Quote of the Day

Posted on May 10, 2010 by David McKee

“Anybody who was not madly in love with Lena Horne should report to his undertaker immediately and turn himself in.” — actor/activist Ossie Davis, speaking of the legendary songstress who died yesterday at age 92. Here she is in unaccustomed repertory:

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While Atlantic City burns …

Posted on May 7, 2010 by David McKee

While Atlantic City burns, Gov. Chris Christie fiddles. After coming into office saying the right things about helping the state’s casino industry, Christie has spent most of first months in office dithering uselessly. Having waited until A) the Revel project is comatose and B) a local referendum on Revel-only tax breaks is moot and C) his signature was a mere formality, Christie applied his belated John Hancock to a bill forbidding the good burghers of Atlantic City from voting on their own future.

But Christie is far from a prime suspect in the matter of “Who Killed Atlantic City?” Accusatory eyes should turn to Local 54 President Robert McDevitt, who has thrown up obstacle after obstacle to Revel. Truth be told, the former Morgan Stanley project probably can’t get built without tax breaks but an unfinished Revel would suit “Rule or Ruin” McDevitt just fine. His trump-card argument (pun intended) is that Revel would put three or four existing casinos — presumably the ones recently described in a state-commissioned report as “parasitic” — out of business.

Your point being … ? Is the future of Atlantic City really going to be brighter without Revel but with the bottom-scraping quartet of Continue reading →

Posted in Alabama, Atlantic City, CityCenter, Colony Capital, Current, Dining, Donald Trump, Economy, Election, Environment, Harrah's, Louisiana, MGM Mirage, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Planet Hollywood, Politics, Regulation, Steve Wynn, The Strip, Tourism, Tribal, Wall Street | 4 Comments

Quote of the Day

Posted on May 7, 2010 by David McKee

“It could never have worked if we had done it in phases. We could never have created what I wanted, which is this urbanization that is going to be so vitally important and makes it so different from another resort. If we’d just built, say, the [Aria] casino-hotel and had raw land around it, it would be a beautiful resort. But that’s what it would be. It would not be a building block in a modern city, and that’s what it is now because when you stand at the foot of Aria and look up, yes, you see the beautiful Cesar Pelli building but as you rotate from left to right, you then see the KPF-designed Mandarin Oriental, the Murphy Jahn[-designed] Veer Towers, Daniel Liebeskind’s crazy roof design on Crystals, you see Harmon [Hotel] peeking through the Veer Towers and you see Rafael Viñoly’s stunningly elegant Vdara.” — MGM Mirage CEO James Murren on why it was imperative to build CityCenter all at once (and arguably bit off considerably more than MGM or its lead contractor could chew in the process) and not in a phased-in manner.

Posted in Architecture, CityCenter, MGM Mirage, The Strip | 7 Comments

Illinois’ results are good, Sands’ are better

Posted on May 7, 2010 by David McKee

Praise be! Casino revenues in Illinois were actually flat (+0.5%) last month. It’s mainly a consequence of Penn National‘s Empress Joliet being back in the fray, raking in $40 million. (You’ll recall that, a year ago, its pavilion was but a charred husk.) This wasn’t such good news for Penn’s Hollywood Aurora or Harrah’s Entertainment‘s casino in Joliet, which lost an average of 23% of business. MGM Mirage‘s Grand Victoria came through unscathed, however.

St. Louis-area casinos continue to lose business to Missouri, however. Both Penn’s Alton Belle and independently owned Casino Queen were down 10% and it’s certainly more than coincidence that Pinnacle Entertainment bolstered its Missouri-side arsenal with River City at that very time. At least the rollout of slot routes in Illinois continues to be a flop, buying some relief for the state’s long-suffering riverboats.

Cap-and-trade at Sands. Combing through Las Vegas Sands‘ 1Q10 report and the first week of business at Marina Bay Sands, analysts at J.P. Morgan are generally bullish on the company. They’re not expecting Sands to move many of its Macao condo units this year but speedily growing VIP play at Venetian Macao (left) generated that megaresort’s highest Continue reading →

Posted in Current, Economy, Harrah's, Macau, MGM Mirage, Missouri, Penn National, Pennsylvania, Pinnacle Entertainment, Regulation, Sheldon Adelson, Singapore, The Strip | Comments Off on Illinois’ results are good, Sands’ are better

Or maybe Excalibur …

Posted on May 7, 2010 by David McKee

Former Mandalay Resort Group boss Mike Ensign‘s payoff of his son’s mistress (which is under investigation for “structuring,” i.e., tax avoidance) is but one of many salacious matters that have brought Senate Ethics Committee staffers to Sin City. They got totally busted questioning castoff concubine Cynthia Hampton and local political fixer Sig Rogich at a Las Vegas hotel. (Like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expects George Knapp.)

