Jason lives … at Station Casinos

Jason Voorhees (well, one of the many) is Station Casinos‘ general manager for the tribally owned Thunder Valley Casino, near Sacramento. No, I’m not making this up.
Uncle Sheldon says … that convention business will be “80% of normal” in 2011. Given that meeting biz was a shrinking market well before the Great Recession, even when the Strip was doing record tourism/gambling numbers, it would be helpful to know what the Las Vegas Sands CEO’s baseline for “normal” is. It’s like nailing Jell-O to a wall. He also claimed Asian revenues never declined, even as the Strip crashed and burned. How quickly they forget. (Chinese visa restrictions, anyone?) And yes, there’s “a lot of conversation in Japan about legalizing gaming” — as there was in 2005 … and 2006 … and 2007 …

Pennsylvania casinos hit the wall. Great Recession, meet casinos/racinos in Pennsylvania. Except for Parx Casino (aka Philadelphia Park, up 13%) and Penn National‘s Hollywood racino (+3%), all year/year comparisons were negative last month. It didn’t take long for inelasticity to reach the Keystone State. Let this be a lesson to all politicians with visions of casino tax revenue dancing in their hands like so many sugarplums.
Keeping bankruptcy at arm’s length, Rivers Casino (left) just extended its senior debt by two years. Both lead investor Neil Bluhm and sundry public-employee pension funds kicked in enough equity ($108 million) to mollify senior creditors and give Rivers a little more breathing room. Considering that it’s smack in the heart of Pittsburgh, Rivers has done inexplicably poorly but appears to be finally making inroads with area gamblers.

Splitting the baby. From the upper house of the Massachusetts Legislature has emerged a proposal that takes Gov. Deval Patrick‘s two-casino plan and tacks on a third tribal-only casino. (Due to reservation-shopping issues, it’s no “gimme” that Fall River‘s pact with the Mashpee Wampanoags is any closer to realization, though.) In the lower house, Speaker Robert DeLeo stands firm on his four-racino, two-casino formula. Since there are A) two tracks in DeLeo’s district and B) faster timelines for racino conversion — i.e., a speedier conduit of gambling taxes to the state — my money’s still on DeLeo.

Anti-casino activists, meanwhile, utter the usual do-gooder response: “We need a study of the social costs!” Given the number of states with casino gambling, I’d say that data could be pretty readily extrapolated without bringing the legislative process to a grinding halt. Besides, there’s not a chance in hell that someone like Kathleen Norbut is going to reverse her “no gambling” stance after aforementioned study is conducted. It’s just a sham in order to punt the issue into the next Lege.