Автор: genom

The shape of Atlantic City’s future as a seaside casino town may become apparent this month as analysts await the first full month of statistics with their clues about the early impact of Internet gaming.
Gov. Christie’s helpful nudge of the last week underscores the significance of whatever the numbers suggest. The dwindling number of optimists who have watched Atlantic City’s casino-based business tumble from the heights it once occupied contend Internet operations have the potential to pump new enthusiasm into the business.
It could not come at a better time.
Pessimists contend the success of Internet action that includes the full spectrum of casino games may generate higher casino revenues, but it is probably too little too late, what with new competition from all sides pressuring the beleaguered casino business.
Christie threw his considerable weight behind Atlantic City’s rush to get into the Internet business but it was apparent last week there is a limit to the governor’s patience. The south Jersey casinos have to start generating evidence of a turn-around or face the specter of competing casinos elsewhere in the state, probably at the Meadowlands.
Atlantic City is in the fourth year of a five-year moratorium on casino development elsewhere in the state.
The number of Internet accounts opened since Nov. 26 is close to 150,000, give or take a few thousand. Of course this figure says nothing about how many unique individuals the figure includes since it is widely accepted that many players have opened multiple accounts at the half-dozen or so casinos where Internet play is allowed.
The still-to-be answered questions involve a number of significant issues, for instance, which games are getting the most attention – slots, blackjack, what? There has been a lot of new slot product dedicated to New Jersey’s Internet stage and the careful review that casino staffs give these figures will determine the shape of marketing campaigns during coming months.
Caesars spokesman Seth Palansky promises a ton of marketing during coming months as the company begins the run-up to the next World Series of Poker at the Rio in Las Vegas in May. Caesars is using WSOP.com as the primary vehicle for its Internet poker operations both in Nevada and Atlantic City.
Another issue: Atlantic City needs Internet gaming to show that it is a positive and will not lead to more players logging on from home or wherever they may be with their laptops inside the state’s borders.
The history of recent marketing trends involving the Internet has pretty much established the ability of sophisticated marketing techniques to lure online visitors into the brick and mortar businesses where they become cash customers for whatever the resort has to sell.
Caesars has become a leader in the Internet’s social gaming industry. MGM has also made significant headway in its exploration of its potential and Wynn Resorts is known to be exploring the possibilities for turning Internet visitors into cash customers with a social gaming venture of some kind.
Building databases of people with a predisposition to spend on casino-related experiences is what it is all about.
“We’re talking about a marketing challenge,” Caesars CEO Gary Loveman says.
The degree to which Atlantic City benefits remains to be seen. Lots of companies are making long distance guesses about the shape of things that might evolve, but too much standing around waiting for others to react could put Atlantic City past the point of no return.
Change is an ongoing process and reluctant learners get left at the station as the future exercises its gravitational pull on companies with the imagination and willingness to embrace passing opportunities.
Whatever happens at secondary properties, MGM remains a favorite to resume its co-ownership role at the Borgata with its 50 percent partner Boyd Gaming. They have the bulk and necessary marketing networks to continue doing well.
The same is certainly true of Caesars. Brands such as WSOP.com and its industry leading Total Rewards program seem to guarantee continued success. Its much-discussed debt load is, of course, a significant issue, but no casino company does a better job of reaching customers where they live with marketing offers tailored to individual players.
It’s too bad other Atlantic City casinos have let opportunities slip away as competition gains ground.

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The number of Internet gambling accounts created in New Jersey continues to grow and is nearing 150,000.
New Jersey authorized Internet gambling last year to give a boost to Atlantic City’s struggling casino industry, which has been beset by increasing competition for the past seven years. It began with a five-day trial period on Nov. 21 and launched publicly on Nov. 25.
As of Monday, 148,487 accounts had been created, though the state’s Gaming Enforcement Division notes that individuals often create separate accounts on more than one site.
The state will issue its first report next week on Internet gambling revenue won by the casinos.
Seven casinos are offering online gambling. They are: the Golden Nugget Atlantic City; the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa; the Tropicana Casino and Resort; Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino; the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort; Caesars Atlantic City and Bally’s Atlantic City.
Resorts Casino Hotel also has received approval to offer Internet gambling. But its online partner, PokerStars, has been suspended from offering Internet gambling in New Jersey for two years due to an indictment against its founder.
State gambling regulators said PokerStars can reapply for approval before then if its circumstances change enough to bring it into compliance with New Jersey regulations.
Online betting marks the biggest expansion of gambling in New Jersey since the first Atlantic City casino opened in 1978. The state lets gamblers play any of the games offered in its 12 casinos including card games and slots, but online poker has proven especially popular in the early going.
New Jersey is the third state in the nation to offer Internet gambling, after Nevada and Delaware.
It remains to be seen if the $200 million to $300 million that Wall Street analysts predict Internet gambling may bring in over its first year will be new business, or whether it will simply cannibalize walk-in business at the brick-and-mortar casinos.

