Approximately 10 workers suffered injuries yesterday when a partial cave-in occurred during construction of Horseshoe Cincinnati. None of the injuries was life-threatening but one local lawmaker noted that the casino — and others like it — “certainly have been in a hurry,” to make up for time lost while Gov. John Kasich (R) basically held their licenses up for ransom last year. For the moment, the finger of blame is pointing in the direction of majority owner Rock Gaming, which hired the contractors for Horseshoe Cincy. The accident comes five weeks after a similar mishap at Rock’s other joint venture with Caesars Entertainment, their Horseshoe Cleveland, whose parking garage sustained a collapse on Dec. 16. Given the common ownership denominator, it’s fair to ask Continue reading
For a company that bridles at negative press coverage, Station Casinos has a genius for provoking it. Case in point: Its increasingly hysteria-tinged campaign toward the Culinary Union. Up until now, it’s been confined to a series of overwrought, unintentionally amusing, sometimes factually debatable TV spots. Now they’re taking it to a mailbox near you. In the two years that my wife and I have lived at our present address, we have received not one piece of direct mail from Station soliciting our business. Zippo. Squat. Nada. A big, fat zero. Although we continued to patronize its properties, as far as Station was concerned we had ceased to exist.
Hardly had the outlines for a gaming-expansion compromise been leaked from the Illinois governor’s mansion when state Speaker of the House Michael Madigan (D, right) nixed the idea — or at least the prospect of a deal getting done in the current Lege. The new sticking point is the idea of the City of Chicago becoming a casino owner, 
Few YouTube feeds are more prolific and state of the art than that of Station Casinos (although they really ought to think twice about 
Dan Gilbert‘s descent upon the Baltimore market, in tandem with Caesars Entertainment, 
Since the Cleveland Cavaliers owner (right) has long since paid his debt to society and had the conviction expunged from his records, the fact that it still could have barred him from casino development in Maryland shows that the rules were too tight from the start. However, the timing of the ‘relaxation’ — coming last month, when the Baltimore slot-parlor license had gone unclaimed for three years and Gilbert was the only rescuer on the horizon — strongly suggests that a mix of pragmatism and desperation prompted the clemency Rock Gaming‘s boss received. Gaming policy in Maryland remains an expedient hodgepodge, not a logical framework.
Closer to Caesars HQ, if you’re fond of taking the back way into the Flamingo/O’Shea’s/Imperial Palace/Harrah’s Las Vegas cluster, avoiding Strip traffic, you can forget about it. As of today, those little back streets that bear the names Audrie, Ida and Winnick will be closed. Yes, construction is actually starting on Project Linq, Caesars’ half-billion wager that two of its gamier Strip casinos can be remade as a warren of mid-market retail and dining, effectively ridding 
No question about it, THE gaming-industry story of 2011 was both an economic and political one: How the Great Recession has essentially broken the back of anti-gambling resistance in the corridors of American power. We can see it up and down the East Coast and throughout the Bible Belt. For instance, if Maryland has casino licenses it can’t give away, that’s because voters approved a confiscatory tax rate in 2008. Finding few takers (and having seen only one slot parlor and one racino open since ’08), lawmakers are trying to claw back some of what the electorate imposed. State senate President Thomas V. “Mike” Miller (D) is offering 
Score another round for Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D): By threatening a drawn-out negotiation process that would put casino expansion hard up against election season — with lawmakers facing the terra incognita of redrawn districts — he may have forced everyone to meet him halfway. That’s the early read on a compromise deal emerging from the governor’s mansion, brokered between Quinn and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel — and hammered out on the noggins of emissaries of the horseracing and casino industries. The horsey set isn’t ready to back off its demand for racinos but it appears that legislators are preparing to dismount and 
Those $2 billion megaresorts mooted for Florida will have a much easier time making their nut if state Rep. Erik Fresen (R, left) holds sway. In an attempt to woo recalcitrant conservatives, 
“Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.” — legendary animator and really cool dude Chuck Jones (1912-2002). Today, Circus Circus opened The Chuck Jones Experience, an interactive museum devoted to Jones and the veritable cosmos of characters to which his pencil gave life. Put it at the top of your “must-see” list the next time you come to Vegas.
If you knew nothing about table games, you could probably guess their volatility just by looking at the wacky variances across Pennsylvania, from Mount Airy‘s -6% to Sands Bethlehem‘s +72% (+88% for the quarter but up “merely” 21% for the entire year). Others who played exceptionally lucky were the dealers at Parx Casino (48%) and Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs (32%), although only Parx and a strong-finishing Sands topped the $100 million mark in table revenue ($116 million and $106 million in 2011, respectively), with everyone else far below. At the slots, teething newborn SugarHouse bit off big chunks of Parx’s business (-5% for the year) and Harrah’s, too (-10%). Does anybody still think Philly needs a fifth casino?
