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 greatly over-ambitious expectations (and 12% less than what Moody’s Investor Service anticipated). And that isn’t even the fault of Rock Gaming Caesars but of Penn National Gaming, which put some bullshit numbers out there to appease the electorate, then had to walk them back. If Year One wasn’t what is was supposed to be, remember that the paint’s barely dry on Horseshoe Cincinnati, and that both Hollywood Toledo and Hollywood Columbus have been open less than a full year, too. True, Hollywood Columbus has — no excuses — been an out-and-out disappointment, but it looks like Penn is finally figuring out how to get reasonable dollar amounts from it.
In Cleveland, fears of higher crime and less street-level business near Horseshoe have proven untrue. Between higher foot traffic in the area and the prospect of Continue reading
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.
America‘s casino officially emerged from the doldrums with the release of the American Gaming Association‘s yearly survey, showing 
That “thud” you just heard was the price of an Atlantic City casino hitting its lowest level ever. In litigation filed against Colony Capital, spurned buyer Rational Group said it was to have paid only $15 million for the Atlantic Club Hotel. Having done so many things wrong, it’s only apt that Colony CEO Tom Barrack couldn’t even get a decent exit price in Atlantic City. (This super-bargain deal makes life harder for Carl Icahn, who’s trying to extract a higher valuation for the just-sold Trump Plaza.) PokerStars got a temporary restraining order against Colony, but I don’t think there’s much danger of Colony being able to find another buyer anytime soon.
We saw Claire Sinclair‘s new show at Stratosphere the other night … or rather, ‘saw as much as we could withstand.’ Our attention and sitzfleisch gave out around the one-hour mark, with at least another 30 minutes stretching before us. Speaking of stretch, the corps de danse looks very well-toned and amazonian but some of their routines appear under-rehearsed. Ditto the synchronization with the band of a vocalist only identified as “Anne.” The latter was mostly inaudible and when you could hear her, you 
“It was mostly old guys with cigars. It was very intimidating to walk into a poker room and see a guy who’s a thousand years old, smoking 10 packs of cigarettes a day, giving you dirty looks because you’re taking the wrong card. What online poker did was let people get familiar with the game, feel a little bit of confidence and then they said, ‘I want to go to Vegas and do the real thing.’” — Dr. David G. Schwartz, director of UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research 
Yes, the recovery in Las Vegas could be said to be a chastened and limping one. The national press 
“MGM [Resorts International] still has much of its business in on the Strip, unlike its major rivals Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Wynn Resorts … Those companies both reported gains for the first three months of the year because of their Macau resorts, while Caesars Entertainment, which has no presence in Macau, 
Last week, it turned out that Revel hadn’t drawn down so much as one penny from the Economic Development Authority, whose leader was able to testify that “no funds have been paid to Revel by the state.” Revel probably still intends to go for the gold