Zynga counterattacks; Fail, Caesar; Adelson honored

If the Stalin organs of the Zynga PR battery had fallen silent, it was only to reload. As predicted yesterday, Zynga is regrouping around Internet gambling as its new strategy of choice. Zynga unleashed “announced an exclusive partnership [with Bwin.party] to offer real money online Poker and Casino games in the UK market. Zynga’s UK-based [real-money games] service and bwin.party will launch RMG products including Poker and a full suite of 180 Casino games in the first half of 2013, which include table games such asslots, roulette and blackjack.” And if you’re a FarmVille fanatic, Zynga and Bwin.party will offer British punters “the first-ever, online FarmVille-branded real money slots game.”

(Somebody please mail Zynga a stylebook, stat.)

This pact won’t likely be anywhere near enough to get Zynga’s stock price out of the dog house. However, with hooking up with Bwin puts Zynga just one degree of Kevin Bacon away from MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming. Neither of those companies has any appetite for U.K. wagering but, if and when they take the plunge into stateside online wagering, Zynga’s bet could pay off handsomely.

The hits keep on coming for financially hobbled Caesars Entertainment. It recently clocked in at #9 on a list of the companies with the “least valuable employees,” a list dominated by the service industry. Low wages and educational requirements, plus the requirement for massive workforces, dilute the value of each of Caesars’ 70,000 employees to $128,000/year … which is a helluva lot more than they’re getting paid, I might add. (Meanwhile, the ass clowns running Caesars are stuffing their pockets with bonuses.) MGM fares better, at $150K/employee. However, for low employee/revenue value, Caesars CEO Gary Loveman (right) falls well short of his corporate role model: McDonald’s, which ekes out $65,000 per employee. It should also be noted that the Fox Business analysis is somewhat one-dimensional: Yes, Caesars is shedding payroll (and revenue!) in St. Louis, but it’s adding more payroll — and somewhat less revenue — in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Baltimore, just for starters.

Shifting Sands. The site of the demolished Sands Atlantic City may have finally found a buyer. The site, an ill-advised purchase by then-Pinnacle Entertainment CEO Dan Lee (left), has been an albatross around the company’s neck. Just who might want the land even mystifies experts but it’s a positive sign for the Boardwalk that real estate is on the move again. However, given the high cost of a “boutique casino” (too rich for Hard Rock International‘s blood), never mind a megaresort like floundering Revel, it’s difficult to foresee who’d have the wherewithal, inclination and risk-tolerance to undertake such a dicey proposition. Maybe since Sheldon Adelson is making minimal headway in New York City, he’ll build in Atlantic City instead, just out of spite. (I’m joking … I think.)

As Halloween draws nigh, it’s time for another CityLife “Web of Evil” cover story. The spidery omnipresence and moral insolvency of Sheldon Adelson ensures him a place of (dis)honor at the center of the web. Rival casino magnate Steve Wynn and paid huckster Donald Trump must console themselves with honorable-mention status as “Crybaby billionaires.” Q-crazy Loveman makes the “Misdemeanor Evil” blotter by proxy, by dint of The Quad and Linq, down there with the Las Vegas Monorail and sycophant-at-large Robin Leach. Those three aren’t really a web of evil so much as one of civic embarrassment.

When it comes to philanthropy, the Adelsons walk the walk and more power to them for that. However, what they give with one hand, they take away with the other, willing to spend as much as $100 million this election cycle to keep the failed “War on Drugs” going. Future arrests of low-level offenders and junkies should be prefaced with a PBS-style, “This war on drugs is made possible with the generous assistance of Sheldon and Dr. Miriam G. Adelson.” If they wanted to do something valuable, Dr. and Mr. Adelson would use their political leverage to effect policy change, not perpetuate the status quo.