Big payoff for Pennsylvania

Gov. Ed Rendell (D) and other state leaders have got to be feeling the love for the Keystone State‘s budding casino industry, which generated over $1 billion in tax revenue last year. That boffo return was achieved without table games even with state leader Philadelphia Park offline for a week. December alone was up 28%, even if same-store growth was miniscule. (Rendell, incidentally, comes out a big winner in the Great Table Game War, having applied a swift kick to the Lege’s posterior at the moment it was most needed.)

The opening of Sands Bethlehem (above) put a beat-down on Mount Airy Casino Resort, which was off 7% for the year. But there’s a silver lining even there, as hotel and F&B numbers at Mount Airy rose somewhere around 15%. Sands has no hotel and minimal restaurant offerings. Coincidence? I think not.

However, Sheldon Adelson didn’t lay a glove on Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs, up a whopping 19% last year. (More good news for headquarters in Uncasville.) To the south, Harrah’s Chester saw its lunch eaten by Philadelphia Park. The two racinos experienced symmetrical decline/growth in revenue. The Dollar Bills, Messrs. Paulos and Wortman, enjoyed a 14% revenue bump at Meadows Racetrack & Casino. Full-year comparisons weren’t available for Penn National Gaming‘s flagship racino, never mind newbies Sands Bethlehem and Rivers Casino, scene of a recent executive suite purge.

The floundering Foxwoods failsino was thrown a legislative life preserver but it doesn’t look like continued enabling of this rootless project is getting Philadelphia any closer to its second casino. (Where’s the vaudeville hook when you need it?) Too bad for the City of Brotherly Love because the exemption of Foxwoods-to-be and Neil Bluhm‘s SugarHouse from the state’s smoking ban threatens to thrust yet another dagger into the breast of Atlantic City, redounding to Philly’s benefit.

Things will get much worse before they get better. That’s our prognosis for Indiana. Why? Because not only is competition from Ohio in the works but the Lege may allow Indiana casinos to move onshore. Which isn’t a bad thing. Casinos on riverboats pose an unnecessary risk. S&G has long been of that opinion. However …

Casino owners will have to pony up $50 million for the privilege of operating on dry land — in addition to the capital cost of the new facilities and as absorb the impact of Ohio’s nascent gambling halls. That means a lot of revenue pressure and God only knows what sort of profit margins, if any, if the riverboat operators agree to endure this triple-whammy.

Unless their name is Don Barden. In a sweetheart provision, he’s exempted from the $50 million levy and gets to move his Majestic Star brand to a major interstate highway in Gary. Barden will have to surrender his other license to the state, but that’s a sacrifice I suspect he’s glad to make.

There are also rumblings of gifting the Hoosier State’s two racinos with a tax break. Considering that same-store revenues in Indiana would have been up, up, up had lawmakers not diluted the market with slots at the tracks, I see no reason to be laying some bread on a couple of venues that are doing quite nicely on their own, thankyouverymuch. If enacted, the provisions on the table would tilt the playing field toward three operators at the expense of everyone else.

In the long view, casinos will fare better ashore, configuring their properties any way they like (assuming they can pay for it, *cough*Casino Aztar*cough.*). But it’s definitely going to mean some near-term pain.

A loophole in Kentucky law may allow slot-like devices into the state. They’re weird things, presently deployed in Arkansas, which allow you to place bets on races after the fact. Even with a 10% hold, they only raked in $25 million last year. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear‘s eyes are bedazzled with a vision of racinos that generate $800 million and pay a hefty 25% tax rate. Of course, the prospect of Bluegrass State slots isn’t being debated on its own merits but is premised on the hope (illusion?) that it will be a panacea for the horsey set. S&G prefers that slots go where there’s market demand but I’m sure the IGTs of this world will be happy wherever Kentucky puts them, so long as it does.

Kudos to Washoe County for cutting the property taxes for every casino in Reno. The revenue declines of the past decade-plus make it an inarguable proposition that a Reno-area casino ain’t worth what it used to be. (Double ditto if you’re in Lake Tahoe.) Each casino’s relief is also a splash of cold water on the Reno Redevelopment Agency, whose budget was predicated on casino taxes. Yes, it’s yet another Nevada municipality that put all its eggs in the casino basket and didn’t plan for the future. That’s becoming a familiar refrain around here. It’s up to the private sector to spur diversification, but with the exception of a Bill Boyd here and a Jim Murren there, not enough Nevada tycoons are leading the way.

Mad Man. Thankfully, there were still two Mad Men calendars available at Borders Books when I realized my office desperately needed a 2010 wall calendar. Like everything associated with Matthew Weiner‘s television masterpiece, it’s classy and stylish. But, I ask you, why are there five photos of the willowy January Jones and only one of red-tressed bombshell Christina Hendricks, the Queen of Curves? And that one picture is for February, the shortest month of the year. Too cruel! At least my birthday month, August, is represented by the poised Roger Sterling (John Slattery), so I’m quite down with that.