coverage [3]. But employers often use ‘measurement periods’ to decide who’s eligible.” The casino industry seems to have picked up this idea from race-to-the-bottom champion Walmart, which is a dire indicator of where Big Gaming is headed. The irony is that this is apparently scaring potential workers away from the industry, with good reason. As wannabe casino employee Kimberly Antes told Moneywise, “they laid off 5 of the regular servers. Therefore, she’s now pushed all the way down to the bottom of the list, has not worked in 3.5 weeks.” It wouldn’t be the first time the industry has amputated its nose to spite its face.
Gridiron Grumbles: Our condolences to the Las Vegas Raiders, who lost a heartbreaker to the Chicago Bears. The latter blocked the Raiders’ almost-game-winning field goal attempt, securing their 800th franchise win and sending the Silver & Black to 1-3. Since the Indianapolis Colts are next, it doesn’t get any easier for the Raiders. The loss came at a bad moment, as the division-leading San Diego Chargers had fallen to the lowly New York Giants, and the Kansas City Chiefs looked like their 2023 selves, snapping out of a funk to clobber the Baltimore Ravens and climb past the Raiders in the division. Speaking of which …
Ravens coach John Harbaugh needs surgery to remove his swollen ego, which had the birds going for it on fourth down deep in their own territory, not once but twice and failing both times. The second gambit came at the Ravens’ own 24-yard line, a bonehead move that spelled points for K.C. The game was already a lost cause but Harbaugh just had to go for it, even as his players were dropping like flies. And congratulations to any prescient bettor who picked the Green Bay Packers/Dallas Cowboys game to end in a high-scoring tie. The sports books surely made out like bandits on that one.
First, as I have said before, the stadium and the rest will not be built by Bally’s. They will be forced to sell when they default on the rent. Besides that, the A’s nor Bally’s has the money to finish the stadium, much less the entire project. Soon, the entire project will become a dead eyesore on the corner until someone comes in to save it. The video marquee getting it up thing is really funny. And true.
I have 2 friends that work for casinos in LV, both are on “standby” or “on call”. One has 16 years seniority the other has 4, and both are getting, maybe, one shift a week. They both said it was rampant. You do not work, and cannot collect unemployment without getting fired or laid off. That law needs to be changed to hours worked per week, not if you are fired or not. And both are worried they will lose their benefits, besides not being able to pay the rent. I thought labor laws stated that standby or on call, where you had to be ready to work at a moments notice, had to be paid for at minimum wage.