Belated Christmas presents

Good news is busting out all over, starting in the unlikeliest place … Atlantic City. Ye Olde Boardwalk was up 4% last month, its first revenue-positive month in 15 quarters. Even a 10% fall in table drop couldn’t put a damper on things, thanks to higher slot drop (7%) and hold, as well as strong table hold percentages.

Leading the victory parade was Borgata, which blew past analysts’ expectations on the strength of boffo table revenue (+37%), grossing $56 million or a 19% increase from last year. Resorts Atlantic City continues its Comeback Kid saga with a 23% increase, for $11 million. Except for Bally’s Wild Wild West (-3%, right), all the Caesars Entertainment properties showed heartwarming little upticks, while Tropicana Atlantic City and Trump Taj Mahal exactly repeated their year-previous performance. The Golden Nugget (-1%) may have finally — we hope — bottomed out at an even $10 million, while only Atlantic City Hilton (-6%) and Trump Plaza (-15%) c0ntinue to tank. The latter grossed a measly $8.5 million. Given the cost of running a modern-day casino, how much longer can Trump Entertainment Resorts afford to keep paying the light bill at the Plaza? The sound of 323 slot machines (including A.C.’s first-ever server-based games) rolling into Revel seems like the rumble of Doom.

Analysts were cautious in their appraisal of the improved numbers. However, a chunk of Boardwalk business must have come straight out of Philadelphia‘s hide, based on early indications from Wall Street. (We’ll know for certain when Pennsylvania finally gets its table-game numbers out.) Only casinos in or near the City of Brotherly Love had a bad December. But you have to wonder what sort of revenue modeling they’re using on the Street when Sands Bethlehem was projected for double-digit gains (it still did quite nicely) during the early months of Resorts World New York (above) The latter didn’t put a crimp into Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs, nor Mount Airy Casino either. Still, Genting’s über-racino is setting a fast pace: $90 million grossed in two months, which is a full year’s take for any other New York State racino. Put another way, $45 million/month would make Resorts World the second-highest grossing casino in Atlantic City by a whopping margin. A bullish Genting is offering to boost its investment to $4 billion, including a convention center, but wants certain protectionist clauses. State leaders shouldn’t let the allure of easy money draw them into such a Faustian pact.

Months of foot-dragging by the governor of Illinois, Mr. Pat Quinn (D), have turned momentum seemingly in his favor. Having hardened from indecision to intransigence, Quinn now looks to have colleagues like Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and state Sen. John Cullerton (D, below) willing to negotiate away racinos and maybe some outstate casinos to get the one thing they — and players — really want: a downtown Chicago gambling palace. Conspicuously not in the negotiations in pesky state Rep. Lou Lang (D), whose rule-or-ruin approach fostered the current stalemate. Oh, he’s still out there, trying to dive-bomb spectacular new performer Rivers Casino, in Des Plaines, with a fiscally deadly circle of racinos. With such “friends,” Land of Lincoln casinos need no enemies, it bears repeating. Quinn favors the (slightly) more palatable notion of subsidizing the horsey set with “impact fees” levied on existing casinos.

Hidden benefit. Quinn’s six-month timetable for resolving the Lang-incited impasse, however, works to current operators’ benefit. By mid-year, elections will be drawing nigh in newly redistricted Illinois. According to the World’s Greatest Newspaper, casino expansion is now making solons antsy: “It’s questionable whether lawmakers would want to take a potentially risky vote to expand gambling when all 59 Senate and 118 House seats are on the ballot,” facing a new set of demographics. Video-poker expansion has gone over like a lead balloon, so legislative trepidation is well justified and, if you’re a casino owner, Pat Quinn is starting to look like a certain jolly old elf who resides at the North Pole.