Snowbirds flocked to Lake Tahoe, leaving $17 million behind, a 23% increase. However, the good luck didn’t spill over into nearby Reno, down 6% on $47 million. The Carson City area hopped 2% to $9 million. The state collected $50 million in gaming taxes, far less than what is needed but a good bit more than might have been expected. Now for December … we’ll know in a month.
Caesars Entertainment got over the antitrust hurdle in its acquisition of William Hill sooner than expected. The deal now looks to close in March. The casino empire will amortize $2 billion of the $3.7 billion purchase by spinning off William Hill’s non-U.S. assets. Four more states—Nevada, Pennsylvania, Indiana and New Jersey—still need to sign off on the deal but we don’t foresee any hesitation, least of all in the Silver State. In a move designed to palliate regulators, Caesars-branded casinos will not have Hill-branded sports books in them. Caesars expects to realize $700 million from the alliance next year, but that includes i-gaming, currently outside the remit of the partnership. DraftKings and FanDuel may be looking over their shoulder although we don’t expect them to lose too much sleep over the new kids on the block.
Vital Vegas author Scott Roeben has posted 21 fearless predictions for 2021, leading off with the prognostication that Station Casinos will sell Palms Casino at a loss. (That won’t make him any more popular at Station.) He also predicts that Station will sell its three other closed casinos—the two Fiestas and Texas Station—to either Boyd Gaming or burr-under-the-saddle Dotty’s but that flies in the face of Wall Street expectations that Station will unload them under deed-restricted (i.e., non-gaming) stipulations, probably to private equity buyers. Also, look for Caesars Entertainment to sweat the comps further under CEO Tom “Rain Man” Reeg (his alleged handle among employees). Other projected sales are the long-suffering Tropicana Las Vegas, The Cromwell and Planet Hollywood. “Nonsensical … scam” Bluetech Park follows the route of all failsinos as “the meds kick in and this utter stupidity finally goes away for good.” Las Vegas gets the 2024 Super Bowl but Allegiant Stadium defaults on its bond payments, in another indignity for Raider Nation. Bellagio‘s Conservatory closes and The Rio gets a date with the wrecking ball. (This is a really depressing set of predictions, man.) The long, long-mooted conversion of Bally’s Las Vegas to a Horseshoe finally happens.
On other happy notes, Virgin Las Vegas outperforms expectations and the Seminole Tribe acquires a Las Vegas casino (how about a Hard Rock rebrand of Planet Ho?), while The Drew continues to be a black hole. No, that’s not a happy note. Cirque du Soleil, carrying $1.6 billion in debt, may soon be rid of CEO Daniel Lamarre, as well as of a few more Vegas shows, contract renewals notwithstanding. $4.3 billion Resorts World Las Vegas will open to critical acclaim and a very challenging marketplace. Roeben is even more pessimistic on the chances of the MSG Sphere (scant) and thinks Sheldon Adelson will, as he’s vowed, cash out Venelazzo, investing the proceeds in other markets. On the other hand, an NBA expansion team is forecast for T-Mobile Arena, which would be only about damn time. Our crystal ball is not as acute as Roeben’s but if Elvis (i.e., Adelson) is leaving the building, we really are in for an Era of Diminished Expectations in Sin City.
Giving in to greedy NFL team owners rarely works out for the taxpayers, Las Vegas picked a terrible time to throw billions of dollars at the Raiders… We sat here in Los Angeles without an NFL team for decades, and we did not miss all that much, what we ended up getting was a stadium entirely built with private money, except for a few tax incentives given by the city of Inglewood. With Covid puncturing tax revenues, it could get bad for Las Vegas and Clark County. The Raiders tried to get taxpayer money a million times in Los Angeles and Oakland, but they could not get it done. When an NFL team owner sticks his hand out, push it aside and tell him you will watch the games on television.
Here is what the NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said about possible NBA expansion: “One of our focuses as the league office is always on how do you create better competition,” Silver said. “So that’s one of the things that we continue to think about as we consider expansion. It’s an economic issue and it’s a competitive issue for us. So it’s one that we’ll continue to study.”
Eventually the NBA will expand and since there is currently 30 teams the NBA would add 2 teams. Seattle would definitely get a team (the SuperSonics left Seattle after the 2007-2008 season for Oklahoma City) and Las Vegas would be the favorite to get the second team.
Sometime in the fall I will be out in Vegas and I can’t wait to visit both Circa and Resorts World. They both look great and hopefully the vaccine rollout will start speeding up so the economy can start improving again.
When football season starts in September of 2021 both college and NFL teams should probably have mostly full capacity in their stadiums which will be fantastic to see. Happy New Year and good riddance to 2020.