{"id":12935,"date":"2014-03-06T13:18:47","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T21:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=12935"},"modified":"2014-03-06T15:56:31","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T23:56:31","slug":"boyd-japan-or-bust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/boyd-japan-or-bust\/","title":{"rendered":"Boyd: Japan or bust"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Japan-flag\"<\/a>Well, they weren’t that dramatic about it. But Boyd Gaming<\/strong> executives surprised Wall Street<\/strong> analysts by announcing their interest in having a Japanese casino<\/a>. For all the ongoing success of Borgata<\/strong>, we still think of Boyd as a small-casino company, getting by on locals play and Hawaiian tourists. “We\u2019re much larger today than we were in early the early 2000s<\/em>,” said CEO Keith Smith, who added that it was too early to talk about financing. Small wonder, with $178 million cash on hand against $4.5 billion in debt. Downtown<\/strong> business improved last quarter while Las Vegas<\/strong> locals business remained on a flat trajectory. (“Relatively OK,” said JP Morgan<\/strong> analyst Joseph Greff<\/strong>.) However, Boyd has improved cash flow for four quarters in a row.<\/p>\n

A $1 billion writedown on the abandoned Echelon<\/strong> project pushed Boyd to a 4Q13 loss. The company also did the responsible thing, retiring an aggregate $585 million in debt and interest. We like seeing that kind of probity in the gaming biz.<\/p>\n

SLS Las Vegas<\/strong> was thrown a lifeline<\/a> this week. It entered a guest-loyalty program with\u00a0Preferred Hotels & Resorts<\/strong>. Which is a good thing because Sam Nazarian<\/strong> offloaded the old Sahara<\/strong> database to Circus Circus<\/strong> and his SBE<\/strong> customers are dancing their brains out at Bellagio<\/strong>. Today’s news makes SLS a bit less of an island in a North Strip slum.<\/p>\n

You can’t fix stupid<\/strong> but you can try to sue your way out of it<\/a>. A Downtown Grand<\/strong> customer admits to gambling away a half-million dollars while on a three-day drinking binge on Super Bowl<\/strong> weekend. The sobering realization didn’t hit him until Sunday, in what must have must as much of a surprise as the Seattle Seahawks<\/strong>‘ runaway victory. If it were to comment (it hasn’t), the Grand would say he’s trying to welsh on his markers. His attorney says the man, Mark Johnston<\/strong>, was “blackout drunk,” couldn’t read his cards and yet kept being served drinks despite his visible intoxication, in violation of Nevada<\/strong> law. Needless to say, the Nevada Gaming Control Board<\/strong> is on the case.<\/p>\n

The Saratoga Springs City Council<\/strong> voted unanimously against expanding gambling at Saratoga Casino & Raceway<\/strong> but no two people agree on what the vote meant. To some, it sent a message. For others, it’s a bargaining chip<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in New York State<\/strong>, what’s halfway between Rochester<\/strong> and Syracuse<\/strong>? The answer is either A) the middle of nowhere or B) Tyre<\/strong>, a wide spot in the road that just qualifies as a town<\/a> (900 souls). Strangely enough, this is where developer Thomas Wilmot<\/strong> wants to put a 2,000-slot, 200-room casino. The project looks like a flop on the face of it but some Tyre residents are worried about potential disruption of their bucolic, agrarian lifestyle.<\/p>\n

Penn National Gaming<\/strong> may yet thwart the lifting of its Sioux City<\/strong> license. In a hearing before the Iowa Racing & Gaming Commission<\/strong>, Penn’s big-gun attorney, Chris Tayback<\/strong> (imported from \"penn-national-gaming\"<\/a>L.A.), was able to extract several damaging admissions<\/a> from the IRGC. One was that it discouraged Penn from reapplying for a casino license, due to the deterioration of its relationship with Missouri River Historical Development<\/strong>. Penn also nailed MRHD for cashing a seven-month backlog of checks just hours after the IRGC decided to supersede Argosy Sioux City<\/strong> with a Hard Rock<\/strong>-branded rival project … now affiliated with MRHD. Tayback also got an IRGC official to concede it would be “possible” for two casinos to operate in Woodbury County<\/strong>, opening the door to a compromise in which Hard Rock and Argosy would both remain in business. Further deliberations were scheduled for today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, they weren’t that dramatic about it. But Boyd Gaming executives surprised Wall Street analysts by announcing their interest in having a Japanese casino. For all the ongoing success of Borgata, we still think of Boyd as a small-casino company, … 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":[60,51,86,53,11,101,69,90,111,25,54,162,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12935"}],"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=12935"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12942,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12935\/revisions\/12942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}