NLRB deals Wynn a rebuke; The twilight of Stanley Ho

Steve Wynn has enjoyed so many victories in his long-running battle with his casino dealers that he was perhaps overdue for a loss. It came yesterday when the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Wynn Resorts had engaged in retaliation against union organizer Ronda Larson when it gave her the chop in 2009 and ordered the company to reinstate her. I’m not familiar with Larson’s case but have interviewed quite a few dealers opposed to Wynn’s confiscatory tip policy and a pattern of management harassment emerges from their testimony. Hopefully that’s a moot situation now that Wynn has signed a contract with the Transport Workers Union, a pact that was game, set and match in El Steve’s favor.

Not only is Sheldon Adelson not going to get the much-coveted Sites 7 & 8 on the Cotai Strip™, neither is Stanley Ho. Adelson’s old nemesis was told by the government of Macao he’d have to go through the public-tender process, just like everyone else. The casino oligarch had hoped to be grandfathered into the casino zoning previously accorded to Las Vegas Sands. The six-hotel amusement park (Stanleyland?) being built across the street by Angela Leong — Mrs. Stanley Ho — is more in line with what the Macanese ruling elite would like to see being built to diversify Macao’s tourist appeal.

The news isn’t all bad for Our Man Stan: He still has a Cotai plot that’s expected to get the green-light for a James Bond-themed casino and the mainstreaming of Macao, if succcessful, is expected to bring even more mass-market gamblers into the casinos, easing their reliance on VIP play. The shockingly frail-looking Ho is presently enacting a drawn-out version of King Lear. But where Lear only had three daughters amongst whom he divided his kingdom, Dr. Ho has 17 offspring and at least one wife. As the elder Ho’s shares are dissipated amongst the younger generation, the stage appears to be set for a battle of succession between Heong and Sociedade de Jogos de Macau Executive Director Timothy Fok, whose family also holds a big piece of the SJM action.

Peninsula wins. In what seems like the umpteenth rebidding for the Sumner County casino contract, Kansas officials have given the nod to Peninsula Gaming. They liked the $260 million project’s proximity to Wichita and especially the horse track that will be the principal amenity of the 2,000-slot casino. (A temporary facility will open in 14 months, followed by the permanent one [left] a year later.) Rival Global Gaming proposed taking — no kidding — 12 years to fully phase in its casino and that just wasn’t happening, not as far as the Kansas Lottery (primary beneficiary of the casino) was concerned.

Peninsula owns casinos in several Midwest markets and its Amelia Belle riverboat, in Louisiana, just had a good month. However, it’s dogged by charges of electoral hanky-panky involving top Peninsula execs and sticky-fingered, outgoing Iowa Gov. Chet Culver (D).

That mattered relatively little against consultants estimates that Peninsula’s casino would gross $51 million-$89 million more than Global’s (left). Not even an 11th-hour charitable commitment from the Oklahoma-based competitor was sufficient to tip the scales in its favor.

A wildcat tribal casino that imperiled revenue-sharing arrangements between other tribes and the State of Michigan has been ordered to close. Expect some interesting litigation to arise from this matter, the casino having slipped through a loophole left in a land-claims settlement by then-Gov. John Engler.