In the casino world it’s pretty much unheard-of for a company to hang a “for sale” sign on itself without a suitor in view. Patti Hart did it successfully at International Game Techn
ology, earlier this year. Now Full House Resorts is trying to lure a buyer. Since Full House stock has 55% since the start of the year, this might be a target of opportunity for companies in growth mode, like Gaming & Leisure Properties Inc.
Buyers would have to swallow one bitter pill, namely that flagship casino Rising Star Riverboat is getting pummeled by rival casinos and racinos closer to Cincinnati. Full House’s other occupants are Stockman’s Casino, in Fallon, Nevada, and Silver Slipper Casino, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. If dissident shareholder Dan Lee wanted to flush ownership from the underbrush and into flight, he has clearly succeeded. The tipping point seems to have been when a trust formed by a former CEO threw its 9% in with Lee. With shares trading a pitiful $1.27, Full House shouldn’t have trouble finding bargains hunters to acquire it.
* Part of the point of promising billions upon billions of dollars in casino investment in Japan was the prospect of recouping some of it during the 2020 
Tokyo Olympics. But it’s now a fait accompli that the Japanese Diet will fail to enact casino legalize before it adjourns on Nov. 30 and American companies are too emotionally invested to pull back (even if recouping their monetary investment will now be more difficult). Even the slightest forward motion in the Diet is read as a major accomplishment.
Blaming “overblown” media coverage, MGM Resorts International spokesman Alan Feldman moved the goalposts, saying, “We have known for a long time this wasn’t going to be easy. I just don’t believe the effort will be 
stopped unless there is a change in the ruling party, the prime minister and the upper and lower houses.” Both Feldman and Caesars Entertainment‘s Jan Jones addressed the Japan problem at Global Gaming Expo. Though both exuded caution, neither talked of digging for a prolonged siege, which is what will now be required.
This week’s news means there’s still a chance Feldman will complete a sweep of the Las Vegas-to-Tokyo routes by going through Seattle. (He’s piling up the frequent-flier miles something fierce.) By his account, casino representatives are all but tripping over each other in Japan. Emissaries from Neil Bluhm, Sheldon Adelson, Genting Group, Caesars, Boyd Gaming (!) and Steve Wynn have been spotted in the Land of the Rising Ante. (Casino analysts have now upped annual gaming-revenue projections from $10 billion to $15 billion.) Putting the best face on what has to be a disappointment, Feldman says Japanese power brokers are looking beyond the Olympics for economic stimulation, perhaps toward making Japan a more attractive convention market. They’d better be. Otherwise this all so much kabuki theatre.
* Thumbing its nose at the State of Alabama, tribally owned Creek Casino Montgomery is putting $65 million into an expansion that will include an event center and a 119-room hotel. Three new restaurants will also be part of the augmentation. Alabama would dearly love to close down the Poarch Band of Creek Indians‘ chain of electronic-bingo-powered casinos by the National Indian Gaming Commission has said ‘Hands off.’ You can practically hear the serenity in PCI Gaming Authority CEO Jay Dorris‘ “I am most pleased about the new jobs in the greater Montgomery area created by our partnership with Beale Street Blues Company.”
