“You know your industry is in trouble if the most current product you offer your 21st century patrons is bingo.” — gaming-law expert I. Nelson Rose on the casino industry’s struggle to adapt to changing times.
tourist corridor since The Cosmopolitan six years ago.” That’s quite a hiatus, all other “openings” being reboots of existing properties, like the attempt to masquerade Imperial Palace as The Linq. (I’ve stayed in Red Roof Inns that were nicer.) “Somebody thought they could make money building a new casino in Las Vegas and convinced enough people to make funding a reality.” Historically, its design — particularly of the gaming floor — is reminiscent of the golden era of the Strip, Schwartz says. But the Lucky Dragon’s significance may extend well beyond its newness and into the different kind of casino marketing it embodies, flouting much conventional wisdom in the process. It’s the first Strip casino conceived exclusively for Pacific Rim customers, both overseas and domestic.
bacon, up 13% to $9 million. The Penn National Gaming-managed duo wasn’t doing a whole lot better. Hollywood Toledo was flat at $14.5 million, while Hollywood Columbus was 4% down, to $17 million. The racinos were an entirely different story, with Hard Rock Rocksino leading the pack at just over $17 million (up 6%). Only Scioto Downs, slipping 2.5% to $11 million was a revenue-negative track last month. Independent Miami Valley Gaming was up 11% to $11 million. Belterra Park gained 7%, to $6 million, while Penn/GLPI‘s Hollywood Dayton was up 6% ($7 million) and Hollywood Austintown was up 6%, to $8 million. At $264 in slot win per day, it is surely the second-most productive property under the Penn banner, the little racino that could.
$1,250 to $625. Obviously, this would put a crimp in the style of gamblers, perhaps more so at the high end than in mass-market play. Still, it’s a setback. As JP Morgan analyst Joseph Greff wrote, “While difficult/nearly impossible to assess the impact on spend per trip, the bigger impact may be on player psychology with regard to visits and spend as mainland China potentially reengages its oversight of Macau.” The catalyst, ironically, may be nothing that happened in the Chinese enclave but “unanswered claims” in Singapore, where UnionPay cardholders were allegedly exchanging vouchers for casino chips at Marina Bay Sands, a forbidden practice. (It wouldn’t be the first time Las Vegas Sands has been found pushing the envelope.) Also, UnionPay had practically inviting scrutiny by advising its customers to bring more than one card when visiting Macao.
features, which include a high-limit area and expanded restaurant offerings, made SugarHouse “much more of a regional competitor … As opposed to an urban-centric casino.” Caesars Entertainment is also reinvesting at Harrah’s Philadelphia, laying down new carpeting and carving out a party lounge. Electronic table games are evidently doing so well up at Sands Bethlehem (Bumazhny found Sands’ to be “very busy … Especially baccarat”) that Philly casinos are already talking about following suit. And although I wasn’t aware of any uncertainty surrounding Cordish Gaming‘s south-Philadelphia casino project, the consensus among gaming execs surveyed was that it would move forward … “eventually.”
on December 14. JP Morgan analyst Joseph Greff estimates its chances of ultimate passage at only 50%. At this point, the legislation hasn’t even been sent to the corresponding upper-house committee, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Carlo Santarelli. He describes previous pro-casino initiatives by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe‘s administration as “delicate” (we agree) but not so this time around, with debate being limited and opposition parties balking at Abe’s fast pace, which also reportedly alienated some upper-house members of his own Liberal Democratic Party. He notes that “considerable discord remains amongst the parties.” There’s also the question of public opinion, which Santarelli describes as “rather unenthusiastic” toward casinos. A recent poll finds the concept 
one handy-dandy report. In October, for instance, table game revenue was remarkably volatile yet had no correlation to whether the casino in question had a revenue-positive month or not. For instance, winnings were up 40% at The Meadows but the casino overall was down 2% for the month. SugarHouse, by contrast, rode a 45% growth in table winnings to a 19% increase casino-wide. The Neil Bluhm-owned casino ate Harrah’s Philadelphia‘s lunch, with the latter down 11%. Bluhm’s Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh was off 2% (11% more table revenues be damned).
