Author: David Mckee

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Bally’s we hardly knew ye; IGT bets big on lotteries

Shares of Bally’s Corp. sprang to $36.76 apiece yesterday on the news that the company’s largest stockholder wants to take Bally’s private for $2 billion. Hedge fund Standard General—founded by Bally’s Chairman Soo Kim—is offering $38/share for the mini-major and selling the idea as a way of ameliorating risk (not that we thought of BALY as a particularly perilous play). Standard General already owns 21% of Bally’s.

Normally we would frown upon such a proposal, as private equity has a mostly disastrous record in the casino industry. However, the presence of Kim in both camps is reassuring. He put the current Bally’s management team into place and is likely to keep giving them his ear. The LBO would be financed by the sale and lease-back of unspecified assets. Jefferies Equities analyst David Katz said Bally’s would go for cheap, as the offer didn’t price in the value of the Gamesys acquisition: “With the current market context for dismissing value on North American digital opportunities, the offer is opportunistic.”

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Sports betting claims first casualty; “Scam” at Caesars?

Online sports betting has evidently proven too rich for Wynn Resorts‘ blood. The New York Post reports that Wynn “is looking to unload its online sports-betting business at a steep discount as the fledgling niche faces painful losses from stiff taxes and costly promotions needed to lure customers.” Wynn Interactive, valued at $3.2 billion, is being peddled for $500 million. This will come as bad news to Shaquille O’Neal, who unloaded his share of the Sacramento Kings in return for becoming a “brand ambassador” for Wynn, which also built a ritzy Las Vegas broadcasting studio to showcase its product. There were rumblings from the top that Wynn and OSB were an uncomfortable fit. CEO Matt Maddox had told investors, “The market is really not sustainable right now. Competitors are spending too much to get customers. And the economics are just not something that we’re going to participate in.”

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Weekends without Adele

As all of Christendom now knows, one Adele Atkins of Tottenham has been forced to cancel/reschedule 13 weeks of shows at Caesars Palace. When Adele signed for this gig, in early December, it was regarded as the showbiz coup of the year. Well, it’s still the biggest story going but not in a way that Caesars Entertainment intended. As the timeline makes obvious, Weekends with Adele was hurried into production, despite being envisioned on a scale (100 backup singers) for which the word ‘lavish’ seems inadequate. So the events of the last 72 hours should be a surprise to very few outside the Caesars C-suite. Maybe you can get away with this in Reno, but this is the big time now.

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Adele fiasco at Caesars; Trouble for Sands in Florida

Resorts World Las Vegas, we’ll see your Celine Dion health-scare postponement and raise you an Adele cancellation at Caesars Palace. The British megastar’s team has, like so much of the human race, contracted Covid-19 and is not physically capable of grinding out a Vegas residency at this point. We wish them a speedy recovery—and a contract extension. There are skeptics about the matter, asserting that the show simply wasn’t ready and that there would have been empty seats galore (we blame the greedy secondary market). Indeed, nixing 13 weekends of shows on account of Covid-19 seems an extreme reaction. Did Caesars Entertainment rush this show to market to one-up Resorts World? It kinda looks that way. Tickets sellers seem to have sensed this, judging from a precipitate, last-minute drop in prices.

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Warm breeze in Atlantic City; Indiana heats up

December brought an acceleration in most forms of New Jersey gambling revenue. Atlantic City casinos managed a 1.5% increase over the end of 2019 but sports betting revenue dropped 11% year/year, blamed on low hold. Sticking close to home, Internet gamblers lost 34% more than last year, the brightest spot on the horizon (unless you were a player). Boardwalk grosses were $212 million, i-gaming yielded an impressive $133 million and sports betting engendered $59 million. Slot revenue was flat at $150.5 million on 2% less coin-in while table games captured $59.5 million (+5%) on 10.5% less wagering. Borgata stabilized at -1% or $54 million, too late to save Melonie Johnson‘s presidency. Hard Rock Atlantic City vaulted 37% to $35.5 million while Ocean Resort climbed 27% to $26.5 million.

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Weekend jottings

Late last week, MGM Resorts International unveiled its plans for a BetMGM-branded sports book at State Farm Stadium in Arizona. No budget was announced for the facility but, given the infinitesimal amount of retail wagering in the Phoenix area, it’s a prestige facility—i.e., a loss-leader. If completed on schedule, it will be the first sports book at an NFL stadium. Like the cost, specific infrastructural details were mostly vague … “massive video wall,” yada, yada, yada. (OK, if you read the fine print, it says 38 TVs spread over 265 square feet.) The book will hold 500 people, have 25-plus freestanding betting kiosks and cover 16,800 square feet. It will be a year-round, day-in/day-out sports book, although it’s an open question over whether that will trump the convenience of online betting. But hey, it looks great:

