If you simply must gamble at a Caesars Entertainment casino in Tunica, you’d better bring a boat. Photographer Trey Clark has surveyed the scene and it looks like the damage to Harrah’s Casino Tunica will be especially costly. There go those second-quarter numbers … glug, glug, glug. Insurance will ameliorate some of the costs over the long term but the immediate future (flooding + no casino revenue) looks grim.
P.S.: A reader asks if “acts of God” like this are covered under casinos’ insurance policies. A very good question! Now I’ll have to dig out an article I wrote on the subject back in 2002, when the industry was bedeviled by bad weather. If I’m never heard from again, it means I was crushed under a pile of old trade magazines.
In Boyd’s conference call execs said that Sam’s Town Tunica’s policy would cover losses — subject to its $1m deductible.
Are not those casinos on barges that float? It would be the first floor of all the hotels on the river side of the levee that would have the damage. Still not as bad as Katrina.
Too bad. I really liked how they re-designed that boat/barge when they re-branded it a Harrahs. Hopefully the damage it negligible. I was unable to open the link to the pics. Cant casino companies operating in MS now build on land?
After studying a second page of aerial photos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tunicams/5690090459/in/photostream), it would appear that a rising tide lifts all casinos. Despite the company’s claims of invulnerability, Harrah’s Casino Tunica looks the most heavily damaged. In terms of being cut off by flood waters the Don Barden-, Penn National- and Colony Capital-owned properties have it by far the worst.
Karma?
Dave,
I have been told that Colony’s Tunica properties are the only ones that make money! Their little Ballys keeps their whole portfolio “above water” normally.
Sucks for them.