New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) loves to veto Internet gambling bills so much that he’s just done it for a second time. There was incremental progress: In punting the ball to the Legislature’s one-yard line, Christie endorsed the idea of Internet gambling, just not in the form that reached his desk. He wants a 10-year “trial period” and a 50% increase in the proposed tax rate: 15% of revenues, not 10%. This is why it sucks to own a casino — even Republicans think you don’t pay enough taxes. The “sunset” provision does give the state a (distant) escape hatch if online gambling backfires — as it has been wont to do. It’s also timed in a such a way that it will occur long after Christie has left Trenton. By 2023 or 2024, Jersey residents will probably be so habituated to online play that renewal will be a matter of routine. At any rate, 10 years makes more sense than former Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle‘s rejected proposal for a one-year “trial” casino. What’s the point of that? Just imagine the sort of pile-of-crap gambling facility you’d build if it had to make a 100% return on investment inside of a year.
To his credit, Christie seems to have genuinely agonized over the pros and cons of his decision, which was made at the last possible moment. Legislators also realize that working with Christie is far less risky than putting the matter before the electorate. To their credit, they’d already stripped the bill of a “juice job” that would have given Caesars Entertainment preferential status. (However, exactly as predicted here, state Democrats have started thumping the tub for a Meadowlands casino again.) Meanwhile, no doubt sensing hesitancy from the East Coast, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) is prodding the Lege to approve online poker by early March.
What if you gave a casino license and no one came? That’s what’s happened in Maryland, where some of the state’s GOP want to put the unwanted license #6 up for auction. That’s fine, if you have low expectations but anybody who thinks that someone is going to bid at least $100 million to get into a astronomically taxed, underperforming market might need to be fitted for a straitjacket. Similarly, people who trot out the factually ludicrous assertion that owning a casino is “a license to print money” shouldn’t be presidents of things called “public policy institutes.” Christopher Summers, whoever you are, your credibility with S&G just went to zero.
While it seems like the height of folly to be running casinos in both Philadelphia and Atlantic City, thereby competing with oneself, that’s what Mohegan Sun CEO Mitchell Etess proposes to do. The presence of Mohegan Gaming Advisors does bring some “brand name” heft to Market East Associates, including the ubiquitous Ira Lubert, who seems to have a finger in every other Pennsylvania casino pie. One gaming analyst tells Connecticut‘s The Day that Mohegan Sun can land both a Massachusetts and Pennsylvania casino license … but I dunno. Between favorite-son candidates Bart Blatstein (who’d better make sure he stays up to date on his property taxes) and Penn National Gaming, to say nothing of Steve Wynn, I don’t rate the project’s chances as better than distant.
Closer to home, there are stirrings of life at the much-abused Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, which has upped its advertising profile of late and now inked a cross-marketing deal with Red Lion Hotels. (Who?) Well, at least the LVH is now tied into 48 other hotels. It would really help if Navegante Group could persuade Red Lion to slap its Leo Hotels moniker on the former Las Vegas Hilton, which now labors under the most ultra-generic, laughable “brand” possible: Even the letters on the marquee don’t match.
If a tree doesn’t fall in the forest, does it generate a news report? If you’re the Mashpee Wampanoags, it does, having managed to generate a two-page story out of absolutely nothing having changed with regard to their standing with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and, hence, their eligibility to own a Massachusetts casino.