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Illinois slouches; Boyd, Churchill praised; DraftKings assessed

Not even Rivers Casino Des Plaines was spared the impact of Hard Rock Rockford, as the newbie helped take a 4.5% bite out of Rivers’ December casino revenues compared to 2019, for a Des Plaines gross of $43 million, still easily the best in the state. Prairie State casinos grossed $110 million, down 12% from two years ago. Without the Hard Rock infusion, those numbers would have been worse still (-15%). The latter brought in $4 million, as did Bally’s Quad Cities (-25%), while Argosy Belle clung jealously to last place with $2.5 million (-35.5%). Other than Rivers, Grand Victoria suffered less than most, down 8% to $13 million. Business was not so kind to its sister properties, with Harrah’s Joliet off 27% to $11 million and Harrah’s Metropolis down 22% to $5 million.

Penn National Gaming wasn’t much more fortunate upstate than in Alton. Its Empress Joliet plunged 26% to $7 million and Hollywood Aurora slipped 13.5% to $9 million. Boyd Gaming‘s mid-state Par-A-Dice was down 14% to $5 million and DraftKings Casino Queen plummeted 30.5% to $6 million. God help ’em when the wave of temporary casinos fully comes online—let alone if the Lege legalizes i-gaming. Perhaps the winningest operator in the Land of Lincoln is MGM Resorts International, which had the good sense to get the hell out.

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Ohio, Missouri booming; Of sports and sports betting

Scarcely had Deutsche Bank analyst Carlo Santarelli projected 12% gaming growth in Ohio over December 2019 than the numbers came in and it was 16%. The $197 million gross showed play heating up from November, too. Slot revenue was up 17.5% on 18.5% more coin-in and table win grew 8.5% on 6.5% heavier wagering. One extra weekend day obviously helped, but still … Belterra Park was up 5% to $8 million, Scioto Downs leapt 21% to $19 million and Miami Valley Gaming hopped 19% to $19 million. MGM Northfield Park clung to the top spot, just barely, with $23 million (+3.5%). It was closely contested by Hollywood Columbus ($22 million, +12.5%) and Jack Cleveland (pictured, ditto). Also bunched at the summit were Hard Rock Cincinnati ($21 million, +18%) and Hollywood Toledo ($20 million, +12.5%). Jack Thistledown catapulted 37% to $17 million, Hollywood Dayton leapt 34% to $13.5 million and Hollywood Mahoning Valley was good for $13 million, an 18% gain.

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Meet the new National Harbor boss, same as the old boss

Maryland closed out 2021 hot, up 16% from 2019 with a gross of $173 million in December. As usual, MGM National Harbor was in the lead with $74.5 million. Maryland Live booked $62.5 million for a 20.5% gain and 36% market share. Hollywood Perryville‘s $7 million represented an 18.5% vault and Ocean Downs‘ $7 million was good for a 19% leap. Rocky Gap Resort grossed $5 million, up 18%. The only loser was—you guessed it—Horseshoe Baltimore—down 9% to $17 million.

MGM employees can expect to see a familiar face in the C-suite. Borgata President Melonie Johnson has been demoted to her former post in Maryland, where she’ll return to the challenge of fending off hard-charging Cordish Gaming. We don’t mean to indulge in schadenfreude by saying we sensed something like this coming. (“Guess she’s finished reducing player’s benefits in AC,” wrote one wag.) Borgata has been struggling of late, despite being at the top of the Atlantic City heap, and November’s calamitous numbers must have been the last straw for MGM Resorts International.

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Doldrums in Macao; “Love” in jeopardy; Mega-Jottings

There’s an Eeyore sweatshirt that says, “Could be worse. Not sure how, but it could be.” That pretty much sums up the situation in Macao, which finished 2021 44% ahead of 2020 when it comes to gambling revenue … but could one envision a worse scenario than 2020? Not sure how, but we could. The world’s gambling capital managed almost $11 billion in revenue last year, Las Vegas-like numbers but we have come to expect so much more. Of course, it’s difficult to open the throttle on Macao given the Chinese government’s newfound disapproval of gaming, and its habit of dialing access to the casino enclave up and down like the burners on a stove.

Then there’s the matter of concession renewals, which seem like a done deal but still have their skeptics, like Jefferies analyst David Katz, who cited “uncertainty” surrounding the concessions, leading him to take “a conservative stance” on Macao-centric stocks. Indeed, the market has punished stocks that are heavily reliant on Macanese casinos. Las Vegas Sands has fallen 35%, Wynn Resorts 20%. Galaxy Entertainment took a 33% bath and Melco Resorts & Entertainment got walloped 43%. “China Lite” MGM Resorts International, however, made out like a bandit, seeing its share price vault 51%.

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