Featured Articles Archive - Page 281

Atlantic City mayor critical of Christie five-year program

ATLANTIC CITY -- As a former dealer and pit boss on the Boardwalk, Mayor Lorenzo Langford is committed to seeing the city’s casino industry recover, despite his well-publicized disputes with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over reforms implemented by the state that the mayor says cut him and other city leaders out of the process.Langford, Atlantic City’s mayor since 2002, was critical of Christie’s reform package that was passed by state lawmakers in 2011 and put authority over the city’s 12 casinos under the state through a newly created tourism district.In an interview Friday in his seventh-floor City Hall conference room, Langford said the first two years of Christie’s planned five-year program haven’t shown any notable improvements.“The numbers don’t lie,” Langford said, citing gaming revenue statistics that showed declines of 6.9 percent in 2011 and 8 percent in 2012...read more

Massachusetts city taps MGM, endorses casino plan

MGM Resorts International was selected by the leadership of Springfield, Mass., Tuesday to represent the state’s third-largest city in the race for a single casino project in western Massachusetts.Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno announced MGM Resorts’ selection and endorsed the company’s plans to build an $800 million hotel-casino on a 10-acre site that was damaged by a tornado in 2011.MGM Resorts beat out a competing proposal from Penn National Gaming.“Today is a great day for both MGM Resorts and the city of Springfield,” MGM Resorts President Bill Hornbuckle said in a statement...read more

Share prices up double digits for Boyd, Pinnacle

Regional casino operators Boyd Gaming Corporation and Pinnacle Entertainment, Inc. experienced double-digit increases in their average daily share price during April.But much of the attention by the investment community focused on Caesars Entertainment Inc.’s plan to spin off several casinos and its interactive gaming subsidiary into a separate growth-oriented business.Caesars, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, was the only casino operator out of eight companies charted by Las Vegas financial adviser Applied Analysis to see a decline in its average daily share price during the month.Wall Street had mixed reviews of Caesars’ announced plan to place Planet Hollywood, the proposed Horseshoe Baltimore and Caesars Interactive, which owns the World Series of Poker, into the new company.Caesars still would retain majority ownership of the businesses...read more

Las Vegas Sands, outside auditing firm part ways

LAS VEGAS -- Las Vegas Sands Corp. parted ways with the company’s longtime outside auditing firm but analysts said Monday that investors shouldn’t speculate beyond the announcement.In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday, Las Vegas Sands said Pricewaterhouse Coopers had resigned as the company’s auditor on April 23...read more

Ultimate Poker launches real-money play in Nevada

LAS VEGAS -- The first-ever legal pay-to-play online poker website in the United States is expected to launch this morning when Station Casinos-owned Ultimate Poker flips the switch on a new era in Nevada gaming.The site, UltimatePoker.com, can be accessed only on computers or mobile devices located in Nevada.State gaming authorities signed off of the company’s technology last week and allowed Ultimate Poker to move forward in what is considered a test period.Ultimate Poker was licensed for interactive gaming in October.The site is expected to go live at 9 a.m...read more

A battle as tough as Philly itself

PHILADELPHIA -- When the $550 million SugarHouse Casino opened 28 months ago on a Delaware River waterfront site in South Philadelphia, opponents of the project worried that local businesses would suffer.Kathy Smith said she hasn’t noticed one bit of difference.Smith, a tough-talking, streetwise native of South Philly, has spent 25 years working at the city’s cheesesteak landmark Pat’s King of Steaks, which opened in 1930 at the X-shaped intersection of Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue.The SugarHouse is roughly four miles from Pat’s...read more

Top-10 observations from GiGSE

The land-based and online gaming worlds converged at the Global iGaming Summit & Expo (GiGse) last week to discuss the future of the online gaming industry in the U.S. And with New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada already authorizing intrastate online gaming, this year's GiGse had a cheery sense of optimism.In the midst of the buzz, conference sessions and meeting rooms, 10 key storylines emerged...read more

Careful, this new job could get dangerous

Overseeing the American Gaming Association (AGA) is not like herding cats. It’s more like herding mountain lions. One misstep and you’ll lose body parts.I wonder if anyone informed Geoff Freeman of this job description.Last week, Freeman, 38, left a seven-year position as the No...read more

Ameristar Casinos shareholders OK company's sale to Pinnacle Entertainment

Ameristar Casinos, Inc. shareholders on Thursday approved the company’s sale to rival regional gaming giant Pinnacle Entertainment, Inc. on a nearly unanimous vote.Pinnacle announced plans in December to acquire Ameristar’s eight casinos in Northern Nevada, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado, Mississippi and Indiana, along with a property under construction in Louisiana for $2.8 billion, which includes assumed debt.Approximately 99.8 percent of the shares voting at the company’s meeting favored the transaction...read more

Do the slots make payout adjustments for people who bet bills or coupons and not coins?

Question: Most slot machines now seem to have "bill acceptors" or take coupons so you don't have to get rolls or cups of coins to get started or to continue if you run out. Someone told me if you play with bills, you'll lose more because the machine assumes you have more money to keep going...read more