That ‘clang’ you hear is the sound of Resorts World New York artillery shells bouncing off the steel plates of Sands Bethlehem, which not only continues to withstand Aqueduct‘s barrage but 
In terms of turning around Isle’s financial performance, do you feel the full 180 degrees have been achieved yet? We’ve had a couple off different priorities over the last few years, as far as our strategic initiatives. One was to become a stronger operating company and we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress. One was — particularly during the Great Recession — to create experiences of values for our customers. We’ve very, very engaged with our customer base, not only through social media but through constant, ongoing research projects where we talk to our customers all the time. Rather than assume what is important to your database, we get out and talk to them at least two times a year, in many cases more than that. [We] ask them to rank what is most important, both in terms of the gaming experience and our employees, and then ask us to rank us on performance. To the extent that there’s a gap between what the customer is telling us is important and our delivery, it gives us a blueprint to improve our operations and we work on that.
During the Great Recession, although customer spending decreased our visitation actually increased. So at a time when leisure dollars were very precious to our customers, we were clearly giving them an experience that was of value to them, even though they didn’t have as much to invest with us. We have, because of the economic issues, instituted profit-enhancement exercises, which has helped us decrease our expenses and improved our margins at most of our properties, and we’ve also paid down a significant amount of debt since this management team joined the company [in 2007]. There are a lot of things that are moving in the right direction. Operating in what we are referring to as “the new normal” means that 
Add South Carolina to the list of states that could be suddenly taking a more favorable view of casino gambling. What the United Keetowa Band of Cherokee Indians is pitching have to be compacted with Gov. Nikki Haley (R, right). We’ve seen in Florida what a long and hellish process getting a compact can be. Of course, if the state proves intransigent, the Keetowa can make a Hail Mary pass to the Interior Department, in D.C. But that’s a desperate resort, usually brandished as a threat when intrastate negotiations have dragged on for years. It’s a bit amusing to see Palmetto State TV anchors reeling with shock at the notion of a “huge” 400-room hotel-casino, something that would pass in Vegas almost without notice. Also, as far as the construction requiring “years” of effort, recent startups in Kansas and Ohio put the lie to that notion. Here’s hoping that Gov. Haley is at least willing to listen to what the Keetowa are offering.
After 42 years of business, the Western Hotel & Casino 
“To see Vegas through the eyes of a CES attendee is to stare into the loudest, brightest, most colour-saturated nook of hell. With 200,000 people — mainly men — crowded into an area just a few miles square, the city becomes one big lumbering, sweaty mass of ill-fitting suits, bluetooth headsets and shwag.” — Paul Carr, newly relocated to downtown Las Vegas, 
As the online-gambling gravy train begins leaving in the station, 
Bottom line, the newfound panic among congressmen and senators who have been hitherto sucking their thumbs could produce an ugly constitutional wrangle. Congress may attempt to rush through a law aimed at superseding individual states’ rights — basically mugging them and taking away any online-gambling monies that states thought were in their grasp. Against this one must weigh the extreme difficulty the current Congress faces even in agreeing whether or not the sun rose this morning. Its list of legislative accomplishments is slight and fast action has not been its specialty. Perhaps out of misguided deference to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Nevada continues to take its cues from Washington, D.C., although one wonders how long that forbearance will once other states get their i-gaming apparatus up and running.
What are your plans for Nemacolin Woodlands Resort, in Pennsylvania? We’re still waiting for the appeal process to wind its way through the courts. The original plan called for to build on an existing facility on the Nemacolin property, which was originally built as a Cabelas-type and which the Hardy family had turned into kind of a 
What are the criteria for reentering the Las Vegas market? We don’t talk specifically about what we’ve looked at. We were selected to [potentially] manage the PropCo assets [during the Station Casinos bankruptcy], a couple of years ago, and became licensed in the state, so we do have the ability to enter the market, if we see the right opportunity. We see that we are more a locals operator than a Strip operator, so we would be looking more for opportunities off the Strip and it could be where we could add value. If it was a property that we felt our customers want to visit, if it was for the right price or something we may manage, 
“I know there’s a perception in life that people who become financially successful do so by climbing up the broken backs of people whose backs they break, but I never climbed up on anybody’s broken back.” — Sheldon Adelson‘s -
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