Don’t tell Sheldon!; East Coast misadventures

As EuroVegas appears on the verge of collapse, recent bulletins pile another indignity upon Sheldon Adelson. When Barcelona‘s BCN World wanted to add a casino, it reached 3/4 of the way around the globe to recruit … Melco Crown Entertainment as operator. Oh, the irony! The humiliation! The $1 billion Barcelona casino seems a bit small — 1,100 hotel rooms — to warrant so high a budget. However, it’s quite a feather in Melco Crown’s cap to obtain a European foothold while Adelson is losing traction.

Back home in Macao, Melco rival Galaxy Entertainment is waxing positive on VIP play this year. CEO Lui Che Woo won’t have Phase III of Galaxy Macau online until 2015, giving his competition and himself a breather to absorb new capacity.

Ohio lawmakers recently (and rather belatedly) outlawed gray-market Internet cafes, in large part to funnel more patrons to the state’s four casinos and two racinos. If indeed that is the case, it better start happening soon. Day-tripper business at Horseshoe Cleveland has been so sluggish that Lakefront Lines is reducing service and may eliminate it entirely. Not even $15 in free play has enticed punters to take the bus rides. (Presque Isle Downs offers $30 free play.) If and when all seven racinos are open, Ohio gambling venues will likely find there’s just not enough business to go around.

Having blown yet another opportunity to get into the casino game, the State of New Hampshire will study the issue some more. At least the outcome might be the simultaneous implementation of casino legislation and regulations. Massachusetts has failed to do that, so its approval process is something of a Chinese fire drill. However, by the time the Granite State gets around to doing anything, Massachusetts will probably have opened its first casino — and then the cat is amongst the pigeons. One of the innumerable Sununu spawn sniffed, “It doesn’t have any real legs now or in the future.” Oh, it will … once it’s too late.

Further to the south, tribal casinos in Connecticut have a new threat on their flanks: VLTs at the state’s parimutuels. At this point, I’d call it a long shot but it would juice Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Casino Resort (below) into the resultant tax revenues (presumably to keep them from cutting off slot-revenue payments to Hartford). It also dovetails with an expansion of the state lottery. It’s the most serious fissure in tribal exclusivity the state has seen to date.

Speaking of Foxwoods … one of the industry’s most encouraging comeback stories continued next week when the casino lured Gary DiBartolomeo away from Valley Forge Casino Resort to become its chief marketing officer. A decade ago, ‘DiBart’ appeared done, ruined by a gambling addiction and sundry violations of New Jersey regulations. Congratulations to Foxwoods, which desperately needs DiBartolomeo’s expertise, and also to the veteran executive, who continues to reassemble his career.