{"id":26041,"date":"2020-02-06T08:05:41","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T16:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=26041"},"modified":"2020-02-06T08:05:41","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T16:05:41","slug":"mgm-cordish-boom-in-maryland-here-come-the-robots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/mgm-cordish-boom-in-maryland-here-come-the-robots\/","title":{"rendered":"MGM, Cordish boom in Maryland; Here come the robots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Turns out the Maryland<\/strong> market hasn’t quite been saturated, after all. January saw 6% growth in gambling revenue, led by MGM National Harbor<\/strong>‘s $58.5 million (+4%). Slots at MGM were up 10% but table win \"\"down 2%. MGM had 40% market share to Maryland Live<\/strong>‘s 35.5%. The latter grossed $52 million for a 12% gain. Horseshoe Baltimore<\/strong>‘s decline softened, down only 4.5% with a $19 million gross. (But it was the only revenue-negative property in the state.) Everybody else had a big month. Ocean Downs<\/strong> was up 11% to $5 million, Hollywood Perryville<\/strong> hit the jackpot, gaining 12% to $6 million and Golden Entertainment<\/strong>‘s Rocky Gap Resort<\/strong> leapt 10.5% to $4.5 million. A 10% gain in slot play boosted West Virginia<\/strong> revenues 8%, with Charles Town Races<\/strong> ceding 6% at the tables but recouping 11% at the slots for a 7% uptick overall.<\/p>\n

* Human bartenders, watch your backs. Maybe you can’t retrain a factory worker but you can, it seems, reprogram an industrial robot<\/a> to make cocktails, as has been done in Japan<\/strong>. It’s a response to the graying of the Nipponese workforce, although the attraction for resort companies looking to cut costs (especially if they’re building $10 billion casinos in \"\"Japan) will be obvious. Heck, the prototype can even chat you up while it takes a minute to fix your drink. Casino development in Nippon is going run smack-dab into a grievous shortage of labor and, at $802,000, robots like this are going to be a relative bargain, amortized within three years. Nor do customers seem to mind. Said consumer Satoshi Harada<\/strong>,\u00a0\u201cI like it because dealing with people can be a hassle. With this you can just come and get drunk.\u00a0If they could make it a little quicker it would be even better.\u201d Oh, they will.<\/p>\n

* AARP<\/em> cover girl Shania Twain<\/strong> has announced an additional 14 dates at Planet Hollywood<\/strong> (now that’s<\/em> a residency, Mr. Pitbull<\/strong>). On the off-chance that you’re interested, there’s an eight-performance stand Aug. 21-Sept. 6, plus six December dates, Dec. 2-12. Tickets go on sale Feb. 14, although it requires being assimilated into the Ticketmaster<\/strong> Borg.<\/p>\n

* Erratum<\/em>: I mistakenly stated that animated feature Klaus<\/em> (-112) was literally Netflix<\/strong>‘s best bet for an Oscar. That honor actually goes to Best Documentary Feature frontrunner American Factory<\/em> (-250). It’s the morally complex chronicle of what happens when a Chinese company opens a factory in Dayton<\/strong> and the cultural clashes that ensue. Nobody’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ … or maybe some of both. See it and decide for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turns out the Maryland market hasn’t quite been saturated, after all. January saw 6% growth in gambling revenue, led by MGM National Harbor‘s $58.5 million (+4%). Slots at MGM were up 10% but table win down 2%. MGM had 40% … 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":[244,275,176,70,4,97,171,72,245,10,71,69,6,8,9,139],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26041"}],"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=26041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26042,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26041\/revisions\/26042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}