And, no, I don’t mean what happened on the field last Sunday at the Super Bowl. Nevada‘s sports books surpassed last year’s record $99 million handle and it wasn’t even close — $119 million. The nearly $20 million in profit that the books recorded was also a record amount. Since most bettors picked the “under” on the point spread, casinos cleaned up big — a 16.5% profit. They lost on some of the prop bets but that’s the risk in offering such exotic wagers.
State Sen. Garrett Richter (R, right) isn’t exactly punting on casino expansion in Florida. However, despite opposition from the leaders of both chambers of the Sunshine State’s Legislature, he’s putting forward a bill that would permit destination resorts in Miami-Dade County and Broward County, the casino-friendliest parts of the state. There’s also talk of tidying existing Florida laws which don’t even define horse racing. “It’s not something that we necessarily want to become involved in. But it’s something that circumstances probably require us to do something about,” said state Sen. President Don Gaetz (R) sounding like a man being forcibly dragged into something he’d very much prefer to avoid.
* The Mashpee Wampanoags took a big step toward gaining a casino in Massachusetts when their compact with the state was gazetted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. However, the tribe still needs to overcome the Carcieri v. Salazar ruling in order to have a shot at the southeastern-region concession. However, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission isn’t obligated to issue that last license, so it could always but it in cold storage — although the MGC has shown signs of impatience already and Foxwoods Massachusetts‘ alliance with Fall River brings heavyweight competition to the area.
Losing Gansevoort Group as a hotel partner wasn’t a bad thing for Caesars Entertainment, judging by the amount of bandwidth devoted to the renaming of the old Barbary Coast as The Cromwell. (Why not ‘The Qromwell’ I wonder?) Caesars is calling it the Strip’s “luxury lifestyle boutique hotel.” That makes me think the company didn’t get the memo when the Four Seasons opened and missed it again when Mandarin Oriental debuted. Were namesake Oliver Cromwell still alive, he wouldn’t thrill to emulation of “the chic Costes Hotel in Paris, where rooms are meant to feel like Parisian lofts, with distressed hardwood flooring, vintage luggage motif furnishings and showers tiled with random English and French phrases,” although customers with a whimsical bent will appreciate them.
