“This is a Nevada variation of ‘too big to fail.’ The big growth market is Asia, and if you want to be in the gaming business you need to be in Asia. Therefore, you have to do things the way they are done in Asia.” — William Eadington, director of UNR’s Institute for the Study of Gambling & Commercial Gaming on the complaisance of Nevada regulators with regard to Macao and its triad culture.
When you’re $19 billion or so in the hole, what’s another half-billion, right? Such is the case for Harrah’s Entertainment, which intends to issue $500 million in second-priority secured notes (soon upped to $750 million) due 2018. The notes are being floated to pay off loans that come due this year and the next. Ironically, while borrowing money to repay previously borrowed money may sound like the definition of running in place, the willingness by Wall Street to underwrite such offerings (like the recent MGM Mirage note issue) is regarded as a sign of renewed investor confidence in Las Vegas. Given that mega-lucrative baccarat play and upward trends in high-end room rates are counteracting flat visitation numbers and continued decline in lower-end room prices — good news for bargain hunters — the Street has a point.
“The late Chic Hecht, a lovely man who also said [Martin Luther King] had ‘not been dead long enough’ to merit holiday, makes Harry Reid look like Cicero.” — Jon Ralston, from his Twitter feed, on Nevada‘s famously malaprop-prone senator, who is best remembered for having referred to Yucca Mountain as a “suppository” for nuclear waste … which was not without an element of poetic truth.
Yr. Humble Blogger is a fan of the Las Vegas buffet scene — and owns the waistline to prove it. Starting Monday, Harrah’s Entertainment ratchets up the temptation factor by keeping seven of its Strip buffets 
Despite being 2.5% below last year’s casino revenues, J.P. Morgan is calling the results in Illinois the best out of the previous 16 months. In other words, the decline was the smallest since November of ’09. The restoration of Penn National Gaming‘s Empress Joliet made for serious inroads in MGM Mirage‘s Grand Victoria riverboat (above, -7%) and Harrah’s Joliet (-13%), although I prefer to think of it as “normalization.” (Empress Joliet was out of commission last year, due to a severe fire — footage of which was a big hit with S&G readers.) Even Penn’s own Hollywood Aurora (-10%) felt the effect of Empress Joliet‘s 62% rebound.
On Monday, Steve Wynn 
While Las Vegas Review-Journal Publisher Sherman Frederick was fretting about the “
Undeterred by the complete tanking of the high-rise-condo market in Las Vegas, joint-venture partners Station Casinos and Fisher Bros. had 
S&G readers are a polite and thoughtful bunch of folks, ones from whom I’ve learnt a great deal over the years. They police themselves so well that I’ve almost never, ever had to articulate the unspoken rules of this forum. However, that also means that the occasional newcomer crosses the line and has to get a stern (but private) e-mail about an unknowing infraction of an unwritten rule. So, to clarify the matter — and for future reference …
“I don’t think we’re counting on them carrying the ball like we thought they would,” is the bottom line of a Wall Street Journal story on Las Vegas Sands‘ 
“My concern is they overspent on the two integrated resorts. Instead of allowing both casinos to open in a more relaxed way during the first few years, the [integrated resorts] are now under tremendous pressure.” — Singapore-based casino consultant Ronald Tam, to the Straits Times. In its first two days of business, Resorts World Sentosa did just 30% the foot traffic of Venetian Macao in a comparable time period, despite Singapore having a much larger population base than Macao.
A longtime observer of the industry (and player) has this to say about Steve Wynn‘s revised sales pitch to the City of Philadelphia …
Surprising as ever, Steve Wynn showed up in Philadelphia yesterday bearing a sheaf of renderings for his proposed casinos — three weeks ahead of schedule. Wynn’s final design looks a mite grander than the one he let Steve Friess photograph, seen at left.
While Las Vegas newspapers have been reticent regarding the regulatory can of worms opened by recent findings about the Macanese operations of Las Vegas Sands and MGM Mirage, veteran gaming legal analyst I. Nelson Rose has felt no such compunction. In a March note to investors, he wrote (in part): -
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