Nevada’ advertising promotions positioning the city as hip and happening appear to be working, based on 2013 revenue tallies
It has been awhile since Las Vegas could really post any really news that is positive profits, but 2013 appears to have been a watershed year economically for las vegas. Numbers posted end-of-year by the Nevada Gaming Control Board show a whopping 22.6 percent spike in gaming revenues for the month of November, following a notably flat October, a reality that guarantees to exhibit exemplary year-end overall figures once compiled.
Second Best of the Year
Turns out November was the 2nd best of the season for Las Vegas Strip properties. Baccarat took home the gold literally with a 94 percent hike, while dining table games also pulled their fat with a 53.5 per cent jump, when compared with 2012. Certainly no body is ripping away slot machines, but it seems that old-school gambling is the moneymaker these full days in the town of Neon.
Statewide, the image had been also a positive one. Across Nevada, gambling enterprises took in $875.9 million in November, a bump of 11.9 percent compared to the year prior. And much more encouraging, it had been the 3rd month-to-month hike during the last four months.
Las Vegas’ uber-successful marketing campaign of being the coolest, hippest, swag-est place to be on earth appears to be working when it comes to gambling since well; the Strip introduced $529.4 million in November overall, largely from table games, which includes popular classics such as for instance craps, blackjack, roulette, poker and, of course, baccarat an especially popular staple with the all-important high-roller quotient that is asian.
Whale of a November
Apparently, Las Vegas’ Asian whale and junket agents are earning their baccarat that is keep; wagering up 90.5 percent versus 2012’s numbers in November. Broken out separately because it is this kind of high-ticket and game that is lucrative the house were baccarat intakes, which hit $129 million. Table games overall brought in $174.7 million, minus baccarat.
‘We believe these outcomes bode positively for larger Strip operators with significant baccarat volumes, but note the core Las Vegas market that is mass soft with non-baccarat mass volumes down 9.4 per cent,’ said Wells Fargo Securities gaming analyst Cameron McKnight.
Global visitors had been also accountable for the upswing, McKnight told investors. He added that Wynn Resorts Ltd., Las Vegas Sands Corp. and MGM Resorts International all saw the best of that angle in November.
November’s sports guide figures were no slouch either as the holiday breaks approached, having a $14.3 million intake compared to a loss of $400,000 during the same time final year.
Also boosting the underside line in November in the Strip: an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, and one extra Saturday on the calendar, compared to 2012. A move into the heart of the thirty days by the 140,000-attendee Automotive Aftermarket Industry Week convention versus bridging October/November the year before also made a factor in the month’s tallies.
‘November’s Strip strength was expected, given commentary from companies, but not to the degree,’ noted Macquarie Securities gaming analyst Chad Beynon while addressing investors.
Although November was a kingpin thirty days for Sin City, it was February 2013 the thirty days that encompasses the really lucrative Chinese New Year that introduced many revenues for Las Vegas, with a 31.2 percent hop on the Strip alone. Statewide in Nevada, February saw a 15.1 percent increase in video gaming profits when contrasted to 2012.
PokerStars Takes a Snipe at Bungled Atlantic Club Closure
PokerStars is vowing to find an Internet home in 2014, after being rejected by Nevada and New Jersey year that is last.
You must control it to PokerStars the most-rejected online poker operator in America these days, labeled in Nevada and New Jersey as a ‘bad actor’ and told to go sit into the corner for a few years they don’t state die easily. Now the company’s executives are saying, stand back, America, we’re coming for you personally in 2014, regardless of how many slaps in the face we possibly may have gotten from regulators.
You Haven’t Heard the very last from Us
At least that’s the term from ubiquitous PokerStars corporate communications chief Eric Hollreiser, who’s noted in an end-of-year blog that his company intends to ‘…have a strong presence and positive financial impact in the American market in 2014, whether that is in brand new Jersey or any other state seeking some great benefits of being home up to a world-class online video gaming business.’
Those in-your-face feedback are a definite not-very-subtle commentary on PokerStars’ talks with ny State lawmakers. Since brand New Jersey regulators told PokerStars to take a seat on the sidelines for at least the next two years and Nevada has nixed suitability for the Internet poker giant for at least four more the ongoing business has brought the tac that if you can not beat ’em, simply go elsewhere. And with the Empire State’s recent approval of major land gaming expansion, it just seemed like a good time to casually point out that adding online poker to that particular mix is actually a extremely lucrative add-on, particularly given New York City’s 8.33 million possible player base through the get-go.
