Linq is shaping up handsomely and its Ferris wheel just had its last gondola added yesterday. So, if we can put Caesars Entertainment‘s debt problems 
aside for a second, the company is doing very nicely in the capex department, where once it seemed ambivalent about investing. The next step might seem counterintuitive, being so close to Linq, but it’s to be a bazaar at Bally’s. About the closest one can come to criticizing it would be to say that 150 restaurants, bars and stores is a sensory overload — even by Vegas standards.
The venues will range from 150 square feet to 2,000 such. Seen from overhead, they sport a brilliantly variegated, tiled look. Also, the moving walkway which transports you into Bally’s through oversized fallopian tubes will have to be sacrificed, so ride it will yet you can. Developer Larry Siegel is to be congratulated for bringing a breath of fresh air to the Strip. It seems just yesterday that the Ferris wheel seemed a pipe dream and Linq was generating a collective “WTF”? But Caesars appears to be executing rather spectacularly on both, so the Grand Bazaar Shops looks like an easy setup for a hat trick.
Solomonic wisdom is needed by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. Voters in Revere approved a plan for a casino but it is not the 
plan that is now on the table. Suffolk Downs already split the baby once by moving all the gambling infrastructure to the Revere side of the city line, East Boston having said “nay.” But further subdivision of the infant will be needed. Not only is the casino design dramatically different, “A Revere voter would have needed clairvoyance to know that they were voting for a Suffolk Downs-Mohegan Sun partnership, because they weren’t partners when the Nov. 5. vote occurred,” writes the Boston Globe‘s Adrian Walker.
MGC Chairman Stephen Crosby simply declared the question moot: “what [Revere] didn’t know wouldn’t have changed their vote.” A reasonable assumption but the MGC needs to meet a higher threshold. (Steve Wynn, call your lawyers.) A subtle change in the plan, by the way, no longer obligates Suffolk Downs to offer horseracing. Hmmm …
Isle of Capri Casinos reported quarterly results yesterday and they were soft. Isle undershot Wall Street’s projections, with squishy performance at most of its casinos, although Lake Charles and Iowa properties did solid business. A one-time boost, in the form of a lawsuit victory in Greece, pushed Isle into the black. Otherwise, it badly missed the Street’s estimates and would have lost 17 cents a share. Look for Isle to bank another one-time, $51 million gain early next year, when its sale of Rhythm City casino in Davenport, Iowa, closes.
So Delaware racinos’ revenue has been negatively impacted by competition from Maryland and Pennsylvania. The proposed solution? More casinos in Delaware. Yeah, that oughta work. Not.
