Entries from September 2008 ↓

Kansas will soon decide who will run 2 state owned casinos.

A state board expects to decide who will get the management contract for a state-owned casino in Wyandotte County and another in Ford County.

The Lottery Gaming Facility Review Board was meeting Friday to vote on the three choices for Wyandotte County – Legends Sun, Golden Gaming Inc. and Kansas Entertainment, which involves Kansas Speedway.

In the running for Ford County are Butler National Service Corp. and Dodge City Resort and Gaming.

The seven-member board spent Thursday hearing from its consultants the applicants. If a majority of the board fails to pick an applicant for a county, all the contacts back to the Kansas Lottery, which will own the gambling.

Final approval will be by the Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission following completion of background checks.

Shares of gaming companies traded mostly lower Thursday as a Deutsche Bank North America analyst said some companies in the sector have limited exposure to Lehman Brothers and American International Group Inc.

Looks like gaming companies will be hit by the financial fallout however I would wager most of them didnt have much involvement with AIG or Lehman. Many industry gaming industries keep most of their assets overseas or in private funds. However some of the larger companies Im sure were effected slighly by the fallout.

The current financial crisis and collapse will definetly swingback and bite the gaming industry that is for certain. It will be interesting to see how big of an effect this has on the industry I am guessing we head into a 10 year black hole in the gaming industry with huge layoffs in Vegas and Atlantic City.

But that is just my opinion.

The market instability of the past week means that casino projects in need of big money may increasingly be delayed or even shelved.

Signs of distress have been emerging all summer, even as earnings remained strong across the industry.

In June, Australia’s Crown Ltd. backed out of a $5 billion project to build Las Vegas’ tallest tower citing the global credit market squeeze.

Bad news for Colorado Casinos and with all the financial chaos i am betting it is not going to get any better anytime soon.

Colorado’s casino revenue dropped 5.3 percent in August compared to the same month last year, according to statistics released Thursday by the Colorado Division of Gaming.

Adjusted gross proceeds for August were $68.2 million, down from $71.97 million last August, the state said.

Limited-stakes gambling is allowed in three mountain towns: Cripple Creek, Black Hawk and Central City.

Central City rang in $6.2 million in August, down 13.9 percent from August 2007 — the steepest decline of all the casinos.

According to Forbes Mississippi Casino Revenus dropped as a result of Hurricane Gustav.

Seeing the Labor Day weekend clipped by Hurricane Gustav, Mississippi’s state-licensed casinos won $232.7 million from gamblers in August, down a bit from a year ago, the Mississippi State Tax Commission reported Wednesday.

Still, the Gulf Coast casinos posted bigger winnings last month than in August 2007, taking in $120.6 million, compared with $108.6 million a year ago.

Vegas just got a lot bigger. Construction at CityCenter in Vegas appear to be nearing an end.

Construction workers building CityCenter on the Las Vegas Strip have topped off the complex’s centerpiece casino-resort, the second of six high-rises for the project.
Officials for MGM Mirage Inc., which has partnered with Dubai’s government investment fund Dubai World in building the $9.1 billion complex, say the 61-story, 4,000-room Aria Resort & Casino has taken 29 months to build so far.

MGM Mirage says the tower will be fully enclosed by December.
In addition to Aria, the 76-acre site is also expected to include boutique hotels, condominiums and a 500,000 square-foot retail and entertainment center.

Maine might still get a new casino after all. That is if one Vegas Developer has there way.

Hoping to reinvigorate a stalled campaign, a Las Vegas developer announced Tuesday it will lead the referendum drive for a casino in Oxford County and spend $100 million to make it a reality if state voters give their approval in November.

In this economy borrowing is getting expensive and harder to do. Thus Pinnacle dropped its plans to operate a casino in Kansas.

It didn’t take long for one of the worst Wall Street meltdowns in history to hit the casino industry.

Already stalled in its plan for a $2 billion mega-casino in Atlantic City, Las Vegas-based Pinnacle Entertainment said Tuesday it was ending its bid to run a Kansas casino, citing “the current turmoil in the financial markets.”

Pinnacle also has delayed the start of its beach house-themed casino on the Atlantic City Boardwalk where the former Sands Casino Hotel once stood. A spokeswoman would not say whether abandoning the Kansas effort could affect the timetable for the Atlantic City project.

Several city officials have expressed annoyance recently with Pinnacle’s pace in Atlantic City, including the fact that nearly a year after the Sands was demolished, the site remains undeveloped.

“It’s not a good sign if they’re backing out of things elsewhere, but hopefully the two are not related and they’ll take that $623 million and put it here,” said Atlantic City Councilman Marty Small.

“I’m nervous,” he said. “We had hoped that the project would be under way by now. We put thousands of people out of jobs and threatened property owners with eminent domain. I would hope they have their ducks in a row.”

Pinnacle said it still plans to go ahead with its Atlantic City casino but can’t say exactly when because of the worsening credit crunch, which makes borrowing expensive.

In Montana its still the Wild West. Missoula Police are still searching for a man who reportedly robbed a local area casino.

Police in Missoula are still on the lookout for a man connected to an armed robbery at a local casino over the weekend.

Authorities tell is the incident happened just after 1:30 a.m. on Sunday when the suspect walked into the One Eyed Jacks Casino on Reserve Street with a gun and demanded money from the employees.

Police say the man left the casino on foot with an undisclosed amount of cash.

The suspect is described as being a white male, between 5′7″ and 5′9″ tall and weighing between 160 to 180 pounds. The man also has light, reddish-blond hair and at the time of the robbery he was wearing a black jacket, blue jeans and a stocking cap. He also wore sunglasses and an orange bandana around his nose and mouth.

Mexico is a land filled with everything but casinos. You have to go underground to find a decent game of poker or blackjack. That could be changing if this possible legislation can sneak pack Mexicó´s Congress.

The seemingly perpetual debate, over the possible authorization of full-fledged casinos that are prohibited today in Mexico, goes on – and it is hard to believe that bombastic politicians might one day break from the vicious circle of the last 15 years. Yet, once again, there are expectations that something might finally be done by the Mexican Congress based on occurrences during the run-up to its September 1 to December 15, 2008, regular legislative session.