Posted on 05/19/2012 8:34:57 PM PDT by JerseyanExile
Casinos are not like Starbucks stores: You really can’t have one on every corner.
That’s the word from David Cordish, whose company is opening a huge new casino next month in Maryland.
Yet Cordish warns that the expansion of casino gambling can’t go on unchecked forever. A big problem is the attitude of politicians nationwide who view casinos as free money.
“I don’t know how we can control the politicians; they certainly don’t understand the word ‘oversaturation,’” Cordish said Thursday. “They think you can have casinos like Starbucks.”
If that attitude continues, Cordish said, “it’s going to implode on them.”
That sentiment was voiced repeatedly at The East Coast Gaming Congress, a major annual casino industry conference, held this year in the newly opened Revel casino resort in Atlantic City.
The Cordish Co.’s Maryland Live!, opening on June 6, will have 4,750 slot machines and cost $500 million. He said the state will have four casinos with more slot machines “than anything in Las Vegas.”
Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem officials have always called Pennsylvania, northern New Jersey and the New York City area their chief market. Maryland, where the closest casino to Bethlehem is more than 120 miles away, has never been mentioned by Sands officials.
Sands Bethlehem President Robert DeSalvio declined to comment on the latest northeast casino expansion, calling it more of a mid-Atlantic than a Pennsylvania issue, spokeswoman Julia Corwin said.
State officials have been monitoring casino growth in both Maryland and fellow border state Ohio, said Richard McGarvey, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.
State Treasurer Rob McCord in September released a study that found casinos in nearby Maryland and Ohio locations will impact Pennsylvania’s slot performance but there are still viable markets for even more Pennsylvania casinos. Pennsylvania casino revenues will continue to grow, but not likely the double-digit year-over-year growth they’ve seen so far, McCord said at the time.
“We can expect future revenue growth that is more modest or that simply plateaus, but that is not a cue for casino operators to become complacent, as was the case in New Jersey,” he said.
Ohio opened its first-ever casino Monday in Cleveland, and officials plan to monitor its effect on western Pennsylvania casinos, McGarvey said. But though Cleveland is eastern Ohio, it is still more than 100 miles from the closest Pennsylvania casino, McGarvey said.
The new Resorts World Casino in Queens, New York City, has been doing incredible business, but Pennsylvania’s eastern casinos, including Sands, still have growing revenues, McGarvey said.
Sands also has amenities that a lot of the new casinos don’t yet, such as a large hotel, outlet mall, celebrity-owned restaurants and event center. DeSalvio last week said he expected Sands to be more competitive in the northeast market because of the casino’s new event center, which held its first concert Wednesday.
Several experts at the East Coast Gaming Congress said the solution to Atlantic City’s woes is the closure of one or more of its 12 casinos.
“Here in Atlantic City, we have assets for sale that literally nobody wants to buy,” said Gary Loveman, president of Caesars Entertainment, which counts four Atlantic City gambling halls among its 56 casinos. “There is simply too much supply in Atlantic City. The supply doesn’t go away. That’s a very bad thing. The problem here? Nobody ever closes.”
During a panel of Wall Street experts, Andrew Zarnett, managing director of Deutsche Bank Securities, said the new Revel casino might hurt, rather than help, Atlantic City’s overall casino market.
“Everybody’s a loser; when you add supply to a market that’s not growing very much, everybody gets cannibalized,” he said. “We need some of this capacity to close and go away. I would have thought that would have happened two years ago, but the properties are still here.”
Zarnett said he doubts any Atlantic City casino will close until they see whether New Jersey will approve Internet gambling and throw the struggling properties a lifeline. He also predicted that New York will approve a casino in Manhattan within five years.
Must be similar to what I experienced yesterday. The park across the street from me has a baseball diamond, it's quite a ways from my house but I walked over there to watch the little leaguers play.
The first sound I heard as I approached the diamond was the sound of a baseball meeting aluminum. Like fingernails on a chalk board to me.
I have a pretty good system to make our money last longer. We put $100 into a slot machine and play it through once. That is, if we are at a $2 machine, we spin the reels exactly 50 times and then cash out. Most slots in Vegas pay 94-98% back so typically after 50 spins on a $2 bet, we usually have at least $80 left and sometimes we are over the original $100. If less than $100, we take what's left and go play another machine (adding whatever we need to make it $100 again). If more than $100, my wife stays at the machine while I take the ticket to a cash machine and I put the "winnings" in a separate pocket and we play the original $100 back again on the same machine. Sometimes you get a "hot" machine and one time we came out ahead on a slot machine something like 10 times in a row. We spent hours on that one machine and splurged on a nice dinner afterwards with the winnings.
Some people look down on casino gambling and I can understand why. Like alcohol or anything else, it can become addictive and ruin your life. However, if you go in there with a plan to have fun and budget your money accordingly with what you can afford to lose, it can be a very pleasurable experience - just another form of entertainment. I used to spend more money taking the kids to Disneyland. Now that they are grown up, it's time for the parents to have some fun!
It does prove that P.T. Barnum was right.
You’ve been reading Milton Friedman again. (Actually, Adam Smith said more or less the same thing.)
I like those commercials! But in my case, I don’t have enough hair left to sell to a wig shop so I better manage my money wisely!
What do you mean by “better returns?”
Tiger Walk 30:1 = 0.0323
Teeth of the Dog 15:1 = 0.0625
Pretension 30:1 = 0.0323
Zetterholm 20:1 = 0.0476
Went the Day Well 6:1 = 0.1428
Creative Cause 6:1 = 0.1428
Bodemeister 8:5 = 0.3846
Daddy Nose Best 12:1 = 0.0769
I’ll Have Another 5:2 = 0.2857
Optimizer 30:1 = 0.0323
Cozzetti 30:1 = 0.0323
TOTAL = 1.2721
So it looks like the house is getting a 27% cut. With slots it’s something like 2%. On the other hand, a person can lay many bets on slots in the time it takes to run a horse race.
Now yes, it takes some skill to pick a horse or win at blackjack or poker, while slots are dumb luck. (Although they have slot tournaments).
I have rarely failed to come home in the black after a day betting at the track while it’s normal for me to lose at a casino. Granted, I’ve been around horses and tracks all my life and slot machines are all I’m “qualified” to play, but with an average of 12 horses per field, it’s pretty hard to lose if you know what your doing. P.S., I don’t play only to “win” but exacta’s and trifecta’s.
I have rarely failed to come home in the black after a day betting at the track while it’s normal for me to lose at a casino. Granted, I’ve been around horses and tracks all my life and slot machines are all I’m “qualified” to play, but with an average of 12 horses per field, it’s pretty hard to lose if you know what your doing. P.S., I don’t play only to “win” but exacta’s and trifecta’s.
I assume that the house’s cut on the exactas/perfectas/trifectas/super perfectas is roughly the same as on win?
Probably. My point is that one’s chances are higher with fewer variables and the payoff greater on an exacta/trifecta bet. Whereas slot gambling is truly hit or miss, given the number of machines and their odds of payoff.
Maryland "Freak State" PING!
I gotta laugh at the guy in Pennsylvania complaining about “dilution” because of competition from Maryland——he wasn’t saying any such thing when he was hoping to take customers from the Delaware tracks.
What goes around - comes around!
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