Getting in the Lobby
And by ‘casually mention,’ we really mean lobby the bejesus out of legislators. To be fair, that process started a long time before the Garden State told PokerStars they might not pass suitability checks for the following two years. And also with that suspension, if PokerStars’ founder Isai Scheinberg’s federal charges get reconfigured in any way, the situation that is whole possibly change. The brand New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement has referred to Scheinberg’s charges as ‘unresolved’, despite the elder having reportedly written checks for longer than one billions dollars to the Department of Justice to avoid prosecution. Although PokerStars’s present leader Mark Scheinberg who occurs to be Scheinberg’s son has said their business has had no dealings with the kingpin that is former regulatory investigations allegedly found otherwise, causing them some concern.
Other issues addressed in the blog included PokerStars’ parent company, Rational Group, and their efforts to buy the Atlantic City. A long and drawn out connection that ultimately ended with the casino planning to bankruptcy court, being snapped up by Caesars https://myfreepokies.com/indian-dreaming-slot-review/ Entertainment and the Tropicana for the fire sale combined price of $23.4 million last month, may have made some of the closing casino’s former owners wonder what they had been thinking if they at first pulled away from Rational’s deal; the business had originally invested $11 million into the casino, and then see that money go up in smoke when their deal fell through.
Hollreiser could not resist noting that the Atlantic Club closing which takes place mid-January ‘simply didn’t have to happen’; the shutdown shall leave some 650 union employees jobless, and with merely a one-time $1,500 severance approved by the courts. Apparently the property’s 1,800 employees are on unique once the casino closes its doors for good; a reality that might have been forestalled, according to Hollreiser, were it not for the ‘vulture-like management practices’ of the casino’s now ex-owners, who didn’t mind ‘[gambling] making use of their employees’ future.’
Bally Technologies Chief Counsel Retires as Company Forges Ahead
Bally Technologies’ Las Vegas headquarters; the business’s chief counsel for 17 yrs recently retired, carrying out a $1.3 billion SHFL acquisition.
Something that cannot be denied is the fact that Las Vegas constantly has and continues to today set the benchmarks, trends and paradigms for how to run a gaming city. Also Macau which includes now far surpassed Las Vegas with regards to pure gambling revenues still aspires to emulate las vegas’s nongaming moneymakers: things like high priced nightclubs, luxury shopping, and five-star restaurants, never to mention so-called gentlemen’s clubs, activity and special attractions. And, needless to say, the casinos themselves have evolved exponentially over the decades, and all of that requires the careful design and planning of a few behind-the-scenes leaders who realize exactly what drives the market.
The Individuals Who Ensure It Is All Happen
Some of those industry leaders people like Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson are very visible, colorful figures in their own right. But some rest in the shadows behind the scenes, making them no less significant in the forward movement of the nevada gambling industry.
One such person in that second category is Mark Lerner, the just-retired legal counsel for Bally Technologies. After a 17-year profession with the slot-making giant, Lerner can definitely lay claim to actively playing how the casino industry has changed and developed during his tenure.
In order to produce gaming gear in any particular jurisdiction, Bally must hold a video gaming license there; a thing that when you yourself have been following any of the sagas in Massachusetts as operators try to obtain one, is no task that is easy. In order to offer proper counsel that is legal the slots giant, Lerner additionally had to get licensed in hundreds of locales: 214, to be exact. In addition to that, 80 per cent of these markets need a yearly renewal for re-licensing.
That means 214+ individual suitability investigations that Lerner has had to endure; centered on their own calculations, he states, ‘If you are doing the mathematics, i have been investigated some 2,000 or 3,000 times.’
This may be a man who can’t manage to have so much being a parking ticket on his background checks. Also it appears, he doesn’t have any. Asked if investigators in most these thousands of checks ever developed even the slightest red flag, Lerner shrugs and says, ‘Apparently not. I’m pretty boring.’
Positioned Bally Technologies for SHFL Acquisition
Boring or not, Lerner has played a key place in taking the thing that was once called Alliance Gaming into its current position since the second-largest manufacturer of slot machines, gaming equipment and casino administration systems. Carrying out a recent $1.3 billion buyout of SHFL entertainment (sic), Inc. formerly known as Shufflemaster plus the creators of this zillion-dollar brainstorm concept of a machine that auto-shuffles cards in gambling enterprises Bally can now lay claim to seven separate reporting divisions, and the reported (& most convenient, considering the purchase price) potential for some $1.3 billion in annual sales.
Much has changed in 17 years, head you. When Lerner joined the company, they nevertheless had spinning reel slot machines; naturally, those are now actually a piece of history, with video-based reels. Plus the noticeable alterations in technology have actually largely driven the changes in the gaming industry itself, according to Lerner.
‘When I began, we owned a dozen that is few,’ noted Lerner. ‘Today, the company has about several hundred. Slot machines are technological marvels.’
While Lerner can be a ‘backstage’ kind of guy, Bally Technology CEO Ramesh Srinivasan credits the attorney’s ‘deep knowledge of gaming’ with much of the business’s meteoric rise to prominence in the casino game.