Why on earth is the New York Post carrying water for Steve Cohen and his Metropolitan Park megaresort? It’s a done deal and hardly needs any special pleading. Some of the Post‘s coverage of the New York City casino derby has been excellent. However, that hardly applies to a recent editorial, masquerading as “news” coverage. It was a bizarre—and more that a little bit racist—take on what is otherwise old news.
Continue reading Selective Outrage in NYC; Inaction in Jersey
Delegating its CFO and vice president of investor relations, Churchill Downs packed them off to Boston to meet with J.P. Morgan stock analysts. The company is feeling high as a kite about Kentucky Derby prospects, to the point where it provided first-ever revenue guidance on the event: as much as $20 million in cash flow. Half of that reflects a deal with NBC to carry the race in prime time. “While there’s minimal downside risk to the low end, upside to the high end could come from wagering growth,” predicted analyst Daniel Politzer. Normal weather—unlike last year—would help, too.
Continue reading Visiting with Wall Street
For the past year, the bow planes of the U.S.S. Las Vegas Strip have been locked in “dive.” Well, Big Gaming may have finally scraped bottom and started back upward. February saw less than a 1% uptick in Las Vegas Strip winnings, but an uptick all the same. Strip casinos grossed $696 million, while it was Downtown‘s turn for malaise, down 4% to $70 million … despite the valiant efforts of Derek Stevens, who brought 15,000 Canadians back into the fold with his creative “At Par” promotion.
Continue reading Strip’s Dead-Cat Bounce
Nothing sends those two twin vermin, Kalshi and Polymarket, scuttling to their rat holes like the threat of congressional action. In case you missed it, Sens. John Curtis (R) and Adam Schiff (D) have introduced a bill to get prediction markets the hell out of sports betting. Evidently sensing the seriousness of the moment, Kalshi and Polymarket promptly announced that they were going to put safeguards in place to ban insider trading. This is unlikely to satisfy the Senate’s bipartisan duo (we hope it doesn’t), but it shows how out of control event-contract wagering has become.
Continue reading Rats Cornered; Sherrill Finks Out
Why is that man smiling? Well, he’s probably contemplating the profit margin on $50 pizzas and $13 Snickers bars, among other MGM Resorts International affronts to decency. To be fair to CEO Bill Hornbuckle, not all the pizzas at MGM Grand are $50. Some sell for as little as $47.95. And people in the industry wonder why the Las Vegas Strip is struggling.
Continue reading Grinning Bandits
Casino revenues were flat overall last month in Atlantic City, which grossed $203 million in the aggregate. The one really dramatic shift involved Hard Rock Atlantic City and Ocean Casino Resort. The former plunged 14% to $36 million, right in striking distance of Ocean, which surged 9.5% to $35.5 million. Borgata, meanwhile, jumped 7.5% to $53.5 million. What ails Hard Rock, we wonder? In the middle tier (i.e., Caesars Country), Harrah’s Resort fell 8.5% to $17 million, Caesars Atlantic City hopped 3.5% to $14.5 million and Tropicana Atlantic City was flat at $16 million. Bally’s Atlantic City jealously guarded last place ($10 million) despite a 6.5% bounce, while Golden Nugget was a few dimes ahead of it, also grossing $10 million on a 3% slippage. Resorts Atlantic City rounded out the grind joints with $11 million, a 5.5% dip.
Continue reading Hard Times for Hard Rock
19 years of S&G experience comes in handy in the most unpredictable ways. This week it helped us take a deep dive into General Manager Peter Gelb‘s criminal mismanagement of the finances of that august institution, the Metropolitan Opera (above). Casinos would love to see Gelb coming, as he has the personality of a degenerate gambler, forever “chasing losses”—using other people’s money. Of course, you can’t wreck a company without the connivance of a Pet Rock board of directors, which the Met definitely has. (Shades of the Caesars Entertainment bankruptcy.) We promise you will find our analysis both lively and depressing. Now to more-traditional S&G fare …
Continue reading Business as Unusual
It’s that time again, dear readers. With a lot of help from veteran oddsmaker Johnny Avello of DraftKings, here are some thoughts on what’s going to go down on Sunday night. First off, we’re picking a mild upset, on the strength of Sinners‘ (+500) surprise Best Ensemble win at the SAG Awards. We think it rides that momentum, great box office and a record number of Oscar nominations to Best Picture status. Yes, One Battle After Another (-500) has led from wire to wire, but it’s a hard film to warm up to (although incredibly pertinent) and frontrunners have a tendency to fade in the home stretch. Our metaphorical money is on Ryan Coogler‘s Dixie vampire opus. Besides, it’s been a few years since the Motion Picture Academy embraced a blockbuster. We think it’s going to happen this weekend. Should win: Sinners. Will win: Sinners.
Continue reading Fearless Oscar Forecast
There is no ethical or moral sinkhole so deep that prediction markets cannot find an even lower abyss to plumb. They may, however, have reached their nadir this week. Polymarket started taking bets on—we kid you not—whether nuclear war would break out over the Middle East. We weren’t there to see it but we’re pretty damn sure that, when Jesus Christ was being crucified on Golgotha, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan (above) was among those gleefully shooting dice for His clothing.
Continue reading Gambling Hits Rock Bottom
Nobody can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory quite like Dr. Miriam Adelson. The ancient meddler and majority owner of Las Vegas Sands saw another slate Sands-proxy candidates go down to defeat last night in the Lone Star State’s primary. Texas voters applied a 10-gallon boot to Adelson’s carpetbagging posterior, in yet another rejection of her ham-fisted agenda. It takes a special kind of reverse political acumen to take a state where a majority of the electorate favors casinos and sports betting, and then turn them into a vociferous bunch of NIMBYs. But Miriam has done it again.
Continue reading Texas-Sized Defeat