{"id":748,"date":"2008-08-05T14:37:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T22:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2008\/8\/5\/Isle-reduces-risk-in-Florida"},"modified":"2023-08-18T02:44:44","modified_gmt":"2023-08-18T10:44:44","slug":"isle-reduces-risk-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/isle-reduces-risk-in-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"Isle reduces risk in Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As we&#8217;re seeing, it&#8217;s not always a bad idea to scrap or delay an expansion. Such is the case with <strong>Isle of Capri<\/strong>&#8216;s decision to <a href=\"http:\/\/biz.yahoo.com\/bw\/080805\/20080805006061.html?.v=1\">allow the expiration<\/a> of an agreement with <strong>Florida Gaming Corp.<\/strong> to turn <strong>Miami Jai-Alai<\/strong> into a slot parlor. Isle couldn&#8217;t even be bothered to announce the news. (Can&#8217;t imagine <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mingaling\/7827060\">why<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>With the various Seminole casinos ramping up their offerings something fierce, Isle has its hands full defending market share at <strong>Pompano Park<\/strong>. The non-tribal Florida market just hasn&#8217;t been the bonanza anyone expected and <strong>Boyd Gaming<\/strong>&#8216;s decision to hold off converting its own jai-alai fronton now appears prescient. Wall Street reacted favorably, with ISLE continuing to trend upward.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps we should have foreseen this. The Seminoles had a track record, a customer base, a brand name (<strong>Hard Rock<\/strong>) &#8212; and now they have table games. Newcomers to the market had a tough row to hoe before and now it looks darn near impossible, unless the Seminoles have to revert to Class II gaming (and that&#8217;s unlikely to happen anytime soon). Florida Gaming Corp., meanwhile, will try to find other takers for its faded <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mugenpuppy\/424531188\">fronton<\/a>. Good luck with that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bury this in Boot Hill<\/strong>. It looks like yet another Kansas casino proposal may be <a href=\"http:\/\/luckynumbers.kansascity.com\/?q=node\/203\">about to bite the dust<\/a>. <strong>Butler National Corp<\/strong>., a manufacturing concern that&#8217;s trying to take a flier into casino ownership (shades of <strong>Galaxy Entertainment<\/strong>, right to down to renting the <strong>Navegante Group<\/strong> braintrust) is pitching a low-budget, smallish (800 slot) casino. Trouble is, Butler&#8217;s a wee bit short on cash and needs an equity partner who will rescue the project but agree to take a back seat.<\/p>\n<p>From <strong>Rick Alm<\/strong>&#8216;s description, this is a Hail Mary play by a penny-stock company &#8212; a big red flag. However, the <strong>Boot Hill Casino<\/strong> that Butler is proposing for Dodge City sounds far more aesthetically appealing that the tacky-looking, theme-park-ish competing proposal. But the latter has the not-inconsiderable advantages of a larger upfront investment and previous in-house casino experience.<\/p>\n<p>If would-be casino operators keep dropping out at the present rate of attrition, the lottery commission&#8217;s selection process will become downright Darwinian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we&#8217;re seeing, it&#8217;s not always a bad idea to scrap or delay an expansion. Such is the case with Isle of Capri&#8216;s decision to allow the expiration of an agreement with Florida Gaming Corp. to turn Miami Jai-Alai into &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/isle-reduces-risk-in-florida\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,36,85,45,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748"}],"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=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32858,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions\/32858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}