Rising water of Mississippi River forces President Casino to temporarily close
The owner of the President Casino, Pinnacle Entertainment, initially decided to close it by July this year. However, the rising waters of the Mississippi River forced the casino to close earlier than expected. The casino will still reopen when the flooding stops.
According to Chris Strobbe, general manager of President, the river went up to 32 feet on Saturday when they were monitoring it. He added that the flood waters can put the safety of the casino’s guests and employees in danger.
Employees will have to work on removing scattered debris when the water recedes. Once everything is clear, the President Casino will be back in business, but there is still no telling when that will be.
The casino will still permanently close on or before July and when it indeed reopens, it will only have a few months left to operate. Pinnacle did all they could to save the President, but they only ended up getting a settlement with the gaming regulators of Missouri earlier this month.
In exchange of clearing itself with any penalty issued by the regulators, Pinnacle Entertainment agreed to close its casino by July 31. The company may still go after the licenses of the two other casinos they own in St. Louis.
The laws of the state of Missouri only issue a limited number of licenses for casinos, which makes the now vacated license of the President Casino more valuable. Developers are given until May 1 to issue their bid on the license.
Louisiana’s gambling revenue up in February
After a full year of seeing revenue drop on a monthly basis, casinos around the country may finally start seeing some improvement within their industry. Evidence of this theory exists in the state of Louisiana where revenue was up ten percent in February.
In January, revenue from the state’s casinos was $189.7 million. For February, those same casinos had revenue of $208.7 million. That represented an increase of ten percent in month over month figures.
The numbers still do not match up favorably from the same period in 2009. Back in February of 2009, casinos won $220 million. Although revenue was higher last year, there was still reason for optimism that the economy may be working its way back to normal.
“What we are seeing is a gradual increase in revenue from casinos around the country,” said Gaming Analyst Steve Schwartz, “The gamblers are not going to all come back at once, but any increase shows that people are starting to once again have that expendable income to enjoy a night out at a casino.”
Competition within the casino industry has become fierce over the past couple of years. As the economy soured, lawmakers in nearly every state turned to gambling expansion to help bridge budget deficits.
The state that has made the most advancement is Pennsylvania. Lawmakers have recently legalized table games and several casinos have been built in the past several years. The table games give Pennsylvania casinos a real chance to overtake New Jersey’s casinos in revenue and become the new top gambling destination in the Northeastern US.
Hard Rock Hotel exec dies of suicide
The death of Randy Kwasniewski, the executive of the Hard Rock Hotel who was found dead in his home Tuesday, was ruled to be caused by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head, according to the Clark County coroner’s office on Wednesday.
The Metropolitan was called to Kwasniewski’s home in Summerlin, Nev. on Tuesday after receiving a call.
David Chesnoff, attorney and family friend of Kwasniewski, said that he was married and had two children. Chesnoff did not disclose any detail about the death and the surviving family has requested for privacy.
At the time of his death, the 56-year-old Kwasniewski was the president and chief operating officer of the Hard Rock Hotel since the takeover of Morgans Hotel Group in February 2007.
The Hard Rock Hotel has been recently expanding with the addition of two hotel towers, casino space and a wider concert hall. Kwasniewski was in charge of overseeing all these.
Fred Kleisner, chief executive officer of Morgans, will be the one in-charge of the hotel operations for the meantime, the company said.
Icahn is the next owner of Atlantic City’s Tropicana
Billionaires Carl Icahn and Donald Trump had been battling for the ownership of Tropicana Casino Resort in Atlantic City during the past days. Icahn emerged as the winner and now has the rights to buy Tropicana.
The Casino Control Commission saw Icahn’s plan as more superior than that of Trump’s with even the latter having bondholders on his side to help him take over the casino.
It has been a long and difficult journey in finding the next owner for Tropicana. Icahn is credited for bringing back other AC casinos into life and he is planning the same for his soon-to-be-owned resort.
According to Sharon Anne Harrington, Vice Chair of the Commission, they are optimistic of Icahn going into the ball game again. Icahn received a unanimous vote from the four-member Commission.
Carl Icahn may just be the person Atlantic City is looking for as the used-to-be booming casino city is now in steady decline in revenue since the recession started almost two years ago.
Nonstop snow causes Atlantic City to lose more
Just when everyone thought Atlantic City casinos have already suffered enough from big losses during the global recession, winter snow has been pounding the region nonstop which causes the city’s revenue to fall down even further.
The Northeast has experienced an unusual number of snowstorms this season. This made people stay inside their house to avoid the cold, thus lessening the number of visitors of the casinos.
The first casino to take the brunt was the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa which lost $5 million during the first major snowstorm late last year, according to the report released by Boyd Gaming, Borgata’s owner.
Month after month, snow pounds the region even reaching as far south as Florida as the winter season shows no sign of ending soon. Boyd estimates that once the weather clears up, Borgata would have lost another $5 million in revenue.