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Revenues at each of Ohio’s four casinos declined in December, leading to the worst statewide showing in the nine months that all were open, according to figures.
Statewide, revenues declined 9.8 percent at the casinos, located in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo, according to figures released by the Ohio Casino Control Commission.
The Cincinnati casino opened March 4 and the others opened in 2012. The statewide December revenue of $63.2 million was the lowest full-month total since all four were open.
For December, revenues were off 19.1 percent in Cincinnati, 9.6 percent in Cleveland, 5.8 percent in Columbus and 3.9 percent in Toledo.
New racinos, horse racing tracks with slots-style video lottery terminals, opened in December north of Cincinnati and near Cleveland , expanding gambling options.
The December declines may reflect both a traditional slow pre-holiday period for the industry and the addition of more racinos to the gambling mix, according to David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Additional racinos scheduled to open this year in the Youngstown, Cincinnati and Dayton areas could further cut into casino revenues, he said.
“This tallies with some of the earlier results. It looks like when you have more competition, you’ll see the existing places suffer,” he said.
Ohio collects 33 percent in taxes from the casinos and distributes them to the state’s 88 counties, its school districts and host cities, among others.

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Local officials have approved casino giant MGM Resorts International’s plan for a new 20,000-seat indoor arena on the Las Vegas Strip.
The Clark County Zoning Commission approved the project’s land use and zoning applications Wednesday.
The $350 million project is being built in partnership with the entertainment company AEG. It will be located behind the New York-New York and Monte Carlo casinos.
Developers expect to break ground in the spring.
The facility will be privately financed and is expected to open in 2016 for concerts, boxing, mixed martial arts, award shows and other events.
Planners also hope to lure professional basketball and hockey teams, but no commitments have been announced.
Renderings show a sweeping 12-plus story glass and steel structure with a light-emitting display on more than 5 acres.

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Nevada’s largest casinos, still climbing out of the recession, suffered a combined net loss of $1.35 billion in 2013, marking the fifth straight year without an overall profit, state regulators reported.
But there was some positive news in the annual abstract report released by the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which looks at the total revenue of casinos that gross more than $1 million in gambling revenue.
The total revenue of the 263 casinos included in this year’s report rose for the third consecutive year, to $23 billion. That’s an increase of 0.4 percent, or $99.2 million, from 2012.
While the casinos’ losses grew by 11.2 percent or $136 million, a control board analyst said much of that was tied to increased expenses.
“For the state, an increase in revenue was primarily driven by gambling,” said Mike Lawton, senior analyst with the control board. “But due to an increase in expenses, the net loss for the state increased.”
Total revenue is the money patrons spent on gambling, rooms, food, beverage and entertainment.
Net income or loss is what casinos retain after expenses have been paid, but before deductions for federal income taxes and accounting for extraordinary expenses.
On the Las Vegas Strip, Nevada’s gambling mecca of posh resorts, the losses narrowed, and for the first time since 2007, the growth of gambling revenue outpaced the growth from other aspects such as hotel rooms, food, beverages and entertainment.
The Strip’s gambling revenue of $5.7 billion was up 3.5 percent from 2012, while the Strip’s total revenue of $15.5 billion rose 1.7 percent. It’s the 15th straight year in which Strip gambling revenue made up less than half of all revenue, a trend indicative of a tourism market where visitors come for other recreational activities besides gambling.
“It’s a positive for the Strip,” Lawton said. “Revenues increased and the net loss decreased.”
Statewide, the large casinos’ $10.4 billion in gambling revenue rose 1.1 percent and accounted for 45 percent of total revenue, the second lowest percentage ever recorded.
Nevada casinos haven’t posted a net profit since 2008, when profits totaled $721 million. The bottom fell out a year later as the recession put a chokehold on the economy. Casinos in 2009 had a loss of nearly $6.8 billion.
Before the current string of yearly losses, the only other net loss recorded by Nevada casinos was in fiscal year 2002, after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The 263 casinos included in this year’s report paid $804 million in gambling taxes and fees.
Most of the casinos are in Clark County, which includes the Las Vegas Strip. The 150 Clark County casinos included in the report had a combined net loss of $1.3 billion on total revenue of $20.6 billion.
Elsewhere in the state, Washoe County casinos reported a profit of $719,000, while the 18 casinos in Elko County had $42.7 million in combined net income. Five casinos on the south shore of Lake Tahoe had a net loss of $90 million, while the Carson Valley Area that encompasses Carson City and parts of Douglas county netted $7 million.

