Blockbuster month in Pennsylvania; Resurgence in Atlantic City; Douchebag of the Decade

You want good news? We’ve got your good news right here: Casino revenues in Pennsylvania rocketed 24% last month. (35% if you include SugarHouse but that’s an apples-to-oranges metric.) Since, on a same-store basis, slot winnings were just slightly down, the infusion of table games into the Keystone State industry has proven a real “force multiplier.” Only Presque Isle racino didn’t post a double-digit increase, up “merely” 9%.

Sheldon Adelson continues to dig himself out of his Sands Bethlehem (above) hole. Players lost a staggering 44% more there than last year and Sands’ $32 million haul has it nipping at the heels of Harrah’s Chester Downs ($33 million, +16.5%). Nobody has a prayer of catching state favorite Parx Casino ($44 million, +21%) but Sands and Harrah’s may find themselves challenged by Millennium Gaming‘s racino The Meadows ($27 million, +25%) and even long suffering Rivers Casino ($30 million, +38%) got into the act. Remaining gainers were Mohegan Sun (+19%), Penn National‘s flagship racino (+14%) and Mount Airy Casino (+32%). Congratulations to all.

Even  if Comcast Chairman Ed Snider and friends win their court challenge to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, it’s not just the fiscal prudence of building a fifth casino in the Philadelphia area (with Valley Forge‘s resort casino having received the go-ahead) that’s questionable. So is the sanity of it. SugarHouse has only a fifth of market share and Snider’s riverside location is even less viable on paper. How many times does he intend to bang his head against that wall before he decides it’s less painful to give up? It’s a far-fetched notion but, should the court side with Snider, perhaps regulators could broker a compromise whereby he gets a bigger extension in return for building somewhere, anywhere else in the state.

Atlantic City also rises. When I’m in a casino, I would find phony flash mobs pretty annoying — but it seems to work for Resorts Atlantic City. So do heavy comping and deep room discounts, especially when (as an S&G reader pointed out), Trump Entertainment Resorts is imitating Sheldon Adelson and taking a chainsaw to its comps. (Just the sort of thinking one feared from industry retread Robert Griffin.) Way to drive customers over to Dennis Gomes‘ property! Even with Donald Trump relegated to the role of carnival barker, his spirit lives on as the primary architect of Atlantic City‘s economic downfall.

Draconian pay cuts (some in excess of 50%) are part of Dr. Gomes’ Rx for recovery but we trust he’ll share the wealth when the casino returns to profitability … which could be soon, he says. Still, it’s a tough bullet to bite and the only consolation is that the likeliest alternative was a closed casino. If the sight of customers pigging out on crab legs at $19/person, getting a $29 room night or a $2.99 steak dinner causes Gomes to “cringe,” he should try operating a 33-year-old casino in present-day Las Vegas. What may look like drastic largesse on the Boardwalk has long since been commonplace in Great Recession-era Sin City.

So is good [sic] old-fashioned sexism, to which Gomes has allegedly added a big dollop of ageism, not to mention lookism as well. One appreciates Gomes’ need to add more (figurative, if not literal) sex appeal to dowdy old Resorts but that’s no excuse for presiding over rampant male-chauvinist piggery.

Keeping the faith with its workers, long-stalled Revel Entertainment Group has called them back into service. Timely financial intervention by the State of New Jersey helped jump-start the project. So did a peace agreement with local unions (which hopefully means an end to the Unite-HERE shenanigans that helped grind Revel to a halt). Construction is expected to proceed ’round the clock on the $2.4 billion project, likely to be the last of its kind: the final destination-resort casino built on the Boardwalk — or anywhere else in Atlantic City, for that matter. Here’s to a smooth completion and a successful launch.

Vegas’ new role model. The Strip has a new symbol and, no, it’s not Céline Dion. Recently mangled remodeled Paris-Las Vegas‘ nightclub Chateau has announced a May 6 appearance by “America’s favorite Alaskan bad boy.” (Translation: America’s most notorious deadbeat dad.) Yes, it’s über-douchebag Levi Johnston (left), sleazy sperm donor to Bristol Palin‘s kid. There’s Caesars Entertainment CEO Gary Loveman, trying to redeem his company’s image by, in part, bringing back Elton John — and what does new tenant Chateau do? It didn’t just scrape the bottom of the celebrity barrel, it dug around under the barrel to find the lowest lowlife imaginable. Nice going, mes amis.