{"id":5557,"date":"2011-01-11T14:21:28","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T22:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=5557"},"modified":"2019-11-10T14:11:37","modified_gmt":"2019-11-10T22:11:37","slug":"harrahs-to-philly-were-back-mgm-tries-something-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/harrahs-to-philly-were-back-mgm-tries-something-new\/","title":{"rendered":"Harrah’s to Philly: “We’re back!”; MGM tries something new"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Or so Ed Snider<\/strong>‘s Philadelphia Entertainment & Development Partnership<\/strong> claims in a new petition to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control<\/strong>, asking for its license back. Snider’s group says that it now has $275 million in seed money sown up<\/a> and would like a do-over, please. Although Caesars Entertainment<\/strong> publicly stated it wasn’t going to pursue the project (above<\/em>) any further, anyone who’s followed CEO Gary Loveman<\/strong> knows that “long-term strategy” is something that changes on a weekly basis at The Company Formerly Known As Harrah’s.<\/p>\n

Loveman’s apparent fixation on Philadelphia<\/strong> looks no better than quixotic during a time when Harrah’s Chester Downs<\/strong> is suffering from cannibalization already<\/a> and the company’s Atlantic City<\/strong> quartet is coming off a 9.6% revenue decline last year. December was outright dreadful for Caesars Atlantic City<\/strong> and its three fellows, down 17.5%. (January’s numbers could, however, bring better news<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\"\"Short of pouring kerosene over his five existing properties and then setting them ablaze, it’s tough to imagine a more surefire course toward disaster that Loveman could chart other than leaping back into the Philly fray. However, since the Caesars board is stacked with fund managers, the CEO can continue to run amuck — though you have to wonder how East Coast chief Don Marrandino<\/strong> (left<\/em>) feels about the on-again off-again threat his boss is posing to Caesars’ already-beleaguered casinos out there. It’s certainly not making his job easier.<\/p>\n

The Caesars CEO is following the same path that led Isle of Capri Casinos<\/strong> to the brink of disaster: He’s growing revenue not on a same-store basis but by dint of acquiring or building more and more casinos. (The parallels to the downfall of the Bernie Goldstein<\/strong> regime at Isle don’t quite end there, either.)<\/p>\n

By the way<\/strong>, Mr. Loveman, what does your company have against cats<\/a>? I’m all for making Fido feel welcome but what if the missus and I want to bring our well-behaved Russian Blue, Piglet<\/strong>, to a Caesars hotel? No room at the inn, huh?<\/p>\n

MGM vs. Caesars<\/strong>. The lion house is trying to counter Total Rewards<\/strong>‘ considerable marketing advantage by leveraging its new M Life<\/strong> into U.S. regions where it lacks a physical presence<\/a>. That also means trying to strike up marketing relationships with tribal casinos. Funneling players at Native American casinos into Vegas has been a problem the industry has been trying to crack for some time. Larry J. Woolf<\/strong> was floating a version of it several Global Gaming Expo<\/strong>s ago but he couldn’t convincingly answer the basic question, “What’s in it for the tribes?” It will be interesting to see what MGM Resorts International<\/strong> comes up with to persuade Native American casinos to share players’ information — and wallets — with the Strip.<\/p>\n

\"\"Dubai<\/strong> having been tapped out, MGM plans to shop elsewhere overseas for its latest debt offering. Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s<\/strong> opt for conflicting stances on the viability, with the normally moody Moody’s being the more upbeat of the two<\/a>. Moody’s takes a sanguine view of Las Vegas<\/strong>‘ immediate prospects but also counts on CityCenter<\/strong> to wrest business from its competitors — a difficult scenario to envision, given the property’s early history. According to S&P, the $8.7 billion<\/a> MGM\/Dubai World<\/strong> joint venture is on pace for a 0.008% return on investment in its first year. It’s probably at times like this that you tell your stockholders that they’re “investing in the future.”<\/p>\n

While there is no other property “of CityCenter’s scale,” the disclosure of “lower marketing spend than typically associated with the opening of a property” is a bit of a shocker. Having plowed so much capital into the metaresort, it hardly makes sense that one would then economize on its promotion. Word of mouth certainly hasn’t been getting it done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or so Ed Snider‘s Philadelphia Entertainment & Development Partnership claims in a new petition to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control, asking for its license back. Snider’s group says that it now has $275 million in seed money sown up and would … 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":[23,56,28,134,14,7,85,53,11,95,99,25,9,19,20,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557"}],"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=5557"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25322,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557\/revisions\/25322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}