{"id":725,"date":"2008-11-25T13:56:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T21:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2008\/11\/25\/Case-Bets-Hooters-Defection-at-Borgata-Yung-vs-Butera"},"modified":"2008-11-25T13:56:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-25T21:56:00","slug":"case-bets-hooters-defection-at-borgata-yung-vs-butera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/case-bets-hooters-defection-at-borgata-yung-vs-butera\/","title":{"rendered":"Case Bets: Hooters; Defection at Borgata; Yung vs. Butera"},"content":{"rendered":"

"All of the economists who gave us information predict 2007 is going to be a year where the economy slows throughout the country and Nevada. Then we will see a pickup in 2008-09." — Deborah Pierce<\/strong>, CFO, Hooters Hotel<\/strong>, Las Vegas, November 2006<\/em><\/p>\n

With prognositication<\/a> like that, no wonder Hooters has consistently fallen short of expectations.<\/p>\n

Mullin mulls Oz offer<\/strong>. Shortly after he had to pink-slip several hundred employees, Borgata<\/strong> COO Larry Mullin<\/strong> relieved himself of duty. He's not falling on his sword but moving to greener pastures instead, becoming CEO<\/a> of the casino division of Australian gambling firm Tabcorp<\/strong>. Which means he'll have four casinos to operate, not just one. Boyd Gaming<\/strong>'s Bob Boughner<\/strong>, left twiddling his thumbs after Echelon<\/strong>'s plug was temporarily pulled, will fill in at Borgata. Congratulations to Mr. Mullin on his new opportunity.<\/p>\n

Leap of faith.<\/strong> Sure enough, it looks like any hopes Tropicana Entertainment<\/strong> CEO Scott Butera<\/strong> had of getting back into the good graces of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission<\/strong> took a massive hit below the waterline. They were torpedoed when Columbia Sussex<\/strong> CEO William J. Yung III<\/strong> unexpectedly paid a visit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why U-Boat Yung<\/em> surfaced at the New Jersey Supreme Court<\/strong> hearing and where the heck Butera was is a good question — as is how Butera managed to get blindsided by this PR disaster. Does Yung still fancy himself the string-puller at TropEnt? Was he trying to stick it to Butera somehow? Or was this merely another example of Yung's professed — and sometimes demonstrable — cluelessness about virtually everything on Planet Earth, up to and including documents he signs.<\/p>\n

In any event, the sole shareholder of the company Butera ostensibly controls just trampled him like a rogue elephant. The odd Yung-Butera dynamic suggests conjoined twins who aren't on speaking terms but can't be surgically separated either.<\/p>\n

If the NJCCC can somehow ignore the Yungian elephant in the middle of the room, there's a good argument to be made for letting Team Butera have a crack at the Atlantic City Tropicana<\/strong> … especially after a state-appointed trustee left hundreds of millions on the table in a bungled sale of the property. But that's a mighty big "if" and the NJCCC probably hasn't the faith sufficient to make that leap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

"All of the economists who gave us information predict 2007 is going to be a year where the economy slows throughout the country and Nevada. Then we will see a pickup in 2008-09." — Deborah Pierce, CFO, Hooters Hotel, Las … 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":[23,60,15,14,22,25,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725"}],"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=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}