If they had a sense of humor, the senatorial sleuths would have done their grilling out in the boonies at the Gold Strike, where Sen. John Ensign used to be general manager. Come to think of it, if the Washington inquisitors had wanted to go unnoticed, they and their witnesses might have blended right in with the tourists at Ensign pere‘s old stomping grounds, Circus Circus. But if you want a bunch of local movers and shakers to stick out like a sore thumb, a sedate Marriott Suites hotel is just the place for it. Those guys from D.C. need to brush up on their undercover skills.

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Adelson does it again

Posted on May 6, 2010 by David McKee

Despite vigorous attempts by Singapore to discourage its own citizens from gambling, it’s not working. Even a $72 admission charge isn’t keeping them out. Better still, VIP junketeers are encountering smoother access than was expected. (Junket scrutiny in Singapore is far tighter than in Macao.)

On the downside, “CEO and hairman [sic]” Sheldon Adelson has proven once more that nobody can fuck up a megaresort opening like Las Vegas Sands. In what may be an LVS record, it’s only taken eight days for the $5.9 billion resort to attract its first lawsuit — or at least the threat thereof. Seems the Inter-Pacific Bar Association Conference is hopping mad to have arrived and found no available swimming pool or spa, malfunctioning telephones and plumbing, and toilets Continue reading →

Posted in Current, Economy, Genting, International, Macau, Pennsylvania, Regulation, Sheldon Adelson, Singapore | 4 Comments

Blasts from the past

Posted on May 6, 2010 by David McKee

Steve Wynn‘s been taking himself a mite too seriously of late, which makes me wonder whatever happened to this guy? At least the “hair helmet” look is a thing of the past. Sadly, so too is the Golden Nugget Atlantic City, which passed through many hands (including umpteen permutations of Hilton Gaming and, briefly, Harrah’s Entertainment) before falling into the dumpster that is Colony Capital.

Colony CEO Tom Barrack (successor to James Packer as Gaming’s Worst Investor) bought the erstwhile Nugget for a song, got way the hell upside down on his mortgage and there’s a serious likelihood that the A.C. Hilton could be forfeited to its creditors, just as Barrack’s Resorts Atlantic City was. One of Wynn’s strengths is that he doesn’t go cruising on Memory Lane but Continue reading →

Posted in Atlantic City, Colony Capital, Harrah's, James Packer, Marketing, Phil Ruffin, Steve Wynn, The Strip, TV | Comments Off on Blasts from the past

How ’bout “Frankie & Lon’s Shack o’ Slots”?

Posted on May 5, 2010 by David McKee

So, will $10 billion Viva precede or follow those condo towers next to Palace Station in the grand Station scheme of things?

There are any number of gaming companies about which one can write with approbation. Station Casinos is not among them. Its history includes some serious ethical scrapes (to put it diplomatically) and it currently looks as though Frank III and Lorenzo Fertitta‘s reward for essentially crashing the company into a brick wall will be court sanction to buy it back at a dime-store price. However, whatever one thinks of the Fertittas and their ceaseless machinations, the word “stupid” never, ever comes to mind.

Until today, perhaps. Attorneys for the bankrupt casino company are floating the notion of removing the “Station” name from their core properties. Even the New Coke of casinos, proposed “MGM Resorts International,” retains MGM as part of the brand. Les freres Fertitta would flush Station’s brand equity altogether. Unless … this is some slick and clever ploy to scare bidders away from the non-core assets by suggesting that Station is going to tank its own brand name, debasing the value of the rest of the 18-casino chain. (And is key player Deutsche Bank down with the expensive rebranding that would have to be done, if push came to shove — never mind waiting for the new moniker to gain traction?)

The downfall and bankruptcy of Station, the most morally depressing casino saga of the last decade, has played out like one big game of chicken as Continue reading →

Posted in Atlantic City, Boulder Strip, Boyd Gaming, Cannery Casino Resorts, Colony Capital, Current, Economy, Station Casinos, Wall Street | 9 Comments

Girls, girls, girls!

Posted on May 5, 2010 by David McKee

Whereas, I have just finished (finally!) watching Firefly and am in deep withdrawal, and …

Whereas, my girlfriend — who generally likes neither Westerns nor science fiction — has become even more of a newly minted “browncoat” than I, and …

Whereas, Amazonian über-babe Gina Torres (Zoe), who was spotted by Yr. Humble Blogger at Aria prior to the Viva Elvis premiere, looks stunning even without makeup, and …

Whereas, Nathan Fillion‘s Castle is just fine but what we really want is more Serenity …

Whereas, this video clip makes me laugh harder than anything in a month of Sundays:

Be it resolved that we present to you, totally gratuitously and just for fun …

Posted in Cirque du Soleil, CityCenter, Entertainment, Movies, TV | 2 Comments

Quote of the Day

Posted on May 5, 2010 by David McKee

“There was a time where I wouldn’t walk in there for fear of getting a secondary lung disease. Now, it’s as cool and neat as a place as there is in the entire downtown.” — Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, on downtown’s renovated Gold Spike motel-casino.

