Even if you’re making money on a daily basis, sometimes a casino-resort can be a bad investment. Take Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, which finally posted a profitable quarter. However, at $3.9 billion in construction costs (now at or very near the $4 billion mark with expansions and revisions of the property), it’s doubtful that Deutsche Bank made a good investment when it took the project over. Casino revenue constitutes 22% of revenue — well below Strip average — and ROI remains in the low single digits. In other words, the Cosmo won’t pay for itself for decades. Even a recent improvement in room revenues was basically manufactured by imposing new resort fees.
So much of the action happens, literally and figuratively, at the skyway level or higher that the Cosmo’s casino might as well not exist. Bill Lerner can Continue reading
When last seen, Caesars Entertainment CEO Gary Loveman was telling his brethren that a stale property is an endangered property. To prove his point, he need look no farther than Philadelphia, where new kid on the block Valley Forge Casino Resort (left)was up in largely “down” April, its revenues increasing 29%. At $8 million last month, Valley Forge is still small potatoes but it’s ascending at a time when SugarHouse and Parx Casino are flat, and when — ahem! — Harrah’s Philadelphia fell -6%. All these boys need to make money while the sun shines because if the Pennsylvania Gaming Commission awards that fifth license to Steve Wynn or Bart Blatstein, it’s be like dropping an A-bomb on the competition. Game over, fellas.
Early news reports held that yesterday’s $70 million judicial beat-down of Las Vegas Sands was unanimous. 
Although the financial backing of Genting Group would — under normal circumstances — make the Mashpee Wampanoags prohibitive favorites for a casino in southeastern Massachusetts, these are anything but normal conditions. The tribe still doesn’t have a compact with the state, its site reposes on land that’s not been taken into trust and the Mashpee Wamps were federally recognized too late to qualify for casino gambling. That last point alone could keep the tribe tied up for years in litigation.
Historians bicker over the incorporation date of Las Vegas. Some say it happened as late as June 1, 1911. Others argue for May 15, 1905. Golden Gate owner Derek Stevens, opting for the earlier benchmark, has had his employees digging through the files for a gallery of images from the good old days. Fremont Street (left) needs no introduction, nor will it comes as any surprise that it was the first city in Las Vegas to get paved.
And small wonder. At the terminus of Fremont stood the city’s first hotel, opened in 1906 and still operating today, the beloved Golden Gate. You could park your buggy at the curb and swagger on in for some victuals and gambling … although I’m sure the famous shrimp cocktail wasn’t on the menu just yet.
Obstinacy has once again been the downfall of Sheldon Adelson. Rather than settle with Chinese businessman Richard Suen, Adelson went to trial not once, but twice (the first verdict having been overturned). In 2008, a Clark County jury determined that Las Vegas Sands owed Suen $44 million — plus interest, for helping Adelson land a casino subconcession in Macao. Sands was able to get that verdict overturned on procedural grounds by the Nevada Supreme Court. So a retrial was held … 
That’s what it could come to in Boston, if mayoral candidate — and current Suffolk County D.A. — Daniel Conley gets his wish. Rather than simply letting East Boston vote up or down on Caesars Entertainment‘s proposed conversion of Suffolk Downs into a $1 billion racino, Conley would require it to get both citywide and local approval at the ballot box. It’s a position 
So, as Ohio marks the first full year of casino play, is the glass half-full or half-empty. Currently, much is being made of Horseshoe Cleveland having brought in less than half of 
We don’t know how it managed it but congratulations to The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. It finally realized how to market to those hitherto-elusive creatures known as “gamblers.” 
Gone and soon to be forgotten is the fugly NASCAR Cafe (site of terrible customer service), one of Bill Bennett‘s dubious ‘enhancements’ to the Sahara during his ownership. Current owner Sam Nazarian is ripping the Sahara apart in earnest, 
After 
It was one of the stupefying follies of the Caesars Entertainment LBO that CEO Gary Loveman believed the company could take on $30 billion in debt and continue to expand. Even as he tries to reshuffle old assets into new IPOs, Loveman is finally coming around to what some of us knew years ago: The Roman empire is in ruins. At Southern Gaming Summit, 
“Building more casinos in the near term strikes me as a very bad idea,” said the man whose company has just opened three in Ohio and is engaged in near-term casino development and/or lobbying in Toronto, Boston, Baltimore, Las Vegas and at Gulfstream Park, in Florida. The days of bigger and better casinos, Loveman said, “are over,” in what must have been the most depressing keynote address in Southern Gaming Summit history, wailing that “the only way the region can survive” is with more and pricier amenities. Never one to practice what he preaches, Loveman proposed a multi-pronged regime for Gulf Coast casinos that would include mandatory amounts of reinvestment and a freeze on new licenses (thereby artificially shielding Caesars from competition, heh heh). Were I another operator in that market I’d tell Loveman to mind his own damn business and put Caesars’ house in order first.
Dan Gilbert. The latter has his thumb in casino pies from Baltimore to Toronto. Take away Gilbert’s money and every non-Las Vegas project proposed by Caesars CEO Gary Loveman suddenly turns into the Emperor’s New Clothes. Having converted the historic Higbee Building into an admired, temporary casino, eventually to be absorbed into the permanent one, Gilbert and Loveman turned their attention to suburban racino Thistledown Park. They’re also angling for a pedestrian skyway into the Higbee Building. This raises the worst nightmare of retailers and restaurateurs whenever a casino comes to town: That it will find ways to “capture” business and suck it away from the surrounding area.
What do you do if you’ve got a purchase agreement with Colony Capital and the latter allegedly reneges on you? If you’re Rational Group, which thought it had a $15 million deal in place to purchase the Atlantic Club Hotel, the answer is simple: “
That pesky Illinois Legislature writes up a new, gambling-expansion bill as fast as Gov. Pat Quinn (D, left) can veto the last one. Evidently worn down by long combat with lawmakers and facing a $100 million hole in the state’s education budget, Quinn has finally waved the surrender flag. This Christmas tree is garlanded not just with slot-only “airsinos” at Midway and O’Hare airports but racinos at five tracks. Chicago will finally get a casino in the Loop, and four other municipalities are expected to cash in on the big buildup. Danville and Rockford are juiced in, leaving Waukegan, Park City, Calumet City and at least three others — likely more — wrestling for the last two spots at the table.
Media previews are a double-edged sword. They can be a cheap way of drumming up advance press but can also betray a project in trouble: Surf the Musical was obviously going to be dead on arrival. And it was. Given its arid recent history in Las Vegas, the directorate of Cirque du Soleil would be forgiven for feeling a certain amount of trepidation when it rolled out four numbers from Michael Jackson ONE for assembled media at Mandalay Bay. True, the crowd included some of the cheapest, most syphilitic quote-whores in town, but longtime readers will know I mean it when I say that Cirque finally has a winner on its hands, if these early indications are correct.