Long-serving (some would say long-suffering) Station Casinos CFO Marc Falcone has had enough and will resign on May 31. He’ll still be at Station’s service thanks to a one-year consulting agreement — read 
“non-compete.” He’s served Station well, coming aboard from Deutsche Bank, a major Station creditor, during Station’s bankruptcy and helping steer it out of the shoals and into prosperous waters. He’ll surely be missed, not least because he served as a buffer between CEO Frank Fertitta III and the investment community, handling those quarterly analyst calls — and pesky reporters.
“We believe most, if not all, will be surprised by this development. Mr. Falcone has been an integral member of the [Red Rock Resorts] team, and a key go-to executive for both buy and sell side analysts,” wrote Deutsche Bank analyst Carlo Santarelli. He continued, “While it is hard to say whether foresight played a role in the hire, we believe the on-boarding of Stephen Cootey in March now proves even more savvy than we originally believed it to be. Mr. Cootey was hired originally to fill the Chief Administrative Officer seat. With Cootey, RRR gets an accomplished CFO with large cap gaming experience and deep roots within the gaming investment community. We think the ability to appoint a known commodity into the role takes a bit of the sting out of the sudden and unexpected Falcone resignation.”
JP Morgan analyst Joseph Greff headline his dispatch, “Expected? 
No. Surprising? Not completely.” Although Greff faulted Station for a “a currently, less than clear repositioning plan” for the Palms, he also took a clement long-term view: “We don’t think this change signals an increase in the company’s earnings risk profile and note the departure appears to be amicable since the outgoing CFO is consulting for a period of 12 months.”
* The Trump administration has sent its first signal on the issue of sports betting and it’s not a good one. The Solicitor General’s office has asked the Supreme Court not to hear New Jersey‘s appeal to let it legalize sports betting. However, Geoff Freeman of the American Gaming Association is unfazed. Yesterday he gave a speech at the East Coast Gaming Congress & NextGen Gaming Forum. He began by highlighting the apparent comeback of Atlantic City (no mention of Revel in his talking points, though; Hard Rock International got a name-check instead). He also pointed out that we have a former casino owner in the White House, a reality that would have been inconceivable (we think) as little as four years ago.
Freeman urged the industry to stop playing defense and go on the offensive. He cited such examples as anti-money-laundering initiatives 
and affecting IRS policies as ones where the industry has been in the forefront. More dubiously, he hailed a Federal Trade Commission decision to let resort fees stand, instead of being listed as part of the price of the room. (Boo! Bad Geoff!)
Not surprisingly, this was all perambulatory to a favorite Freeman topic: legalized sports betting. Evidently not willing to wager on a second Trump term in office, Freeman laid out a timeline to settle the issue by 2020. Even he conceded this was “ambitious.” As he put it, citing the prevalence of illegal sports wagering, “Americans love to bet on sports and the federal government’s ban on sports betting is a total failure.” (So is the War on Drugs but no president has had the stones to admit it.)
Freeman’s goal, vis-a-vis Congress is to “Give congressional champions on Capitol Hill a convincing, concrete legislative proposal.” This essentially would consist of allowing the issue to devolve to the state level, trusting the regulatory bodies already in place — and avoiding burdensome tax rates. Freeman would like to see this happen as soon as within the next year — although a three-year process would also suit him.
Acknowledging that sports betting would take a back seat to infrastructure investment and tax reform, Freeman nonetheless said, 
“To build on our current momentum, our goal is to use the rest of 2017 to develop consensus legislative language among key stakeholders and to launch a broad-based coalition to spearhead this effort. At the same time, we’re identifying potential champions in Congress to take the lead on congressional hearings and introduce a bill later this year or early in 2018.”
Added Freeman, “I want your feedback on what we’re doing.” Generally, pretty good. We’ll modify that to “sensational” if the AGA can get Donald Trump to come out in favor of legalized sports betting. He’s favored it as a private citizen but talk is cheap — and with Trump it’s a devalued currency indeed. (Remember that casino he was going to build on the site of Trump World’s Fair? Neither do we.)
