Hicks is back; Sheldon Adelson, misery broker

Give Caesars Entertainment for making a good call this week. It’s inked a one-year residency deal with American Idol winner Taylor Hicks to return to Bally’s, starting Oct. 17. Prices will still begin at a wallet-friendly $40/seat and, in light of the amount and quality of a show Hicks puts on, that’s an incredibly good value for your money. Even some of the most rinky-dink offerings at V Theater start higher than that! Although I’m sure another casino may try to make lightning strike twice, I don’t think the Idol-to-Vegas route will become a heavily traveled one. After all, how many winners can one even name? The latest, Phillip Phillips, isn’t even old enough to drink or gamble in Nevada and his fanbase doesn’t appear to have been long out of diapers.

Just in time for ‘Talk Like a Pirate Day! Now that corporate raider Marc Leder is in the news, due to his role in l’affaire 47%, it is perhaps worth noting that he and some of the likely attendees of the now-infamous catered affair in Boca Raton surfaced in the pages of S&G back in mid-February. These buccaneers include the real string-pullers of the casino industry, the private-equity tycoons calling the shots at the debt-hobbled likes of Caesars Entertainment, the Palms, American Casino & Entertainment Properties (owners of the Stratosphere and sundry grind joints), the LVH, Aliante Station, etc. At least we can take comfort in the knowledge that those entities are paying taxes … it’s one basic requirement for being in the casino industry out of which you cannot worm your way.

Has anyone done the math on the timeline for completion of Sheldon Adelson‘s mooted “Euro Vegas“? (To quote Citizen Kane‘s stentorian newsreel narrator, “Cost … no man can say!”) It’s currently slated for full build out by 2022 — although Las Vegas Sands has all but never met a deadline. So, in the unlikely event that it’s not only built but on schedule, too, Adelson would be a mere stripling of 89 at the time. I’m just sayin’. In the meantime, Sheldon gloats in inimitable fashion, “unemployment in Spain is significant and assures us the support of the government.” Stay classy, Shel.