{"id":22223,"date":"2018-08-07T08:21:13","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T16:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=22223"},"modified":"2018-08-24T09:56:25","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T17:56:25","slug":"illinois-takes-a-dive-okada-gets-nabbed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/illinois-takes-a-dive-okada-gets-nabbed\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois takes a dive; Okada gets nabbed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Illinois<\/strong> casinos had been bumping along nicely in the Trump economy until they hit a plain old speed bump last month, with revenues down almost 4%, on a gross of $119 million, $39 \"\"million of which was generated by Rivers Casino<\/strong> alone. Rivers was one of the few revenue-positive casinos, up a point. Gamblers spent 6% more statewide but that wasn’t enough in the face of a 9.5% plunge in foot traffic. Reporting positive results were Harrah’s Joliet<\/strong> ($15.5 million, +1.5%) and … well, nobody I’m afraid. MGM Resorts International<\/strong> won’t be shot of Grand Victoria<\/strong> soon enough, as it was 9.5% down ($14 million), while Jumer’s Casino Rock Island<\/strong> was 10% lower, grossing $6 million.<\/p>\n

For everyone else it was\u00a0lesser degrees of misery. Penn National Gaming<\/strong> ceded 8% ($10 million) at Empress Joliet<\/strong>, 5.5% ($10 million) at Hollywood Aurora<\/strong> and 4% ($4 million) aboard Argosy Belle<\/strong>. Boyd Gaming<\/strong> slipped 4% (to $6.5 million) at Par-A-Dice<\/strong> and Gaming & Leisure Properties<\/strong> slid 7.5% to $8 million at Casino Queen<\/strong>. Harrah’s Metropolis<\/strong> tumbled 8% to $6.5 million. At least Penn and Boyd have their slot routes to fall back upon.<\/p>\n

* As Wendover<\/strong> goes, so goes Nevada<\/strong>. In this case, Wendover Resorts<\/strong> is purchasing an end-to-end gaming solution from Scientific Games<\/strong>, including slots and tables. The casino company will also SG Universe<\/strong> (hey, wasn’t that a TV show?) on its mobile and Internet<\/strong> platforms. Of course, when you have as dominant a market position with Scientific Games, it’s hard not to do business with them.<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, Scientific reported 2Q18 revenues of $845 million, which was 1% below Wall Street<\/strong>‘s expectation. “Decelerating Social Gaming revenue growth (9.7% in the 2Q vs. 21.4% in the 1Q) reflects impact from Facebook<\/strong>\/privacy issues, \"\"which SGMS sees as temporary in nature,” reported JP Morgan<\/strong> analyst Joseph Greff<\/strong>. Still, lotteries and social gaming partly made for shortfalls in the digital and casino segments. The manufacturing side was helped by orders for 913 machines from MGM Springfield<\/strong> and Hard Rock Atlantic City<\/strong>, moderating a 5% decrease in replacement sales. Greff doesn’t see any chances for major new sales before early 2019, when he anticipates Encore Boston Harbor<\/strong> will open — sooner than Wynn Resorts<\/strong> says it will.<\/p>\n

* Things just go from bad to worse for Kazuo Okada<\/strong>. The former chairman of Universal Entertainment<\/strong> was arrested in Hong Kong<\/strong>, charged with what are described as “corruption-related offenses<\/a>.” Neither Okada nor authorities are talking at this point but we do know that China<\/strong> takes corruption seriously (much more so than we do), so Okada couldn’t have picked a worse place to get busted.<\/p>\n

* Monmouth Park<\/strong>‘s latest plan to improve revenues is to sue the NCAA<\/strong> and major sporting leagues on the grounds that it would have made oodles of money\u00a0(i.e., $140 million) if the leagues hadn’t opposed sports betting back in 2014. Good luck with that and don’t let the courtroom door hit you in the butt.<\/p>\n

* Weapons found in\u00a0at casino-resorts. Thirteen known drug deals. Tampering with slot machines. \u201c[F]ailures of governance and risk management, contributing to compliance slippages.\u201d \u201cLack of innovation\u201d regarding responsible gambling … \u201csuch as might now be required of a world-leading operator to meet heightening community and regulatory expectations.” It’s just another day at the office for Crown Resorts<\/strong>. And why not? Despite all those fouls, its license was renewed<\/a> just the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Illinois casinos had been bumping along nicely in the Trump economy until they hit a plain old speed bump last month, with revenues down almost 4%, on a gross of $119 million, $39 million of which was generated by Rivers … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,103,60,244,219,14,190,58,188,189,112,245,69,25,242,160,92,243,8,38,247,233],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22223"}],"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=22223"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22337,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22223\/revisions\/22337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}