Atlantic City dispatches; Sports betting meltdown?

Our East Coast correspondent had a good experience at Ocean Casino Resort last weekend. It started with no line at the “Prime” players-club check-in … although it was a quite a different (and worse) story if you fell into a lower player tier. Ocean rewards guests who “go green” (i.e., opt out of maid service) with a $20 F&B credit. “So our Saturday morning breakfast sandwiches were a few cents short of free. When we checked out, our balance due was $0.26 total. The employee asked if he should use ‘comps’ for the balance, but I paid cash.” Incidentally, Bart Blatstein holds several vacant lots in Ocean’s vicinty, but has announced no plans for them.

Incidentally, Caesars Entertainment is having another fare sale on hotel rooms, with fire-sale prices on the Boardwalk. One can stay at Caesars Atlantic City for $59/night, and Harrah’s Resort and Tropicana Atlantic City for $39 per night. You get one reward-point credit per every dollar spent. That’s one way to raise awareness of the “New Rooms and Suites in Atlantic City!” Cheapest property per night in the rest of the Roman Empire is Circus Circus Reno at $39. No surprise there. Priciest is—believe it or not—Caesars Windsor at $135/night. We think they’re misreading the Detroit market. The second-most-expensive is Horseshoe St. Louis ($129 a night), presumably trading on its proximity to the heart of downtown.

Meanwhile, an attempt to see KC & the Sunshine Band at Bally’s Atlantic City turned into a “fiasco” for our bureau. Mind you, this was Bally’s only big-ticket event for 1Q23, so you’d think they’d want it to go well. Evidently not. “There were three lines of people, with no employees to tell people where to go. After one half hour in the correct line, we were told ‘there were no comp tickets left.’ The couple in back of us had paid $200 for the best section of tickets (the ticket prices were $60, $80 and $100). He showed me his phone and his paid tickets were front and center. They said they had to stand in line to confirm an employee’s name, when they would be told there was ‘standing room only,’ so they could file a dispute with their credit card company. They also paid for a hotel room.” If we plunked down $200 and got assigned SRO we’d be pretty steamed as well.

That’s not the end of it. “As one customer left the place where you were supposed to pick up tickets, she loudly said: ‘I have the highest level Bally’s Legends Card and I will never come back to this casino.'” Our reporter breaks the failure down as follows: “Bally’s knew the exact number of seats in the ballroom. Bally’s knew the exact number of ‘comp’ tickets that were accepted by their best players and Bally’s knew the exact number of paid tickets. There is no excuse for this fiasco.”

Attempting to salvage what was left of a ruined evening, our friends repaired to the VIP lounge for a glass of wine. “We previously had dinner at Ocean Casino where we were staying, but thought we both could have Bally’s small salad with the wine. After some time had passed waiting for our server named Michael, I went to the reception/check-in desk and asked her to get us the salads, and she did. Only after the lounge had closed, Michael said he didn’t have the time to get us anything. When the lounge reaches closing time, you can’t get anything, even if you ordered it before closing time. Michael said they don’t want to pay overtime.” Ah, Bally’s, where the customer almost matters. Put that in your pipe, Soo Kim, and smoke it.

Online sports betting providers could be unwittingly abetting fraud, to their own detriment, especially with extravagant “free money” offers. Global Gaming Business breaks down some of the ways in which the digital sector of Big Gaming is playing into the hands of criminals. Money line: “This has led some operators to seemingly accept high fraud rates as an unwelcomed, but unavoidable cost of business.” That’s not acceptable.