Casino Connection Atlantic City

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Nice Work If You Can Get It

As the sale of Atlantic City’s Tropicana Casino and Resort drags on, New Jersey’s hand-picked conservator, former state Supreme Court Justice Gary S. Stein (shown below at right, with Trop President Mark Gianantonio), has billed almost $1 million to preside over the deal.

Okay, it’s not quite a cool million; the published figure as of last […]

The Gee Whiz Factor

A businessman I once knew, someone who made pots of money in several industries, was fond of talking about “the gee whiz factor”–the novelty, the quirk, the cool new thing in any venture that make people notice it for the first time, and talk about it for at least a little while.
I was reminded of […]

Return to Normalcy?

The May revenue report from the Nevada Gaming Control Board showed casinos faced their second-worse month in at least ten years.
Statewide, the industry saw a 15.17 decrease in total gaming win with casinos taking in just $969,943,776 compared to $1,143,445,674 in 2007. Worse yet, for the year the industry is now 2 percent behind where […]

Reverse Revenues

We became so used to increasing revenues in both Atlantic City and Nevada, it’s somewhat of a shock when the monthly figures are a disappointment. That is so true this week in both jurisdictions. One begins to wonder how we’re going to recover.

Atlantic city saw revenues fall by 11 percent in June, the biggest dip […]

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

…Try, try again.
That’s the motto of Tropicana Entertainment LLC, which against all odds is STILL trying to regain ownership of the Tropicana Casino Hotel in Atlantic City.

The Columbia Sussex subsidiary lost control of the Trop last December, when the Casino Control Commission deemed it unfit to run a gaming operation in New Jersey. At the […]

The Inevitable in Florida

This week’s revelation that the Florida Supreme Court struck down the gaming compact between Governor Charlie Crist and the Seminole Tribe should come as a surprise to no one.
The compact was signed in haste to get the state a piece of the gaming revenue pie as the federal Interior Department was poised to grant the […]

Too Many Margaritas

The purchase of Trump Marina in Atlantic City by Coastal Marina LLC for $316 million, and its transformation into a Jimmy Buffet Margaritaville Hotel Casino, is being questioned for several reasons.

The difficult credit market would be the first hurdle to overcome. Established casino companies have had trouble coming up with financing for many projects, and […]

AC Casinos Are Budget-Proof

For the second year in a row, New Jersey lawmakers and Governor Jon Corzine managed to pass and sign a state budget just before the deadline set out in the state constitution. That happened yesterday, about 10 hours before the deadline.
Unlike last year, though, the Atlantic City casinos were not sweating the outcome of the […]

Pansy’s Potential

The investigation into the partnership of Pansy Ho and MGM Mirage has taken a strange turn in New Jersey.

Some background first. MGM Mirage was anxious to get into Macau several years ago after failing to win one of the coveted three concessions distributed by the Macau government in 2000. The company reached a deal with […]