isn’t the end of the process, although casinos are now legal, more like a promising first step. The parliament still has to reconvene and enact a second law setting forth the regulatory apparatus whereby Japanese casinos will be governed. Also remaining to be addressed are how many casinos will be built and where they will go. Conventional 
enough that you have to pay a premium for everything in a Strip casino, even a simple cup coffee but the industry wants an even-bigger share of your wallet. In the case of Caesars, the surprise is not that it followed MGM’s lead but that it didn’t do it sooner, given the company’s financial straits. Only The Rio will be exempt for the new policy (good for business there, I should expect). That’s not out of clemency but because it would not be “
and occupancy has been running at 71% … At a time when the market overall is averaging 92%. Already drastic action is being taken to appeal to the mass-market crowd. More casual dining (“as hard-core gamblers are likely to be more interested in eating quickly and returning to the gaming tables”) will be added and the casino floor will be reconfigured, a reconstruction that is expected to take anywhere from six months and 18 months. The idea is to “create compressed energy” around the baccarat tables, although I guess we’ll get to find out how players like gambling in the middle of a construction area. Morningstar analyst Chelsey Tam spun it positively as “meaningful disruption,” although with construction barricades impeding pedestrian access to Wynn Palace there’s got to be a limit on how much disruption it can afford.
who put in 3% more coin, only to see the house win 10% more than last year. Gaming revenue was also 10% up in locals casinos, fattened by some end-of-September play that was rolled into October’s count. The volume of baccarat play was anemic, down 32%, but the luck was with the house on other table games, where winnings were 22% higher. Locals slot players lost 15% more to the house but an 11% drop off in table wagering produced a 10% decline in win. Even considering that October 2015 (-5%) provided a weak comparison, these numbers are mostly quite impressive.
however.) In the case of ‘Net betting, the last few years may be looked back upon as a missed opportunity, state after state having 
City, which he deemed cleaner and better-maintained than many on the Las Vegas Strip. No, he was talking about the operating profits of the surviving casinos, many of which are skyrocketing as the market goes through the process of right sizing itself. The only exception was Carl Icahn‘s Tropicana Atlantic City, where operating profit dipped 22% from 2014 to 2015. By contrast, though you wouldn’t know it on a month-by-month basis, the repositioning of Bally’s Atlantic City as a grind joint has fattened the bottom line, with operating profit up 77%. The tightest-run ships appear to be Resorts (+525%) and Golden Nugget (+396%). Borgata (+36%) had the highest dollar volume of profit, while Caesars Atlantic City and Harrah’s Resort (+39% and +26%) made respectable gains.
from litigation that Caesars wrested from creditors as part of the price of being made whole. The bankruptcy trustee calls this “blanket immunity” applying to “a wide array of parties far beyond the plan or the Chapter 11 cases.” So broad were the releases, that outright fraud was among the forms of misconduct they shielded. As we have already seen, a court-appointed examiner deemed Caesars to be potentially on the hook for $5 billion worth of fraudulent asset transfers — and consciously acted to 
has inked a new 
Mahal. Take out the Taj (which labor troubles did) and a slightly revenue-negative month swings to a significantly positive one. And, for the year, the seven surviving casinos are up by 3%, according to the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. If it’s too soon to say “comeback,” we can at least say “market correction” and throw a little ticker tape out the windows. PokerStars hasn’t been the shot in the arm it was supposed to be but Resorts Digital is an amazing 204% ahead of October 2015’s revenue. So while Atlantic City isn’t out of the woods — the revival of Ten threatens to dilute the revenue base — it’s looking a lot better than it has in a long time.
rising 30%, to just short of $17 million. Terrestrial casinos were down 3%, raking in $186 million. Slot play was down 3.5%, leading to a 5% revenue decline. However, table games were up 4%, both in wagering and revenue. Borgata grossed $60.5 million (+5%) and a 6% increase in table game wagering translated into 12% more revenue. All these gains helped Borgata overshoot Deutsche Bank‘s projections for the month by $5 million.-
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