Isle sheds a spare part; Bluhm rebounds

Not long ago, S&G was musing aloud at the oddity of Isle of Capri Casinos running two riverboats on Lake Charles, one of which grossed only $1 million or so a month. That seemed rather an extravagance. Somebody at Isle must have similarly,  because the company is selling its Crown Casino vessel to Paradise Casino. The latter is an aegis of Silver Slipper Gaming, which also owns a racino in Louisiana, as well as an eponymous casino in Bay St. Louis, Miss.

Paradise proposes to hoist anchor and move Crown Casino to Bossier City — and build a hotel — rather than stay on Lake Charles and duke it out with Isle’s Grand Palais, Pinnacle Entertainment‘s L’Auberge du Lac and Dan Lee‘s $400 million Mojito Pointe, still a-building. (Paradise lost out to Lee in the last round of license-bidding, so Crown Casino is a consolation prize to itself.) The Crown vessel served to handle overflow business from Grand Palais but these aren’t times, Louisiana‘s gaming economy being flat, when overflow is a pressing concern.

But if Lake Charles is competitive, what to make of Paradise Gaming’s plans to drop anchor in Bossier City? That market’s been hit hard by the emergence of Class III tribal gaming in Oklahoma and the intra-market competition promises to be stiff. However, a local economist predicts that Bossier City can absorb the additional capacity by late 2012. I’m loath to agree with Roger Gros but the idea of Crown Casino growing the market seems far-fetched. It didn’t do it in the lucrative Lake Charles region, so the odds facing it in the greater Shreveport area (halfway through its third year of decline) are worse still.

Better Gros’ measured caution than the Chicken Little hysterics of Harrah’s Louisiana Downs GM Mike Rich: The sky is falling! Casinos will close! Maybe if Rich was offering a superior product he wouldn’t be losing business to competitors like El Dorado. Damn that free market!

Closing the gap. After weak starts, developer Neil Bluhm‘s two Pennsylvania casinos are paying off. Table game numbers were released today and Philadelphia-based SugarHouse ($6.6 million) shot past Bluhm’s mammoth Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh last month ($5.8 million), closing in on the $6.9 million won at the tables by Harrah’s Chester Downs. (Parx Casino and Sands Bethlehem led the state with $9.8 million and $7.2 million, respectively.)

In overall gaming revenue, Rivers has grown by one-sixth over the first five months of 2011, posting year-over-year gains from 38% to 64%. Pretty showy stuff. There are, of course, no y/y comparisons available for SugarHouse (right). However, it has grown its winnings by fully one-third since January and was one of only two casinos (the other being Mount Airy) in the state to post higher grosses in May than March. That will provide mathematical ammunition for those who contend that Philadelphia can still support a fourth casino.