It’s early yet but the House Finance Committee of the Colorado Lege has overwhelmingly voted through a sports-betting bill. The would-be 
law has to survive three more votes in the House before moving along to the state Senate. However, it has powerful bipartisan backers in Majority Leader Alec Garnett (D) and Minority Leader Patrick Neville (R). With two weeks left until adjournment, though, it may be a nip-and-tuck affair. The bill would juice existing casinos into sports-betting concessions while horse track Arapahoe Park, ironically, would be on the outside looking in. The Department of Revenue would regulate and a percentage of the proceeds would go to treat problem gambling.
Garnett says, “we’ve gotten to a place where everyone is in a pretty good place, including the owners of the track. We wanted to be respectful of the intent of the voters when it comes to where brick-and-mortar establishments already exist to allow betting to occur.” The bill, however, faces a full-court press from the Denver Nuggets, Denver Broncos, Colorado Rockies and three other pro teams that oppose it. They want to opt out of being bet upon, if possible. “With the appropriate integrity provisions, the teams would support legalized sports betting in the state; as currently drafted, we do not believe that bill provides sufficient protections for the sports or consumers or fans,” they wrote to the committee, although their pleas fell upon deaf ears.
* PokerStars can’t stop stepping in it. The company has been fined 
$10,000 in New Jersey for taking action on college games. It took 216 wagers on a Rutgers/Eastern Michigan University basketball tilt and one on a Monmouth University/University of Pennsylvania tipoff. PokerStars just can’t seem to straighten up and fly right. No wonder states like California hesitate to license it.
* The former owners of Centaur Gaming are back in business as Spectacle Entertainment, owner of the two Majestic Star riverboats in Indiana. They want to move the business ashore and the Indiana Lege just made it more affordable for them. Although the House Public Policy Committee recommended $100 million, the General Assembly slashed that to $20 million, seemingly clearing the way for Spectacle to build a $300 million casino onshore in Gary. Spectacle general counsel John Keeler, feeling his oats, said his company “can live with” $20 million (I bet they can) and the final sum was “much more reasonable.”
Much now depends on whether Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) signs off on the move, which would come with a doubling of Majestic Star I’s gaming capacity. (The other boat would be phased out in favor of auctioning off a casino license in Terre Haute.) HB 1o15, which is in the process of being merged into its Senate counterpart, also legalizes sports betting with a 9.5% tax rate.
Not everyone is a happy camper. Referring to the co-owner of Spectrum, Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. went into Eeyore mode, grumbling that “Rod Ratcliff played it like a master. All the steak dinners, all the airplane flights, all the convention center work, it all paid off for him. The Legislature got bought out, the governor got bought out, the speaker of the House got bought out, everybody got a piece. A $100 million transfer fee goes down to $20 million. Rod Ratcliff saved $80 million. The whole thing is very shady. The whole thing is very corrupt.” Casino.org reports that McDermott wasn’t the recipient of any Ratcliff campaign contributions, which could have something to do with his choler.
* The late Ralph Engelstad used to be an outlier in the hotel industry, eschewing bathtubs in his hotel rooms, lest customers soak in
preference to being soaked on the casino floor. However, Engelstad
were merely ahead of his time. Marketplace reports that the hotel 
industry is cutting back on bathtubs for lack of use. “We have a lot of clients and a lot of brands who are saying, ‘get rid of the bathtub. The bathtub is a thing of the past. Tear them out of our old hotels and put in big, beautiful, glass- enclosed walk-in showers,’” says architect Michael Suomi. His view is not an isolated one: Bathtub-less hotel rooms now comprise 25% of all U.S. inventory, a threefold increase across the last couple of years.
This is kind of a shame. Both the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas and Silver Legacy in Reno have marvelous bathtubs, to cite but two. Whether a guest chooses to use that amenity or not may have to do with how appealingly presented. But, says travel expert Joe Brancatelli, “Hoteliers say, ‘Wait, I can give customers what they want, give the impression of being stylish and use less space, which means I can squeeze more hotel rooms into the same sized building.’” That’s a powerful motivator. There will, however, always be holdouts, particularly hotels like Circus Circus that target the family trade. Admits Suomi, “if there’s small kids, having a bathtub is a necessity.”