Profits in Atlantic City casino continue to decline with double digit losses seen recently. Some casinos are too battered to afford any more losses this year.
Competition toughening up in the region is also partly to blame for the losses. After legalizing gambling, Pennsylvania has already overtaken Atlantic City in casino income last month.
No gambling at all for Hawaii
Hawaii may just all sand and no games at all as lawmakers in the Aloha State rejected a plan that would allow gambling on the sunny shores of the state.
Waikiki would have been the first location to boast a casino in this Pacific state but legislators discarded the bill that would have made that dream come true. A second bill that would allow Hawaiian residents to wager bets may also not get votes.
Hawaii is only one of the two states in the United States that do not give provisions for any gambling in the state – the other being Utah.
Proponents of gambling in the state proposed the bill because according to them, this would help boost the state’s economy by contributing $86 million annually from tax revenue especially not that the state is facing a deficit worth $1.2 billion.
Opponents of the bill, however, argued that casinos would only stain Hawaii’s image of being family-friendly as well as increase the proliferation of crime.
Casinos in Louisiana experience drop in revenue
Some states in the US have experienced a boost in sales in the gambling industry. Unfortunately, other states did not experience the same success and that includes Louisiana. The southern state saw a drop of revenue during the first month of this year.
There are thirteen riverboat casinos in Louisiana. Their cumulative revenue dropped from $153.2 million in January 2009 to $131.2 million last month. Harrah’s land casino also saw a drop of $4.3 million in its income.
Last month’s figures came as a surprise to analysts considering that at the same time last year, the US economy was deep into recession. Even with the slow recovery, Louisiana still managed to lose more money on casinos.
Top gambling locations in the US, Las Vegas and Atlantic City, have reported revenue drops recently. Nevada’s gambling decreased by $6.8 billion for 2009 while New Jersey saw an income reduction of 8.5 percent in its casinos last month.
Partly blamed for these are the tougher competitors in some states that try to enhance their casino industry to compensate for the economic crisis. Pennsylvania lawmakers have made an effort to expand its gambling business which was just recently legalized and Florida and Delaware may soon follow suit.
Louisiana has been stricken with so much bad luck recently. It took a long time for the state to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. However, just right when they thought they were already back on their feet, the recession came.
Gamblers have a new destination – Cambodia
The casino industry seems to be really expanding as another casino conquers an Asian country that is not entirely known in the gambling world – Cambodia.
Titan King Casino will be opening its resort in Bavet, a border gate between Cambodia and Vietnam but under Cambodian jurisdiction, in February 26. The casino will be employing over 6,000 workers and is expected to attract many tourists to the Asian kingdom.
According to Kith Thieng, owner of the new Titan King, gamblers will most likely come from Vietnam but they are also hoping that they can promote Cambodia to the world as also a place for entertainment.
Cambodia is just one of the countries to see the latest development of casinos as its other Southeast Asian neighbor Singapore opened its first casino resort last week.
Macau, which is also located in Asia, has recently become the gambling capital of the world even exceeding Las Vegas in profits.
Even though the casino industry continues to expand in the US, Las Vegas and Atlantic City have been struggling to keep up with competitors and recovering from the economic crisis.
Kakavas loses another court battle against casino in the Bahamas
Harry Kakavas may have made a record as the biggest loser in casino gambling in the history. He lost another court battle Monday and he was ordered to repay a gambling marker he owed in one of the casinos in the Bahamas.
Paradise Island Casino loaned $1 million in gambling marker to Kakavas in November 2006. He decided not to pay the loan and the casino brought the fight to court.
The casino sent a lawsuit against Kakavas to the Victorian Supreme Court for which they won on Monday. The judge ruled against Kakavas as he did not the claim that the casino took advantage of him during his stay at the resort.
Kakavas has been renowned for his big losses in gambling. He is suffering from problem gambling, a psychiatric condition which he alleged Paradise knew when they allowed him to borrow the gambling marker.
Kakavas lost another case last year as well when he sued the Melbourne Crown Casino also alleging that the casino knew about his condition after he lost $35 million in a gambling spree.
First casino in Singapore to open on Sunday
Singapore will finally have its first casino as The Resorts World Sentosa Casino opens on Valentine’s Day, February 14.
The date has more meaning to it. The Chinese New Year will also take off on Sunday making it a triple celebration for Singaporeans.
Macau has ruled over Asia’s gambling business for years and Singapore to cash in some of the revenues. Las Vegas Sands has also announced that it will be opening a resort in Singapore very soon.
The Sands was supposed to be the first casino developer in the small but progressive Asian country with its Marina Bay Sands project, but the economic crisis forced the project to be shut down.
Sands, however, has held some public offering in Asia which helped the company raise funds to resume the project.
The Resorts World Sentosa Casino is just the first of what Genting, the casino’s developer, hopes to bring to Singapore. A Universal Studios theme park is set to open on March.
An analyst predicts that the new casino will be making $1.20 billion in its first year but that figure could drop afterwards.
