Those masters of quality on a budget, Millennium Gaming CEOs William Paulos and William Wortman have found a new target of opportunity: New Hampshire. Using the Rockingham Park horse track as their base of operations, the Dollar Bills are helping to lead the movement to bring racinos to the Granite State (formerly symbolized by the now-vanished Old Man of the Mountain, left). Some reports place the number of slots proposed for Rockingham alone at 8,000 machines.
Speaking as someone who’s spent more summers in New Hampshire than I can offhand remember, there are many better things to do there than gamble. However, if that’s your recreational activity of choice, Granite State legislators have an excellent opportunity to steal a march on their indecisive Massachusetts colleagues (currently gravitating toward the racino option) — unless they study the matter to death. Perhaps by 2012 or ’13, the economy will have rebounded sufficiently that states are able to generate increased same-store casino revenues, instead of simply stealing market share from across the state line.
Analysts at J.P. Morgan have low expectation for IGT‘s fourth quarter (due in part to write-offs) and a generally cautious outlook for the year ahead. Unit sales for 4Q09 are forecast to be -39% from the same period last year, and the 2010 fiscal year is expected to see a 15% falloff from ’09.
However, what to our wondering eyes should appear but the news that Harrah’s Entertainment, which has been trash-talking IGT’s product for over year, has placed “a sizable order” for year’s end. Another glimmer of sunrise on the horizon is industry scuttlebutt that, after a year of austerity with regarding to reinvesting in their slot floors, casinos will be begin to budget for slot replacements again, hopefully setting off “some domino effect on those who deferred slot capex and now feel inclined to play catch up.”
The best-case scenario for IGT would be if customer acceptance of server-based gambling were to take off like a shot when Aria opens. Even so, the timing would still be fiendish for the cash-strapped industry, were it to try and play catch-up. Having put so many eggs in the SBG basket, IGT has been doubly disadvantaged by how long it has taken the technology to come to market and, once it did so, it was at the worst historical juncture imaginable. The slot gods definitely haven’t made life easy for IGT, though some of its competitors would chalk that up to karma.
8,000 slots in New Hampshire?? Are there that many people in the whole state outside of Manchester and the Seacoast? 800 would be huge, 8,000 is kinda crazy but they could fill ’em with a new motto, “Gamble or die.”