Subtract one casino from the Tropicana Entertainment portfolio: The River Palms Resort & Casino, in Laughlin, just went for $7 million today. TropEnt CEO Anthony Rodio isn’t pulling out of the Colorado River market altogether. He says the company will continue to maintain its presence at the Tropicana Express (a former Ramada), which has been the priority property for some time. LVA reader queries about the future of the River Palms (left) have focused on a steady diminution of amenities. It could certainly be argued that today’s price — less than impressive — reflects long periods of neglect, dating all the way back through the Carl Icahn era to the pinch-penny regime of Columbia Sussex.
The River Palms now goes into the relatively untested hands of M1 Gaming. It’s the sort of small-scale enterprise that has flourished in the years following the Big Crash of the casino industry, scavenging up surplus properties and trying to turn them around. While M1 may be a comparative newbie, Continue reading
Every few years, brows are knitted earnestly in discussion of whether this will finally be the year in which Japan legalizes casino gambling. I’ve been hearing versions of this debate regularly since 2005, so you’ll pardon me if I suppress a yawn. Yes, billions of dollars — to say nothing of various Asian currencies — are flowing into Macao and Singapore. But this is hardly new or shocking intelligence. One’s skepticism is only fed by the hype of brokerages such as CLSA 
revenue in the wake of wake of recent naturals disaster wasn’t enough to get gambling expansion through parliament, what will be different this time? Meanwhile, the three nominal front runners — Las Vegas Sands, MGM Resorts International and Wynn Resorts — 
Pricewaterhouse Coopers, accountant to the stars — and Las Vegas Sands — tendered its resignation last week, news that Sands kept carefully under wraps until after the markets closed on Friday. After a brief, initial shock, Sands shares went back to trading as usual. J.P. Morgan analyst Joseph Greff explained the rupture thusly: “we think this is likely a situation where a service provider reviewed the amount of fees its client pays in relation to services rendered and decided to quit the account.” In other words, keeping Sands’ books was more trouble for PWC than it was worth. This 
“Slot machines and blackjack tables have no power at all. What we are not building is a box of slots. We’re building a beautiful hotel that just happens to have a gaming room in the back.”– Steve Wynn, repositioning himself as an urban hotelier in the course of unveiling 
still pending in Nevada and other states but Ameristar always kept its nose clean and Pinnacle has generally behaved itself under previous CEO Dan Lee and successor Anthony Sanfilippo. Despite a player-sharing agreement with MGM Resorts International, Ameristar wasn’t able to draw MGM into a bidding war. Caesars Entertainment was too levered up and would have been duplicating assets (not that either consideration ever stopped CEO Gary Loveman before) and Penn National Gaming had taken itself out of the fray by going all REIT on us ahead of Pinnacle’s play for Ameristar. Pinnacle nabs a couple of lucrative assets in Missouri, two slightly less so in Indiana, a juicy one in Iowa and a loyal base of players. For Penn, meanwhile, this will be The One That Got Away. Back in St. Charles, Ameristar also received some good news …
Entertainment carried Boyd Gaming up with it, 
As Motley Fool 
If you have been waiting for the moment to sell your Caesars Entertainment stock and get out unscathed, even making a tidy profit, that moment is now. Actually, it was March 20 this year, when CZR hit an all-time high of $17.54, gently sloping off thereafter. That continued an impressive comeback for a stock that’s been of meager value until early February, when it began manifesting signs of strength. Today’s bulletin 
“Apollo’s sixth flagship fund was carrying Caesars [Entertainment] at one-fifth of its $1.34 billion investment as of Sept. 30, according to a marketing document obtained by Bloomberg News. Caesars had returned $158.8 million to the private-equity firm, the document shows.” — yup, Apollo Management and its co-founder, Leon Black, 
If Carl Icahn 
As the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe and Gov. Deval Patrick (D, right) continue to try and convince the federal government that their prepackaged arrangement for the Mashpee Wamps to get a casino in southeast Massachusetts isn’t usurious (17% of gross revenues to the state), 
Break out a flagon of whatever Derek Stevens is drinking and put it on my tab, lads. To commemorate the first leg of the Triple Crown, he’s holding a May 3-4 Sigma Derby tournament. Buy-in starts at $50, so starting emptying your piggy banks for some of the best time-on-device action in Las Vegas. To the winner goes $2,500, with varying levels of consolation prize, down to $100 for the sixth through 10th-place finishers. D owner Stevens is also splitting $10K among all punters who bet on the winning horse in the Kentucky Derby. Still not good enough to draw your business? How about $6 mint juleps during the race? Stevens has proven yet again that the Joe Sixpack player in Downtown has no better friend among casino owners.
competitor for the last Philadelphia casino license pulled out its deal breaker. And it’s — a quartet of evergreens. Wow! I am so impressed. (Not.) The conifers are symbolic of a “Special Services District” that would extend from Seventh Street to I-95. PHL executives like to make the point that they were in South Philly long before bygone Veterans Stadium or either of its successors. Joe Procacci and his partners are promising a “world class” casino-hotel (2,400 slots, 105 tables, five eateries and a 250-room hotel, all for a relatively thrifty $428 million. And it can open six months ahead of anybody else, they say. (Not hard when you aim that low.)
