Maryland casino revenues inched up to $145 million last month, led by MGM National Harbor with $61 million and 42% of market share. Maryland Live, no 
surprise, was second with 33% and $48 million (+2%). Horseshoe Baltimore grossed $20 million (-9.5%), Hollywood Perryville was off 10% to $6 million, Ocean Downs gained 7% to $6 million and Rocky Gap Resort was flat at $5 million. West Virginia casinos and racinos were flat, despite a 3% bump in table winnings. A 9% surge in table games at Hollywood Casino in Charles Town made up for a 2% decline in slot win.
* A sale of Casino Queen in East St. Louis had been flying under the radar—until it crash and burned. Now Gaming & Leisure Properties will be writing off $13 million in impaired value of Casino Queen. Of course, once you’ve emotionally committed to selling an asset it’s hard to walk that back, so we expect Casino Queen to stay on the market. GLPI has only $30 million in cash on hand versus debt of $5.8 billion, so it would make sense to delever as soon as is feasible.
* What do you do when the bulk of sports betting is done via the Internet and on mobile devices? Make the sports book the nicest loss-leader you can. At least 
that’s the current thinking in Atlantic City, where Bally’s is kitting out its book with foosball, billiards and beer pong. “It’ll be like an arcade for grown-ups,” said Caesars Entertainment exec Phil Mazzone. He’s putting in automatic beer dispensers (Yay!) and a 100-foot-long TV screen. Mazzone’s biggest competitor, Borgata, is creating a dedicated, $11 million book, having outgrown the racing book that held sway for years.
“What’s great about that is this is a new customer,” said Caesars’ Kevin Ortzman, alluding to the Sunday and Monday football traffic that a state-of-the-art sports book creates. “Caesars and MGM have sportsbooks in Las Vegas, so we know how important it is to have an amenity to drive new business that we otherwise wouldn’t have.” If, as Resorts Atlantic City reports, sports book traffic is driving more casino gambling too, look at books as being a loss-leader to stay.
* Halfway across the country, a sports-betting bill is on Gov. Kim Reynolds‘ desk and she’s keeping everyone guessing whether she’ll sign it or not. That hasn’t stopped solons from rolling an Internet-gaming bill through the Lege. 
“We’re getting ready to queue up the next generation of gamblers in Iowa. It will start with sports and lead to online slot machines that look a lot like your phone and who knows what else,” wailed Sen. Joe Balkcom (D), balking at the idea. Once the online-sports-betting issue is resolved, the Iowa Lottery is next up with a proposal to sell lottery products over the Internet.
The bill at hand, SF 617, juices 19 already-licensed casinos into ‘Net sports betting by enabling them to create ‘virtual wallets’ whereby Hawkeye State bettors could place their wagers via the Web. “The way that I looked at sports betting was that it’s being done already, everywhere. If you’re going to be making it legal, then why wouldn’t the state try to benefit from that and put it to good?” asks state Sen. Liz Mathis (D), one of the cooler heads prevailing in Des Moines. She’s having to deal with the likes of Consumer Credit of Des Moines Executive Director Tom Coates, whose scare tactics include conjuring up visions of video game Fortnite being reinterpreted as sports betting.
As for the lottery, “Without the ability to modernize our products, we anticipate that lottery proceeds will only be able to continue at their current levels for a few more years and then we anticipate a downturn, due to the decreased use of cash and the overall trend toward e-commerce,” laments CEO Matt Strawn. He can count on Reynolds’ support, unlike the would-be purveyors of sports betting. Strawn complains that “it would be an antiquated model to rely solely on the unpredictable nature of jackpots to expect the Lottery to continue to hit the revenue goals that we believe that we can deliver for the state.”
Elsewhere in Iowa, chalk up a win for Prairie Flower Casino. The National Indian Gaming Commission has ruled that the Ponca Tribe—which was disenrolled in the 1960s and restored to tribal status during the George H.W. 
Bush administration—was within its rights to open that casino. “Since the parcel is within the aboriginal territory of the tribe and the tribe possesses modern connections to it, based on the geographic factor alone, the parcel is restored lands,” reasoned the NIGC. Council Bluffs attorney Dick Wade intends to keep on suing but admits that the NIGC determination makes his job much harder. Iowa’s attorney general is “considering our next steps,” which leaves the door open for quashing its own litigation. “The decision effectively ends the legal battle in district court,” said tribal attorney James Meggesto but just try telling that to huffy Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, who vows to take the matter to federal court, shades of the Desert Diamond casino fight in Arizona. (The bad guys lost that one.)
* We’ve been watching the Netflix series Ozark and were sticking with it pretty well until protagonist Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) pitched a riverboat casino to some backwoods drug dealers. Byrd said that the average riverboat casino in the Show-Me State grosses “$90 million a month.” Ha! Haha! Hahahahaha! Not in Missouri they don’t! Not anywhere! (Except Las Vegas, if we only knew.) The Ozark writers have clearly done their homework on some aspects of the casino business in Missouri so why they threw this boner in there defies explanation.
* Lawrence Ho may have trouble financing his next phase of Studio City, now that U.S. affiliate New Cotai Holdings has filed for bankruptcy.
