Palazzo closes; iGaming here to stay

Speaking of gambling, the American Gaming Association may have taken a premature victory lap when it released a revenue tracker showing October casino win nationwide to be at 93% of pre-pandemic levels from the same point in 2019. This was before yesterday’s revelation that Maryland had taken a downturn and the bottom had fallen out of Ohio. And now casinos in Illinois and Michigan are closed. Again. So November and December will not look so roseate. Anyway, the report does make a strong case for online sports betting and Internet casinos. While slot revenues were down 10.5% ($2.1 billion) and tables were off 17% ($543 million), sports wagering shot up 53.5% ($237.5 million), as did Internet gambling, (+209.5%, $156 million). While Sheldon Adelson may continue to oppose both these forms of gaming, the AGA has implicitly come down in their favor, simply by posting the factual evidence of their importance to the overall gaming picture. The AGA pointedly noted that Iowa (4%), Ohio (7%), Pennsylvania (14.5%), New Jersey (15%), Colorado (28.5%) and South Dakota (3%) “saw revenue gains over October 2019, mostly powered by strong sports betting and iGaming performance.”

The wintertime resurgence of Covid-19 (2,000 deaths per day) may put a dent in the trend but gambling revenues have been marching steadily upward from their April perigee and puny May But it’s hard to argue with numbers. The biggest surge in revenue was Oregon‘s 1,162% ($3 million), while New Mexico reported no money at all, its casinos completely hors de combat. The AGA thinks sports betting may have peaked in October, even though we’ll soon have overlapping NFL/NBA seasons (again). Nevada fell to New Jersey in October, posting $659 million in sports-betting handle to the Garden State’s $803 million, with Pennsylvania chipping in $526 million. Money talks and there’s so much of it being wagering online it should effectively drown out Adelson, for all his perceived political clout.

Ohio solons are taking another look at sports betting and they’ve plenty of economic incentive to do so. SB 111 differs from its predecessor by restricting the number of Internet “skins” from three per casino to one, obviously a sop to gaming skeptics. “It sounds like there is momentum behind the bill to get it passed before year end, but it still has to go through the Senate and the House,” writes Credit Suisse analyst Ben Chaiken. Alliances that have been announced are Barstool Sports/Hollywood Columbus, DraftKings/Hollywood Toledo and FanDuel/Belterra Park. If the bill passes (and time is short), this will be Barstool’s first real test, starting with a level playing field.

As long as we’re on the subject of sports betting, the Las Vegas Raiders may not have won last Sunday’s game as the New York Jets lost it. In a situation where the Raiders’ vertical-passing tendencies were all but inevitable, the Nyets called “Cover 0” (which is what the Raiders did to the spread), enabling Derek Carr to hit Henry Ruggs for a game-sealing touchdown. Said Carr, “I couldn’t believe they all-out blitzed us. As soon as I saw it, I was thankful.” So were Raiders fans. Point-spread fans, maybe not.

Hard Rock Atlantic City will be writing seven-figure checks to two former tenants through 2032. It has settled with the former Scores strip club and Robert’s Steakhouse (both owned by Robert Gans) over its attempted eviction of the two in the reinvention of the property from Trump Taj Mahal. The agreement, which only just came to light, dates back to Jan. 17 and sees Hard Rock A.C. paying a cool million a year to the aggrieved parties. They reopened in 2016 but agreed to vacate the premises last winter. As an S&G source summarizes it, “They re-opened, re-closed, etc. They have been in court for years now, and it appears Hard Rock has ‘rolled over’ for a lot of $$.” Indeed it has.

Jottings: Las Vegas has fallen out of favor with WalletHub as a destination for New Year’s Eve. It doesn’t even crack the top 20. Want to know where to go? Try Virginia Beach or Honolulu, followed by (Sonny Tufts!) Plano, Texas … Tribal-gaming revenues for 2019 are finally in and they’re a whopping $34.5 billion, up 2.5% from 2018. The leading market was Oklahoma City, hopping 8% … Mohegan Sun has teamed with Yale New Haven Hospital to expand the Coronavirus testing site currently for tribal members and employees only at the resort’s Thames Garage. You can make an appointment here. The testing program is now open to the general public. The Mohegan are also constructing a primary-care facility in the Trading Cove parking lot. Well done … We totally called this one: Rather than keep his promise to rehabilitate Belle of Baton Rouge, CEO Tom Reeg of Caesars Entertainment has sold the decrepit riverboat to CQ Holdings, which also owns DraftKings Casino Queen in East St. Louis. This gives DraftKings a base of operation once the Louisiana Lege sorts out sports betting in the Pelican State.