“Like the travel industry, gaming is a complex industry.” — newly elected American Gaming Association President Geoff Freeman, making the understatement of the year. Only 38 
No sooner had I confidently predicted that Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh (whoops, wrong Tony) would not be making any gaming related purchased when the shoe mogul pounced on the financially troubled Gold Spike. Showing the acumen that’s made him the most-admired magnate in town (yes, even more than Steve Wynn), 
Yesterday, Hsieh (left)and sidekick Andrew Donner pounced. Hsieh is conferring title of the property upon Resort Gaming Group (of which Donner) is CEO, which is like saying I transferred my toothbrush from my right hand to my left. While the Las Vegas Sun is all gloom and doom about the future of the Spike’s casino, I remain optimistic. “Hsieh [said] he would not be going into the casino business.” Translation: “That’s why I’m turning this over to my good buddy Andy Donner.” However, 
amenities are but a pallid shadow of what competing properties, even Tamares’ own Plaza, have to offer. It’s basically dead without knowing it. The news comes as the Las Vegas Sun reports — or implies — that once-aggressive Siegel Group is having trouble over at the thoroughly remade Gold Spike. The latter was once a vile, indescribable dive that Siegel rescued from Tamares’ neglect. As for the Vegas Club, it’s not a good sign that Tamares is pulling in its horns still further at a time when Derek Stevens (of The D and the Golden Gate) and Terry Caudill (of Binion’s Gambling Hall & Hotel and the Four Queens) are either executing or announcing various forms of reinvestment and capital improvement. All of them, of course, are trying to keep pace with the state-of-the-art Golden Nugget and the renewed ‘classic cool’ of the El Cortez, which — having helped bring Emergency Arts to fruition — finds itself sitting at Hipster Central.
“But it also must be said that — of all the demands made by organized labor groups in Las Vegas, whether private-sector or public-sector — the demands of the Wynn [Resorts] card dealers is among the most reasonable ever. In opposing the tip pooling policy, they are not asking for extra pay or more generous benefits, but rather to keep the tokes they earn on the job, except where they voluntarily pool that money with fellow employees. Greedy, this is not.” — Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Steve Sebelius on the failure of the Nevada Legislature (yet again) 
One doesn’t really think of going to shore in March, so it’s no surprise that Atlantic City casino revenues were — excluding Revel — down 14% last month. The latter grossed $10 million, pulling it almost dead even with the Golden Nugget and a bit further behind the Atlantic Club. The surprise bulletin of the month is that Colony Capital‘s low-budget, l0w-roller joint (right) posted a totally anomalous 33% increase, the only casino do post better numbers last month. Is Colony sure it wants to sell the place? It looks like Tom Barrack‘s people have finally figured out how to run a casino. Sharp declines marred Trump Taj Mahal (-19%) and all of the Caesars Entertainment foursome (ditto). Holding their own pretty well — defined as a 4% slippage — were Borgata ($52 million in gambling revenue) and Tilman Fertitta‘s Nugget. Coin-in and slot win at Borgata improved even with looser hold. Despite heavier play at the tables, Borgata was as unlucky at the Boardwalk’s other casinos were at the tables, matching the average 13% declivity.
Since Colliers International hasn’t been able to move Gary Goett‘s 100 gaming-enabled acres on St. Rose Parkway and I-15, at $1.25 million per acre, he’s still got time to rethink his decision not to build his Southern Highlands megaresort (left), complete with a mini-ripoff of Wynn Las Vegas, architecturally speaking. But Penn National Gaming continues to entrench at M Resort. (M’s much-touted, sprung-structure pavilion can best be described as “butt ugly” and is unfortunately the closest part of M to the street.) Colliers will split off the 51 acres closest to M, if it likes your offer, and sell those to you. Of course, you can forget Goett’s 1,200 approved condo units and I doubt anybody will build 2,700 hotel rooms far, far south of the Las Vegas Strip, even in a renascent market. Penn has talked about expansion at M, but more in the nature of additional amenities, not rooms.
Although Jon Woodrum has been a minor fixture of the Las Vegas casino scene for decades, he and son Mike Woodrum are trying to cash out of the Klondike Sunset Casino for a tidy little $3.5 million. It appeared last summer that