Detroit casinos continue to be outperformed by their Internet rivals. Last month saw $151 million in online gambling revenue against $102 million from terrestrial, private-sector casinos. Sports betting chipped in $18 million. Revenue for the three Motown casinos was up 4% from last year, led by MGM Grand Detroit‘s $47 million—but 3% down. By contrast, Hollywood Detroit is coming on hard, vaulting 37% to $22.5 million. That left $34.5 million for a comfy second place by MotorCity.
Also first online was BetMGM with $49 million, trailed by DraftKings ($34 million), FanDuel ($29 million), BetRivers ($9 million), Caesars Entertainment ($6.5 million), WynnBet ($5 million) and Barstool Sports ($3.5 million). Sports wagering handle of $228 million boiled down to $10 million for FanDuel. Nobody was even close, with BetMGM making $3 million, DraftKings $2 million and no one else cracking our $1 million Mendoza Line.
A Bally’s Corp. direct-mail piece touting low room rates at nine properties leads with … Bally’s Vicksburg?!?! Chairman Soo Kim must be convinced that Vicksburg is the jewel in his crown. Doomed Tropicana Las Vegas ($39/night) is relegated to the middle of the pack. Top of the pecking order is Bally’s Quad Cities at $120/night, closely segued by Bally’s Twin River Lincoln ($110/night) and Bally’s Dover ($109/night). Even Bally’s Evansville skunks the Trop at $56 per night.
Casinos in Massachusetts couldn’t their act together, offering unauthorized sports wagers at their sports books. Fines will be the price of this lack of vigilance. MGM Springfield and Encore Boston Harbor, as well as Plainridge Park, will be docked an aggregate of $50,000 in return for having taken action on such off-limits games as Merrimack College and Long Island University. Harvard University men’s basketball and Boston College women’s roundball also somehow wound up on casino tote boards. Only Encore was alert enough to void one of the errant Boston College bets. This shouldn’t be rocket science. Let’s hope such levies become unneeded and soon.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt‘s quixotic crusade to punish tribal casinos for being successful has run into a new obstacle in the form of state Attorney General Gentner Drummond. The latter has elbowed Stitt out of a lawsuit involving four errant compacts that Stitt approved with small, favor-currying tribes. Wrote Drummond, “As you should fully understand, this long running and costly litigation is a direct result of your refusal to follow Oklahoma law. The four tribal gaming compacts you signed were invalid from the start because you did not have the approval or authorization from the Oklahoma Legislature to enter the gaming compacts.” A particularly blatant Stitt overreach was the unilateral authorization of sports betting, something that is flat-out unconstitutional in the Sooner State. Taxpayers are now on the hook for $600K to defend Stitt’s jihadist actions. If Drummond has a sense of humor he will find a way to extract those 600 dimes from Stitt’s ass.
A happy 50th birthday to S&G poster girl Kate Beckinsale. The British beauty (last onscreen in the Vegas-set Prisoner’s Daughter) hasn’t been seen in Las Vegas since the opening of Carversteak at Resorts World Las Vegas. It’s time we did something about that, don’t you think? Fontainebleau, your turn.
