In what must have been an easy call for jurisprudence, a Clark County judge has ash canned the Sahara‘s frivolous lawsuit against Vital Vegas author Scott Roeben. “Ill-considered” was about the nicest thing Judge Trevor Atkin had to say in granting Roeben’s anti-SLAPP motion, leaving Alex Meruelo free to appeal, if he’s a glutton for punishment. He’s already on the hook for Roeben’s legal fees—and Lord knows how much PR to repair the Sahara’s battered reputation. Roeben’s counter motion—crafted by Nevada treasure Marc Randazza—disclosed many damning details about the casino’s operations, dirty linen we’re sure Meruelo would have preferred to keep in the bag. As Roeben recapitulates, “We had a source for our Sahara story, a representative of a liquidation company asked to bid for the removal and sale of all the physical assets at Sahara. The liquidation bids were set to expire at the end of September, according to the source, hence his belief the resort might close at that time.”
As you know, DraftKings is the current darling of Wall Street, its stock hovering around $50/share. Today Credit Suisse analyst Ben Chaiken initiated coverage with an “outperform” rating, putting a $76/share price target on the stock. He even went to far to call the stock “undervalued.” Given what we’ve seen from DKNG so far, that does not strike us as the least bit over-optimistic. Wrote Chaiken, “the structural growth story is still in its infancy. DKNG has access to only ~18% of the population with mobile betting, and line of sight opportunity to a few other states. As was seen following ‘08/’09, the legalization of land based gaming almost doubled, and we think a similar dynamic could occur post-COVID with sports betting, as states look to fill in budget gaps.” 