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Inside Gaming Column: Gaming Operators Could Hit IPO Market

LAS VEGAS -- Watch for a spate of initial public offerings from gaming operators in 2004. Wall Street analysts say the market would love to have another first-class gaming operator listed on the New York Stock Exchange and would be receptive, right now at least, to gaming stock offerings. The NYSE's interest is being fed because leisure travel is up, convention business is booming and gaming stocks have been soaring beyond the wildest expectations.

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Wynn resort is getting the shafts. Those three cylindrical towers soaring from the excavation in front of the Wynn Las Vegas resort construction project are actually elevator shafts. That's where Steve Wynn is building his mountain, and they'll carry maintenance workers on their utility vehicles through the mountain. That's saving them having to crawl up the man-made alp through all the edelweiss.

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Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., used to say a billion dollars here and a billion dollars there and pretty soon you have real money. In the same way, a small problem in one state, and the same problem in another state, and pretty soon you have a national epidemic. Frank Fahrenkopf, president of the American Gaming Association, says that pathological or compulsive gamblers make up 1 percent of the adult population. "Those 1 percent are very, very sick people, and they will commit crimes," Fahrenkopf says. Frank, that means 3 million of us are sick. But he also says 99 percent of Americans can gamble responsibly and that most pathological gamblers have other disorders as well.

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Caesars Entertainment spokeswoman Debbie Munch told The New York Times last week that in deference to guest privacy, her company never confirms when a specific guest is there. The Times had been seeking information on Pete Rose, who wants back into baseball and has, at last, admitted to gambling on the game. But when it comes to 300,000 ordinary Americans such as us who came here for New Year's, guest privacy didn't seem to mean so much if the FBI wants to know about us.

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Quote of the week. "Most people thought É this would be like a kidney stone: It would hurt for a while, and then it would pass." Harrah's Entertainment President Gary Loveman, who was describing to The McKinsey Quarterly the reaction of employees when he first arrived at corporate headquarters in 1998. The magazine reported skeptics stopped taking bets on Loveman's chances of success long ago. "In five years, Loveman has reinvigorated the company, largely by developing a successful gaming-business strategy rooted in smart retailing," it says.

The Inside Gaming column is compiled by Gaming Wire Editor Rod Smith. You can contact him by phone at (702) 477-3893, fax (702) 387-5243 or e-mail at rsmith@reviewjournal.com.

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