{"id":22711,"date":"2018-10-18T05:57:13","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T13:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=22711"},"modified":"2018-10-18T05:57:13","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T13:57:13","slug":"tilman-covets-roman-empire-bellagio-turns-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/tilman-covets-roman-empire-bellagio-turns-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Tilman covets Roman empire; Bellagio turns 20"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tilman Fertitta<\/strong> is the maverick among mavericks in the casino industry, beating veteran operators at their own game and doing it \"\"as some one who entered the industry as a novice and immediately began to strike gold. More recently, he’s been beating the pants off the competition in New Jersey<\/strong> for Internet<\/strong> gambling. (He was the first to have live, online dealers, an experiment that paid off big time.) We’ve butted heads with Tilman a few times in the distant past but have the highest respect for him and his track record.<\/p>\n

Now, in a David<\/strong>-and-Goliath<\/strong> scenario, Fertitta is aiming to take over Caesars Entertainment<\/strong> for $13\/share<\/a>. (The stock is one of the cheapest in the gaming group.) According to the Houston Chronicle<\/em>, “In what is referred to as a reverse merger, Caesars would buy the Golden Nugget<\/strong> and Caesars shareholders, including Apollo Global Management<\/strong> and TPG Global<\/strong>, would continue to be shareholders in the combined company,” surrendering Caesars shares<\/a> for Landry<\/strong>‘s ones.\u00a0The rumors were a shot in the arm to CZR shares, which jumped 16% … to $10.40\/share.<\/p>\n

Fertitta’s restaurant brands —\u00a0Morton’s<\/strong> steakhouses, Mastro’<\/strong>s, Bubba Gump Shrimp<\/strong>, Rainforest Cafe<\/strong>, etc. — would be \"\"redeployed into Caesars properties, CNBC<\/strong> reports. Caesars CEO Mark Frissora<\/strong> would have to clean out his desk to make way for Fertitta. Mind you, since Caesars is still tinkering with a purchase of Jack Entertainment<\/strong>, it may prefer to buy out Dan Gilbert<\/strong> than succumb to Fertitta’s embrace. Credit Suisse<\/strong> analyst Cameron McKnight<\/strong>\u00a0likes the Landry’s scenario, though, pointing out that “Golden Nugget<\/strong>\u2019s casino portfolio is additive and high quality (adds lucrative markets like Houston<\/strong>) …\u00a0Fertitta would be a strong addition to management,” not to mention that it would be a merger of two powerful databases. For his part, Landry would get a company that has a “defensive mix of Vegas and Regionals …\u00a0expected share gains in Las Vegas<\/strong> [and]\u00a0very attractive valuation, with low expectations.”<\/p>\n

Is Fertitta ready to take 55 more casinos and restaurants<\/a>? I put nothing beyond him and think Caesars would be a better-run company with Fertitta at the helm. Let’s hope Caesars shareholders see it that way too.<\/p>\n

* Remember when old-school thinking had conventioneers pegged as a customer tranche to be shunned. (Sheldon Adelson<\/strong> changed all that.) Now Las Vegas is pinning its hopes on a convention calendar that sees 33% improvement in convention in 4Q18 and 4% in the first half of 2019. Las Vegas has also risen from the 10th to the first-ranked destination according to one (unidentified) corporate travel agency.<\/p>\n

* Happy 20th birthday to Bellagio<\/strong>, which celebrated its anniversary this week. Heartiest congratulations are in order for the approximately 2,000 original employees who are still on the job and keep making Bellagio the go-to MGM Resorts International<\/strong> casino.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tilman Fertitta is the maverick among mavericks in the casino industry, beating veteran operators at their own game and doing it as some one who entered the industry as a novice and immediately began to strike gold. More recently, he’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":[244,154,18,14,140,37,245,248,12,114,9,129],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22711"}],"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=22711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22712,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22711\/revisions\/22712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}