{"id":13102,"date":"2014-03-26T10:34:19","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T18:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=13102"},"modified":"2014-03-26T11:23:44","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T19:23:44","slug":"upside-down-at-cosmo-casino-beggars-tribal-casinos-set-new-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/upside-down-at-cosmo-casino-beggars-tribal-casinos-set-new-record\/","title":{"rendered":"Upside down at Cosmo; Casino beggars; Tribal casinos set new record"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"450px-Cosmopolitan_from_Las_Vegas_Blvd\"<\/a>If a 3% ROI is your idea of a good return on a casino, have we got the place for you: The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas<\/strong>. It continues to narrow losses and improved gambling revenues 25%. Last year, the Cosmo’s casino made $155.5 million. But … hotel rooms generated $277 million and F&B brought in $314 million. When gaming is the “loss leader” at your $3.9 billion casino, you’ve got a problem. No wonder Deutsche Bank<\/strong> has been trying to hide these numbers from public scrutiny. They’re an embarrassment.\u00a0Rather feebly, the Cosmo said it was looking to its Rose. Rabbit. Lie<\/em> show\/nightclub and its Chelsea<\/strong> concert hall to drive revenues. I’ve been the former and everyone should see it once, but it’s not going to get the Cosmo out of its doldrums. (Can Caesars Entertainment<\/strong> really be trying to acquire this turkey? Somebody must have offered them a helluva bargain.)<\/p>\n

Delaware<\/strong> taxpayers will be out $20 million if a casino-bailout plan passes the Legislature<\/a>. One of the unspoken attractions of casino gambling for states is that it’s industry that pays its own. When it’s got its hand out for a taxpayer subsidy, it’s time to reexamine \"Delaware<\/a>the premises under which the industry operates. In the Delaware giveaway, taxpayers would be on the hook directly for $10 million in costs paid to slot vendors. \u00a0(In effect you’re playing the slots even if you never put a coin in one.) The yearly table-game tax would be zeroed out. And the annual tax rate of 29% on table game revenue would go down to 15% from 29%. The whole magilla will also be renegotiated in 2015-16.<\/p>\n

Racinos in Delaware were approved both to help the state and its horseracing industry. Now the casino industry is playing the role of mendicant, begging for a handout. Has anybody thought of suggesting to the racinos that they cut costs by $20 million, instead of panhandling John Q. Taxpayer?<\/p>\n

Kansas<\/strong> has a casino license it literally can’t give away. In an attempt to make it more appealing, the state senate has lowered the application fee<\/a> to $5.5 million and the minimum required investment to $50 million (from $25 million and $225 million, respectively). Casino operators like Penn National Gaming<\/strong>, who bought in at the higher rates, may cry foul, but the state’s got to do something to put that fourth license into play. (The upper chamber wisely kiboshed a smoking ban.) A racino at the defunct Woodlands<\/strong> track in Wyandotte<\/strong> was rejected. If Phil Ruffin<\/strong> wants slots at Wichita Greyhound Park<\/strong> he’ll find himself thwarted by hard-liners in the Kansas GOP<\/a>, who blocked a local vote on the issue.<\/p>\n

In 2012<\/strong>, tribal casinos set a new record of revenue<\/a>, albeit at a slower rate of growth — 2% vs. 2011’s 3.5% — which gives some cause for concern. Compared to the traditional casino industry (4% growth) and racinos (8%), tribal casinos were sluggish. Some of this is attributable to faster growth in the private sector, although they represented 43% of casino revenue nationwide.<\/p>\n

\"Money\"<\/a>Two-thirds of Indian casinos surveyed by Alan Meister<\/strong> reported increases, particularly in the Bible Belt (Alabama<\/strong> and Texas<\/strong>), Montana<\/strong> and South Dakota<\/strong>. Slow-growth states included Connecticut<\/strong>, New York<\/strong>, Idaho<\/strong> and Colorado<\/strong>. Meister blamed some of the malaise on aging facilities and new, private-sector competition. California<\/strong> alone represented 25% of total income<\/a>. Oklahoma<\/strong> came in second. Revenue is way down from the go-go, early years of IGRA (148% in 1989) but we’re still talking about a $28 billion industry. With the most tribal-gambling facilities in the U.S., Oklahoma posted an above-average growth rate of 7%<\/a>. However, perhaps due to state charges on Class III machines, their number in the Sooner State has declined for the fourth year running. New Mexico<\/strong> was up 7%<\/a>, Florida’s revenues only 2.5% but the growth in non-gaming tribal income was 10 times that<\/a>. The greatest increase was in Alaska (20%) while the greatest decline<\/a> (-8%) was in Connecticut.<\/p>\n

Quote of the Day<\/strong>:\u00a0\u201cWe thought of Las Vegas<\/strong>, but Macao<\/strong> is just so close, and maybe better anyway, so we came here. We had canard au sang<\/em> yesterday at a good restaurant \u201cand it was pretty special.\u201d — tourist Zhao Yi<\/strong>, from a New York Times<\/em> story on the increasing Disney-fication<\/a> of Macao. Meanwhile, Singapore<\/strong> grows more attractive for those Chinese<\/a> who don’t want their gambling scrutinized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If a 3% ROI is your idea of a good return on a casino, have we got the place for you: The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. It continues to narrow losses and improved gambling revenues 25%. Last year, the Cosmo’s … 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":[135,34,27,66,164,18,4,7,45,62,101,115,111,108,31,114,9,19,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13102"}],"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=13102"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13109,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13102\/revisions\/13109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}