Barstool buy buoys Penn Nat’l; MGM’s ad blitzkrieg

Basically, Greff sees the forward march of sports betting as a reprise of the riverboat-gambling armada of thirty years ago. State budgets are reeling from the Great Shutdown, and both sports betting and Internet gambling represent a tax lifeline. Penn “will be one of the winners.” In addition to his fondness for Penn, Station Casinos and Boyd Gaming, Greff tips Churchill Downs and Caesars Entertainment as prime movers. As for Penn’s terrestrial casinos, “The regional gaming recovery seen during May/June continued into the 3Q, with revenues coming in better than feared; we had previously assumed a slower ramp once pent-up demand normalized and little/no opex creep from post-COVID efficiency gains.” In other words, cabin-fever gamblers are continuing to play and, thanks to corporate cutbacks, it’s not costing Penn more money to run its far-flung casino empire.

More good news from the front lines of the fight against Covid-19: Mask compliance at Las Vegas bars and restaurants is on the rise. 94% of restaurants surveyed were in compliance, as were (not quite so good) 86% of bars. None of the non-compliant businesses receiving citations, which may have been a mistake, rewarding bad behavior. Still, one can enter a Clark County eating establishment with a greater degree of confidence. We’re not out of the woods yet. The county reported 1,853 new Coronavirus cases last week. Wear that mask, pardner!

Scientific Games had some good news of its own. Hard Rock International renewed its sports-betting partnership with SGMS on a long-term basis. Scientific operates OpenSports and OpenGaming for Hard Rock, which it will be rolling out in Iowa and New Jersey. Although it’s just starting with two states, Hard Rock will deploy the Scientific applications across all its digital gaming platforms. This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

MGM Resorts International is going head-to-head against regional casinos. One target: Phoenix. An S&G source reports that MGM is carpet-bombing the radio airwaves with ads, each plugging a different Las Vegas Strip resort (MGM Grand, Bellagio, Aria) but all with the same basic message, ‘Please come back.’ If they’re doing it in Phoenix (a hotbed of tribal gaming), dollars to donuts it’s happening in San Diego, Los Angeles and other drive-in markets, at minimum. Strip casinos have historically ignored or tried to co-exist with tribal and regional properties, so MGM’s escalation makes us sit up and take note.

We’re not saying anything about last night’s debate but Crossroads Addiction Services CEO Dave Marlon (a sometime S&G contributor) is. “It shouldn’t be lost amidst last night’s chaos that currently about 20 million Americans are battling addiction, while America is mired in an opiate and overdose crisis the likes of which we’ve never seen, compounded by the stress of the pandemic. As we call it, it’s ‘The Epidemic within the Pandemic.’ [Joe] Biden acknowledging his sons addiction and embracing recovery is a meaningful sign to any American struggling through addiction–that things can get better, and that help is on the way. It’s also important to remember President Trump has said similar things about his brother Fred’s fight with alcoholism many years ago.” We’d call that fair and balanced … and salubrious.

Jottings: Seven casino states all have another thing in common—they all have the most-mispronounced names in the country. Top of the list: Nevada. The common (and recommended) usage is Nev-AAA-da. I’ll never forget how John Kerry got razzed in 2004 for calling it “Nev-AH-da” at a UNLV rally. (I was covering it. I cringed.) … Did you know about the Donald Trump/Jared Kushner connection to the Downtown Grand? (We didn’t.) They’re partners with owner CIM Group in sundry ventures drawing upon CIM’s $20 billion in funds, including Trump SoHo. CIM’s philosophy is described as “to get good returns for investors by investing in undervalued urban real estate.” (Something of which we could use more.) That’s certainly true at the Downtown Grand, somewhat so in CIM’s coastal markets, even though CIM has been dogged by a variety of personal scandals. However, compared to the Trump Organization, CIM is sound as a pound, so much so that it paid $345 million for a New York City parking lot. That’s either foolhardiness or confidence, probably the latter.