While the New Jersey Casino Control Commission continues to bobble the sale of the Atlantic City Tropicana, at least its stewardship has arrested and perhaps finally the property's decline. While a 5.5% decline in business is nothing to crow over, only Caesars Atlantic City lost less ground, down 4%.
Of course, nobody did remotely as well in dollar volume as the newly augmented Borgata. Whatever struggles Boyd Gaming has experienced in cracking the top, er, echelon on the Las Vegas Strip, it's had the rest of the Atlantic City market playing catch-up, mostly without success, for five years now.
As for the Trop, its gambling revenues are still just keeping pace with Showboat Atlantic City, a property with 7% fewer slots and half the poker/table game capacity. So, while the NJCCC has largely stanched the bleeding, the problem of an attenuated market share remains. Thanks, Columbia Sussex. Don't let that doorknob hit you on the way out.
But the Trop's doing way better than Trump Marina, whose owners — coming off a wretched quarter and not yet having booked the $316 million they're getting for Trump Marina — are merely considering using the money to pay down debt. After all they could "look elsewhere for growth opportunities" — like Panama. (I kid you not.) That's quintessential Donald Trump: Don't address your problems; just run away.
(Presumably the new "Chairman" tower at Trump Taj Mahal is supposed to evoke the glowering, orange-haired Trump himself. But, if you grew up in the Sixties, "the Chairman" was Mao Tse-tung or maybe — if you were just a few years older — the Chairman of the Board himself, one Francis Albert Sinatra. I guarantee that no one will ever call Trump "the Chairman." Ever.)
Golden Heartland: Coming soon-ish to a Kansas near you?
Golden Gaming's PR peeps contacted me to very politely dispute my characterization of Golden as a probable also-ran in the Kansas casino sweepstakes (see "Don't tax me, bro!"). They pointed to CEO Blake Sartini's 15 years in the upper ranks of Station Casinos, his 40-tavern operation in Nevada, the Pahrump Nugget and a trio of Black Hawk, Colo., casinos (with an aggregate of 778 slots and no table games).
I would respond that Golden's most imposing rival in Kansas, Mohegan Sun, probably has a larger installed slot base in its Connecticut casino alone (a mind-boggling 6,199 one-armed bandits) than Golden probably has in all its 40-plus properties rolled together. That Colorado is the minor leagues, casino-wise. That all those taverns, nice as they are (and they're some of the very poshest in Nevada), amount to one big-ass slot route — no disrespect intended. And that we're talking about a $600 million casino-resort contract — far, far bigger than anything Golden has attempted.
Bottom line: I still think Golden is very much the underdog in Kansas. In fact, I'm even more convinced of it. Which isn't to say it won't pull off a stunning upset. But, given the scale of operation that the State of Kansas wants to see, Mohegan Sun's resumé makes the most logical fit.
