Caesars Entertainment created a bit of income for itself, selling Harrah’s Las Vegas to its REIT, Vici Properties for $1.1 billion. That’s quite a tidy sum for Caesars’ dowdiest Strip 
property, some 43 years old and showing every one. As the money moves from one CZR pocket to another and then another, Vici will lease the casino-hotel back to Caesars for $87.5 million a year. It’s a 15-year agreement with options that could extend it to 35 years. Caesars also paid itself to buy the 18 acres designated for a convention center, retaining the prerogative to sell it to Vici at some future point. The Harrah’s LV deal is being done to generate cash flow to pay for the $1.7 billion (overpriced) acquisition of Centaur Gaming in Indiana. (I’ll say this for Mike Pence: He can’t be bought. Centaur drenched his re-election campaign in cash and didn’t get bupkis in return.)
* Here’s the American Gaming Association‘s spin on this morning’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of the Bradley Act, composed in the heat of the moment: “Today is a positive day for the millions of Americans seeking to legally wager on sporting events. While we can’t predict the intentions of Supreme Court Justices, we can accurately predict the demise of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection of 1992 (PASPA). The justices of the Court expressed deep interest in the role of the federal government — a role that we believe has created a thriving illegal market that has driven trillions of dollars to offshore websites and corner bookies. States and tribal sovereign nations have proven to be effective regulators of gaming and today’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court moved them one giant step closer to offering a new product that Americans demand.”
