{"id":103,"date":"2009-07-24T15:02:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-24T19:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2009\/7\/24\/Packer-steps-in-it-again"},"modified":"2022-02-08T07:14:40","modified_gmt":"2022-02-08T15:14:40","slug":"packer-steps-in-it-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/packer-steps-in-it-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Packer steps in it again"},"content":{"rendered":"

After frequent demurrals, the Victoria government has ‘fessed up that it was on the receiving end of ham-fisted lobbying<\/a> by Crown Casino<\/strong> owner James Packer<\/strong>. A delicate quid pro quo<\/em> (higher taxes in return for more table games) was being negotiated. But, not wanting to leave anything to chance, Packer personally besieged both Victoria’s premier and treasurer in re<\/em> Crown.<\/p>\n

The state comes out of this looking worse than Packer, though, as witnessed by this weaselly attempt at damage control: “The Government is adamant that any expansion of Crown’s gaming tables was under discussion for a long time and that poker was a less addictive form of gambling than poker machines<\/em>.” [Emphasis added] So I guess that makes it all copacetic, right?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Lawrence Ho & James Packer: less to smile about these days<\/em><\/p>\n

Hammered in Macao<\/strong>. Packer’s new City of Dreams<\/strong> is getting stomped<\/a> by nearby Venetian Macao<\/strong>. VIP baccarat play for Melco Crown Entertainment<\/strong> properties was off 19% — which is even worse than its sounds when you count on it for 60% of your total gambling revenues. Mass-market baccarat play was 12% up, so there’s some consolidation. (Meanwhile, in some parallel universe, the Wall Street Journal<\/em> is nattering on about a “brighter outlook<\/a>” for Macao, even as revenue continues to decline and City of Dreams flops. Visitation was -16% in June and the Mainland China subset of that was -22%.)<\/p>\n

A good thing for Sheldon Adelson<\/strong> that Venetian Macao’s play is so strong. Bloomberg News<\/strong> reports that 85% of Las Vegas Sands<\/strong>‘ Macanese revenue is casino-derived … which ought to raise serious questions about Adelson’s hotel-, retail- and convention-premised Cotai Strip™<\/strong> business model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After frequent demurrals, the Victoria government has ‘fessed up that it was on the receiving end of ham-fisted lobbying by Crown Casino owner James Packer. A delicate quid pro quo (higher taxes in return for more table games) was being … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[103,14,96,94,62,93,90,25,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30704,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/30704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}