Posted in Current, Downtown, Oscar Goodman | 4 Comments

Vegas’ secret shame revealed

Posted on May 5, 2010 by David McKee

Thanks to last night’s episode of Dancing with the Stars, all America knows that Cirque du Soleil has unleashed a campy, fugly Elvis Presley “tribute” show upon the Strip. (I wonder which of the six credited choreographers was responsible for the number performed?) Truth be told, it actually “plays” far better on the DWTS set than at Aria, where it’s crammed — shoehorned, one might say — onto a shallow, overstuffed proscenium stage. Happily, Cirque left the giant blue suede shoe — the size of a compact car — back in Vegas.

While Viva Elvis might have engendered better opening-night reviews had “Blue Suede Shoes” been more pure dance and less “Cirquetry” (as Las Vegas Weekly‘s Joe Brown dubbed the shtick), at least one viewer got a premonition of the candy-colored glop that is Viva Elvis‘ prevailing aesthetic. Wrote TelevisionWithoutPity.com member o2Sean: “I don’t remember even those day-glo Elvis movies having people who looked like they were rejected from the Legion of Superheroes circa the Saturn Girl bikini era. What did any of that even have to do with Elvis?”

What indeed?

Posted in Cirque du Soleil, CityCenter, Entertainment, MGM Mirage, The Strip, TV | 1 Comment

Marina Bay Sands Film Festival

Posted on May 4, 2010 by David McKee


Welcome to soothing, serene Marina Bay Sands, in Singapore, where good feelings were the order of the day when Las Vegas Sands soft-opened the megaresort as only CEO Sheldon Adelson‘s flunkies can …

… complete with luxurious transportation …

… to the 90% unfinished mall ([in]complete with faux Venetian canal; some things never change). Looks an awful lot like Continue reading →

Posted in Genting, International, Sheldon Adelson, Singapore, TV | 6 Comments

New Brunswick has a casino

Posted on May 4, 2010 by David McKee

Move over, Atlantic City, here come “the Maritimes.” (Quoth the Mackenzie Brothers, “Zoom in on the Maritimes, eh?”) Not to be outdone by Nova Scotia‘s casinos or Prince Edward Island‘s racino, New Brunswick has struck back with a 22-table, 500-slot casino in Moncton. Already, dark predictions of doom are being sounded by the usual suspects. Watching the (non-embeddable) video footage, I couldn’t helping thinking Mayor Tommy Shanks (the late John Candy) ought to be cutting the ribbon, with entertainment provided by lounge lizards Sammy Maudlin (Joe Flaherty) and Bobby “As a comic, in all seriousness” Bittman (Eugene Levy) … for those of you who fondly remember SCTV.

Posted in International, TV | 3 Comments

BoB still $29.99 … sorta

Posted on May 4, 2010 by David McKee

If you’re heading north out of McCarran International Airport on Swenson, be sure and have your digital cameras or cell phones at the ready. There, big as life, is a Harrah’s Entertainment billboard for the “Buffet of Buffets” (spotted at approximately 8:45 this a.m.) displaying the original $29.99 tab. If one takes Harrah’s at its word and you can produce time-stamped, photographic evidence, the company ought to honor the original BoB price.

I’ve not had time to trawl cyberspace but my sources tell me “Internet chatter” regarding Harrah’s now-you-see-it/now-you-don’t switcheroo Continue reading →

Posted in Dining, Economy, Entertainment, Harrah's, Station Casinos, The Strip | 1 Comment

Quote of the Day

Posted on May 4, 2010 by David McKee

“[Steve] Wynn does business in Las Vegas, where Gaming Inc. pays a 6.75 percent tax rate and casino bosses bray like thunderstruck donkeys when someone reminds them Mississippi casinos pay 8 percent, Atlantic City casinos contribute 9[%], and Louisiana riverboats pay 21.5[%]. Wynn claims he is sincerely considering moving his headquarters to Macau, an Asian mob-infested smuggler’s paradise ruled by a communist government where casinos pay an aggregate 40 percent tax rate. This is the atmosphere he says is less oppressive than the United States?” — Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith on Wynn’s threat to take his ball and move to China.

