Sports betting came out of the gate strong in Colorado. One of the surprises was the amount of handle on the Los Angeles Lakers. Said DraftKings odds guru Johnny Avello, “One of the things I did find 
interesting was the Lakers were one of the higher team bets as far as handle. Obviously, you have some Lakers fans in that area.” Sorry, Denver Nuggets. However, punters in the state are mad for the Denver Broncos and their chances in an (iffy) NFL season. (Although the Dallas Cowboys racked up an impressive amount of action.) They led in handle and sheer number of bets. Similarly, the Colorado Rockies were favored by fans to win the World Series. Said Avello, “You can’t even compare it to [when] you had all these other major sports going. But just to be able to take wagers, any kind of wagers on those things, is good news.”
In the meantime, there’s still Taiwanese professional baseball and Belarusian soccer. ($1,400 to the gambler who picked the winner of FC Minsk versus Torpedo Belaz.) According to the Denver Post, “The first-
ever beat on the FanDuel app in Colorado was $11 for a 10-leg parlay on table tennis. Only seven of the 10 bets won.” As Avello put it, “Of course, we don’t have the content that we’d like to have.” Regardless of what happens, $2 billion in handle is projected for the first year of legal sports wagering. Analyst Dustin Gouker is still more exuberant, predicting $6 billion in handle. One thing that will juice the numbers is the inclusion of e-sports as something on which bets can be placed. (Betting on UltraPlay is up 400% in the last three months.) That should make up for the absence of the Kentucky Derby, which was to have been the flagship event of Colorado’s May 1 sports-betting launch.
* On a related note, we just spotted the Typo of the Month in a headline e-mail blasted to the known universe: “DraftKings Goes Pubic.” Too much information.
* JP Morgan analyst Joseph Greff bitch-slapped Gaming & Leisure Properties for reducing the first-quarter dividend (Heaven forfend!) but praised it for “taking practical steps to work with its tenants on rent relief.” One of those tenants is GLPI’s own Casino Queen in East St. Louis, whose rent was waived. Boyd Gaming and Pinnacle Entertainment leases are on the table right now and are expected to be slightly reduced, in light of current events. Eldorado Resorts‘ master lease re-sets in October, with or without Caesars Entertainment, so what happens there will clearly depend on the state of the economy come autumn.
Cannily, GLPI may trade rent waivers for greater equity stakes in its tenants. “GLPI’s primary goal currently is getting properties re-opened (when permitted) and ramped, after which the Board could revisit the dividend and potentially look at M&A opportunities,” adds Greff. Revenue of $283.5 million missed Greff’s $292.5 million estimate, largely due to the closures of wholly owned Hollywood Perryville and its Baton Rouge casino. Despite that disappointment, where its tenants are concerned, GLPI is clearly in the driver’s seat.
* Employee-owned Eureka Casinos of Mesquite, in tandem with UNLV‘s Lee School of Business, is stepping up to the plate in this time of crisis, offering $1 million in grants to inventors who come up with Coronavirus-hindering products. We applaud their initiative.
