{"id":3712,"date":"2010-06-04T11:39:18","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T19:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=3712"},"modified":"2021-03-11T16:12:31","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T00:12:31","slug":"jason-lives-at-station-casinos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/jason-lives-at-station-casinos\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason lives … at Station Casinos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Voorhees<\/strong> (well, one of the many) is Station Casinos<\/strong>‘ general manager for the tribally owned Thunder Valley Casino<\/strong>, near Sacramento<\/strong>. No, I’m not making this up<\/a>.
\n\"\"Uncle Sheldon says<\/strong> … that convention business will be “80% of normal” in 2011. Given that meeting biz was a shrinking market well before the Great Recession, even when the Strip was doing record tourism\/gambling numbers, it would be helpful to know what the Las Vegas Sands<\/strong> CEO’s baseline for “normal” is. It’s like nailing Jell-O to a wall. He also claimed Asian revenues never declined<\/a>, even as the Strip crashed and burned. How quickly they forget. (Chinese visa restrictions, anyone?) And yes, there’s “a lot of conversation in Japan<\/strong> about legalizing gaming” — as there was in 2005 … and 2006 … and 2007 …<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania casinos hit the wall<\/strong>. Great Recession, meet casinos\/racinos in Pennsylvania. Except for Parx Casino<\/strong> (aka<\/em> Philadelphia Park<\/strong>, up 13%) and Penn National<\/strong>‘s Hollywood<\/strong> racino (+3%), all year\/year comparisons were negative last month. It didn’t take long for inelasticity to reach the Keystone State. Let this be a lesson to all politicians with visions of casino tax revenue dancing in their hands like so many sugarplums.
\nKeeping bankruptcy at arm’s length, Rivers Casino<\/strong> (left<\/em>) just extended its senior debt by two years. Both lead investor Neil Bluhm<\/strong> and sundry public-employee pension funds kicked in enough equity ($108 million) to mollify senior creditors and give Rivers a little more breathing room. Considering that it’s smack in the heart of Pittsburgh<\/strong>, Rivers has done inexplicably poorly but appears to be finally making inroads with area gamblers.<\/p>\n

Splitting the baby<\/strong>. From the upper house of the Massachusetts Legislature<\/strong> has emerged a proposal that takes Gov. Deval Patrick<\/strong>‘s two-casino plan and tacks on a third tribal-only casino. (Due to reservation-shopping issues, it’s no “gimme” that Fall River<\/strong>‘s pact with the Mashpee Wampanoags<\/strong> is any closer to realization, though.) In the lower house, Speaker Robert DeLeo<\/strong> stands firm on his four-racino, two-casino formula. Since there are A)<\/strong> two tracks in DeLeo’s district and B)<\/strong> faster timelines for racino conversion — i.e., a speedier conduit of gambling taxes to the state — my money’s still on DeLeo.<\/p>\n

Anti-casino activists, meanwhile, utter the usual do-gooder response<\/a>: “We need a study of the social costs!” Given the number of states with casino gambling, I’d say that data could be pretty readily extrapolated without bringing the legislative process to a grinding halt. Besides, there’s not a chance in hell that someone like Kathleen Norbut<\/strong> is going to reverse her “no gambling” stance after aforementioned study is conducted. It’s just a sham in order to punt the issue into the next Lege.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Voorhees (well, one of the many) is Station Casinos‘ general manager for the tribally owned Thunder Valley Casino, near Sacramento. No, I’m not making this up. Uncle Sheldon says … that convention business will be “80% of normal” in … 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":[34,28,22,62,112,91,115,69,95,33,90,12,57,9,19,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3712"}],"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=3712"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29372,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3712\/revisions\/29372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}