Posted in Atlantic City, Louisiana, Macau, Mississippi, Steve Wynn, Taxes | Comments Off on Quote of the Day

Macao’s best month ever

Posted on May 3, 2010 by David McKee

Pace T.S. Eliot, April was not the cruelest month for Macao. Quite the contrary: The protectorate posted gambling revenues of $1.72 billion, a single-month record. Galaxy Entertainment (whose new Cotai Strip™ pleasure palace is pictured, above) brought up the rear, along with MGM Grand Macau. Even if Stanley Ho is really on his deathbed, his Sociedade de Jogos de Macau continues to pull market share away from Las Vegas Sands in tiny increments. For April, SJM’s market share was 33% to Sands’ 21%. Wynn Resorts continues to get the most bang per gaming position, its 14% of market share good for third place, edging Melco Crown Entertainment‘s 13%.

Due to technical difficulties, we had to remove an earlier posting about a proposed Macanese law that would effectively put a brake on casino development without explicitly doing so. To quell unrest over imported labor, Continue reading →

Posted in Current, Economy, International, James Packer, Lawrence Ho, Macau, Melco Crown Entertainment, MGM Mirage, Regulation, Sheldon Adelson, Stanley Ho, Steve Wynn | Comments Off on Macao’s best month ever

Quote of the Day

Posted on May 3, 2010 by David McKee

“It’s not going to come back to 2006 and 2007, because people were spending more than they could afford then.” — Spectrum Gaming Group Managing Director Michael Pollock, administering a dose of realism to the casino industry.

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Sheldon’s smokin’ (something)

Posted on April 30, 2010 by David McKee

If any other gaming CEO than Sheldon Adelson opened the most expensive casino ever ($5.5 billion) and projected it would recoup its tab in five years — requiring a return on investment well above 20% when you take operating costs into account — Wall Street analysts would be rushing the phones to put “sell” orders on the stock.

Yet when the Las Vegas Sands CEO predicts a $1 billion or more annual profit on mega-expensive megaresort Marina Bay Sands, nobody bats an eyelid. Then again, there was nary a peep of skepticism when Sheldon forecast 17% ROI for Sands Bethlehem, despite its unfinished condition and runaway cost. Its actual return has been in the low single digits and the company says the $740 million (and counting) project is losing money.

Analyst projections for Marina Bay run the gamut from a conservative 5% ROI to an Adelson-like 14%. Despite various cautionary notes (like the fact that only 10% of Marina Bay’s “shoppes” and a quarter of its hotel rooms are open), Adelson responded with cloud of platitudinous blather about Continue reading →

Posted in Atlantic City, Colony Capital, Entertainment, Fontainebleau, Harrah's, International, Macau, Marketing, Penn National, Pennsylvania, Planet Hollywood, Sheldon Adelson, Singapore, Station Casinos, Wall Street, World Series of Poker | 2 Comments

Harrah’s big buffet bungle

Posted on April 30, 2010 by David McKee

Let it be said at the outset that $39.99 for X number of meals at (most of) Harrah’s Entertainment‘s Strip buffets — up from $29.99 — is still one heckuva deal. If you can manage, say, breakfast, lunch and two dinners in a 24-hour period, that’s $10 per buffet. Try getting that price anywhere else in town and a meal you can stomach.

Harrah’s, it will be remembered, rolled out its “Buffet of Buffets” (henceforth “BoB”) on April 12 … and it lasted all of 16 days. During that time it was insanely successful, too much so for its own good. Last Wednesday morning, Harrah’s tiptoed out a $10 price increase, mainly via Twitter. However, the Tweeting right hand of Harrah’s marketing didn’t know what the left was doing. At approximately 9:30 that same morning, yours truly saw a mobile billboard — right in front of Paris-Las Vegas — still promulgating the suddenly obsolete $29.99 price.

Although Harrah’s reserved the right (in miniscule print) to change prices without notice, to roll out the BoB with great fanfare and then slap on a 33% price increase while most of Vegas slept is what some folks Continue reading →

Posted in Current, Dining, Harrah's, M Resort, Marketing, Planet Hollywood, Technology, The Strip | Comments Off on Harrah’s big buffet bungle

Quote of the Day

Posted on April 30, 2010 by David McKee

“It is certainly time that we openly recognize that when a limited number of gambling licenses are up for bid, the winners will be the applicants who promise the state the most money, in upfront fees, massive construction projects and continuing jobs.” — gaming-law scholar I. Nelson Rose, on the Missouri Gaming Commission‘s recent attempt to strip the President casino of its license due to financial underperformance. A similar confrontation may loom between Isle of Capri Casinos and the State of Louisiana.

Posted in Economy, Isle of Capri, Louisiana, Missouri, Pinnacle Entertainment, Regulation | Comments Off on Quote of the Day