Excessive Access? The casino industry gets closer and closer to the day when it simply hooks up a suction hose to your bank vault. While Global Cash Access doesn’t want to interface bank cards with slot machines — it would be too difficult — it’s pitching the notion of ATMs that dispense slot tickets directly to consumers. Are chips next? (Just think of the floor employees casinos could eliminate.) When you compare this to previous Global Cash Access ideas that the Nevada Gaming Commission has nixed, it looks suspiciously like a distinction without a difference … and the NGC’s previous objections dwindle into mere sophistry. The notion of routing bank-to-slot money through an intermediate wagering account is another concept that will soon be on the docket.
If the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling has no problem with what GCA is proposing, I bow to its superior wisdom in such matters. (Actually, the wagering-account concept is less worrisome than ATMs disgorging casino scrip.) The trouble may lie not with the message but the messenger. GCA has been repeatedly in hot water in Arizona but recently shrugged off a lawsuit filed by former GCA executives. (Disclosure: Some fellow at GCA supposedly tried to get me fired from Casino Executive back in ’99 for referring in print to some of its employees as “tellers,” but my publisher — the late Bob Bradley — was a gentleman of the old school and stood behind me.)
Harrah’s Entertainment recently severed several ties to GCA, potentially putting the company into a “death spiral.” If the Gaming Commission and the Problem Gambling Council approve GCA’s concept in theory, perhaps they should think carefully before putting their eggs into GCA’s basket. Oh sorry … too late now.
Marriage made in Heaven? The $3.9 billion Cosmopolitan doesn’t have a customer database-marketing setup. Marriott International doesn’t have a casino. Put ’em together and — voila! — you’ve connected the Cosmo to 32 million potential guests. Well done. More seriously, this addresses a major worry about the Cosmo. It also enables the megaresort to outsource certain marketing operations, making this a significant coup for Cosmo CEO John Unwin. Like I said, well done.
Topsy-turvy. A “good” quarter at the Riviera is defined as losing less money than last year. In a microcosm of the Strip economy, more people are staying at the Riv but gambling much less. While bankruptcy may erase a debt burden so badly structured that it would wipe out two quarters a year, even in good times, Riviera Holdings‘ casino in Colorado is going to be little help, the recession having negated any potential gains from newly liberalized gambling rules in that state. On a positive note, it’s official (according to The Newspaper That Must Not Be Cited) that a Barry Sternlicht-led group of investors will take over the Riv as part of the Chapter 11 process. The company needs a strong hand at the tiller, so this is very good news indeed.
If optimism could be bottled, then Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman would have a distillery running ’round the clock. Never mind excessive Strip capacity and falling casino revenues, the real soft underbelly of Vegas may be that it’s outgrown its sustainability. Hizzoner’s notions for how to remedy that result in some friendly but pointed sparring with the BBC.
Race to watch. Keep your eye on a drive in Oregon to amend the law to permit a one-off Class III casino. Canadian private-equity firm Clairvest (recently booted from Aqueduct Race Track) is the moving force behind the initiative, which seeks to make an end-run around the state constitution.
Breaking the bank. A casino in Puerto Rico got taken down for $250,000. The gang that pulled the score did their homework, because their operation was carried out in classic John Dillinger fashion. Now the question is, Who were those masked men anyway?
Common sense just bounces off Oscar, but he’s not the only desert southwest politician like that.
To work in the location it is, Vegas is going to have to become a smaller city, and get an alternate way in/out of town that is more insulated against oil prices. At least one of these things is actually happening.
David;
Please let your friend Oscar know that the best team in baseball needs a new stadium. I’m sure that “Vegas Rays” doesn’t make much sense but I’m sure the last name can be fiddled with.
– Off-subject, but curious:
“Are chips next? (Just think of the floor employees casinos could eliminate.)”
I remember that, in the old days, LV casinos & people who wrote about them seemed to bristle when we ignorant gamblers called the discs “chips”. They insisted that they were “checks”.
Which is “right”?
– Any word on why Harrah’s dumped GCA? I don’t see it as a death blow as long as the other casinos keep their ATMs, especially as it looks to me that more gamblers are getting comfortable using them.
– “Starwood Capital Group LLC has reportedly bought control of Riviera’s first mortgage for about 50 cents on the dollar and is leading the creditors negotiating a prepackaged bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported Thursday.”
http://www.lvrj.com/business/barry-sternlicht-may-be-trying-to-buy-riviera-again-89169837.html
“The four masked gunmen were caught on camera, and a fifth suspect waited outside in a getaway car, Santos said. No one had been arrested, he added.’ they’ll get’m.
Good move by Marriott International to buy into the Cosmopolitan. It might be expensive now but in the long run Marriott gets part of a property on the Strip. After the Fontainebleau is completed there will not be many more opportunities for major hotel corporations to “buy” into new hotel-casinos in Las Vegas.
Agreed. Great move for the Cosmo! I am a Marriot rewards member and you can bet that I will now stay there on points or accumulating them!
On the Riv…one thought that has been on my head since the Sternlicht-led group made there intentions known: I thought Barry Sternlicht was afraid of casinos! I guess they see this as a pure investment opportunity. Either way, I hope they can turn the Riv around or at least stabilize it.
Kerr, you’re right that “checks” is the preferred in-house term, although I’ve never anyone but dealers use it and they speak in an argot that requires footnotes to be understood. As for Sternlicht, he actually wrote me at the Las Vegas Business Press 3-4 years back and said his position on casinos had been greatly misunderstood. Even so, his intentions for the Riviera aren’t entirely clear. Lately, he’s been talking about it as a long-term real estate play. If he does get the whole 26 acres for $10.4 million, that’ll blow the bottom out of Strip land values. It’s sitting next to land that Triple Five bought at $33 million *an acre.*
Re: HET and GCA, one explanation I can think of is that Harrah’s manages a tribal casino near Phoenix, AZ, and didn’t want to hazard contracting with a vendor who’s at serious risk of being booted from the state. (In typical ostrich fashion, NV regulators are pretending that none of this unpleasantness is taking place.)
Alex, much as I like the Rays, if we take them from Tampa, who’ll keep the Evil Empire in check? But I think I’ve got that name thing worked out: We get (too) much sunshine out here. Make the team’s logo a jolly, round, yellow sun, extruding rays of sunshine and … problem solved! Heck, maybe Greenspun Media could sell the rights to use its “Mr. Sun” as the team emblem.
David Mc & Alex –
“I’m sure that “Vegas Rays” doesn’t make much sense but I’m sure the last name can be fiddled with.”
How about the ‘Las Vegas Isotopes’, as a throwback to its atomic bomb viewing history? Of course they’d have to pay royalties to “The Simpsons” owners, but it could provide marketing hooks to the old and new generations. 😉
Never mind: Vegas will never get or support a pro sports team. It just ain’t built that way.