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The embattled Atlantic Club Casino Hotel closed early Monday, a victim of the casino saturation taking place in the Northeast.
About 1,600 people lost their jobs at 12:01 a.m. as the 33-year-old casino shut its doors. Tearful employees embraced one another and exchanged goodbyes.
Struggling for years against newer, bigger casinos in Atlantic City and in neighboring states, the Atlantic Club sought a buyer for the last few years but was unable to attract one. It filed for bankruptcy in November and was sold for a combined $23.4 million just before Christmas to two competitors who will strip it for parts. Tropicana Entertainment bought the table games, slot machines and customer lists, while Caesars Entertainment bought the 801-room hotel, for which it has no immediate plans.
“I never thought it would end this way,” veteran cocktail server Catherine Irizarry said last month on the day the bankruptcy sale was finalized. “I came here from Caesars when it was the Golden Nugget because it was the hot place to work. I never thought it would go down. It’s sad.”
The Atlantic Club opened in December 1980 as the Golden Nugget, owned at the time by casino magnate Steve Wynn. It soon became Atlantic City’s top-earning casino, and its TV commercials featured Wynn bringing fresh towels to Frank Sinatra, who often performed there.
But over the years, as the Atlantic City casino market expanded, the casino changed hands several times and went through a handful of names: The Grand, Bally’s Grand, the Atlantic City Hilton, ACH and finally the Atlantic Club.
As newer casinos opened with 2,000 rooms and hot nightclubs, pools and spas, it was no longer so special. It lost market share to its local competitors, and the decline was hastened when the first Pennsylvania casino opened in 2006.
The Atlantic Club was more dependent than the others on convenience gamblers looking to play for a few hours, then drive or ride the bus back home. It struggled further as many of its best customers forsook it for gambling halls closer to their houses.
Its owners, Colony Capital LLC, a Los Angeles hedge fund, paid more than a half billion dollars for it in 2005.
It searched in vain for a purchaser for the past three years, before inking a deal in December 2012 to sell itself to the PokerStars website for $15 million. But that deal fell apart within months because of concerns over whether the website’s management could qualify for a casino license in New Jersey amid an unresolved indictment against the company’s founder.
Steve Norton, a former Atlantic City casino executive and current casino consultant, said the Atlantic Club closing will benefit the market by removing unneeded capacity, and the excessive discounting that he said was helping to keep it afloat. He said Atlantic City should brace for additional casino closures, particularly if gambling is allowed to expand to the northern New Jersey Meadowlands in the next several years.
“This is very unfortunate for the several thousand employees, whose families rely on their casino jobs, but those with gaming training may find a new opportunity, if Meadowlands gaming is approved in the future,” he said. “The Atlantic Club’s casino may be the first, but probably not the last.”
Cocktail server Ursula Moralski, who has worked at the casino since the day it opened, said the casino’s struggles were evident.
“We’ve seen it coming, but we’re still shocked it’s actually happening,” she said. “It’s sad. I’ve been here half my life.”
Annette Flack said she and all her co-workers asked to work one last day together Sunday.
“I don’t care if we make $2,” she said last month. “We want to go out together.”
Added food server Lisa Schaper: “Everyone said they wanted to come to work.”
As of Monday morning, Atlantic City will have 11 casinos.
“We didn’t have the glitz and glamour of the other casinos,” said Anne Marie DiLella, a cocktail server since the casino’s first day. “But the customers all knew us. It was like ‘Cheers’: Everybody knew your name.”

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