
A judge by having a penchant for history and Shakespeare may have decided that March 15, 2016 could be a good deadline for Caesars to get lienholders on board with its bankruptcy restructuring plan.
Baffling moments in gambling, you state? What?
As top gambling journalists, it is not our job to be baffled; it’s our task to cut through the presssing issues with razor-sharp commentary and observations.
Sometimes, though, you simply have to throw your hands in the atmosphere and go WTF? With that in mind, here are the top five many gambling that is baffling of 2015.
CSIG Rhetoric
The Coalition to Stop Web Gambling CSIG) is an expert at churning out baffling statements, and in 2015, these may have struck their zenith. The coalition subscribes to the ‘it’s-true-because-it-rhymes’ brand of rhetoric, and thus phrases such as ‘click your phone, lose your house’ and the slightly zingier variation ‘click your mouse, lose your house,’ went down gangbusters at anti-gambling cocktail parties in 2010.
Representative Jason Chaffetz’ (R- UT 3rd District) assertion that RAWA is a pro-states’ rights bill, despite all evidence to the contrary, was pretty ‘out there’ in the bafflement stakes, we thought. And meanwhile, John Kindt, a professor at the University of Illinois Law School, was partial to quoting a scholarly research from 1999, the times of dial-up Internet, as evidence that ‘Internet gambling may not be regulated.’
Finger on the pulse here, Professor.
However, the award for the most baffling CSIG declaration of the entire year would go to a ‘news’ header on the organization’s website which screamed ‘Online Gambling Hurts Farmers.’
The logic of why this demographic is very at risk is lost on us, and we realize CSIG is not averse to resorting towards the use of emotive language to make an intellectually dishonest point or two, but farmers? The correlation that is only could make was that spades might be used by farmers to dig things, so there you go.
The Daily Fantasy Sports Scandal
The daily fantasy sports (DFS) scandal was pretty odd when you consider it. DFS continued its unstoppable rise through the first nine months of the season, with the most truly effective two internet sites, FanDuel and DraftKings, securing vast sums of dollars in assets as the multibillion dollar industry started mulling international expansion and eventual world domination.
With all this on the line, you might have thought that someone at the 2 kingpin businesses would have recalled to prohibit their players from playing games at rival sites.
Nope.
DFS became thoroughly unglued at the conclusion of September, when it emerged that the DraftKings employee had accidentally released player information ahead of the week’s NFL games had begun. In identical week, this worker won $350,000 playing at FanDuel.
Accusations of ‘insider trading’ were possibly overblown, and the employee was eventually cleared of wrongdoing, but the public’s faith in DFS was shaken, and suddenly the industry ended up being facing attacks on all fronts, from player legal actions to judicial investigations to denouncements from regulators and politicians.
Beware the Ides of March
That Caesars Entertainment’s debt stands at an industry that is unprecedented of around $20 billion ended up being an undeniable fact that baffled the Nevada Gaming Commission at a meeting to discuss its messy bankruptcy proceedings this year.
The Commission called the problem ‘embarrassing,’ and suggested that the ongoing company refrain from ‘building any Ferris wheels for a while’ to chuckles from assembled users associated with press.
‘Everyone throws the economy beneath the coach,’ snapped commission chairman Tony Alamo testily.
In seeking Chapter 11 proceedings for its main operating device, Caesars has been accused by its second lien creditors of restructuring its assets in a way that unfairly prefers its controlling private equity backers, who were the guys that got Caesars in this mess within the place that is first.
Faced with lawsuits and accusations of fraudulent behavior, Caesars devised a new restructuring plan. Now the business is charged with the job of getting its lesser bondholders on board. The deadline because of this is March 15 of next year, after which Caesars will totally lose control over its own bankruptcy proceedings.
Shakespeare scholars among you will recognize this date because the one known as ‘the Ides of March’ in the Roman calendar and the fateful day’s Julius Caesar’s assassination by his former supporter, Brutus.
Who’d have thought that a bankruptcy judge would have this type of wicked feeling of humor?
There were numerous baffling moments this season, we had to get this piece a two-parter, so come back tomorrow for more bewildering gambling landmark moments from 2015.
Five baffling that is most Gambling Moments of 2015, Part Two
Revel owner Glen Straub ended up 2015 saddled with the world’s biggest bill that is electric. (Image: Tom MacDonald/WHYY)
Welcome back to role Two of our operate down of 2015’s most baffling happenings, in which we ponder some of the more mystifying occurrences of this 12 months inside and around the video gaming universe.
Chukchansi Costs
In July, previous Chukchansi leader that is tribal McDonald accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to 485 times for false imprisonment after admitting to being the orchestrator of 1 of the very most idiotic moments in the history of the casino industry.
The prior October, he had lead an armed assault on the Chukchansi Gold Casino, near Fresno, California.
McDonald had stormed the home with some 20 accomplices, sending clients running for cover, and security that is ordering at gunpoint into a secure area regarding the building. Guards were reportedly handcuffed and assaulted, but no casino customers were hurt.
This it appears, was the culmination of a power that is bizarre between two rival Chukchansi factions vying for control of the casino. McDonald had been running the casino from the business that is nearby up until August 2014, whenever a rival group, led by one Reggie Lewis, resulted in the night and literally took the casino over.
While Lewis is fantastic at surreptitiously taking over gaming properties, it appears his admin skills aren’t quite therefore hot, as he failed to file the accounts, which meant that the casino was dealing with a $16 million fine from the regulator and closure that is possible.
McDonald chose to take action that is drastic charged into the casino with guns drawn. We are not quite certain what their goal was, but he’ll have a lot of time to think about it in the pokey.
Straub’s Strange Energy
Eccentric billionaire Glen Straub has been a lively and um, interesting source of entertainment this 12 months. The home magnate initially lost the auction to buy the distressed Revel Casino property in Atlantic City and immediately blasted the auction as ‘improper.’
Having suffered a bad bout of something, Straub explained, he previously flown from New Jersey to their home in Florida to retrieve his medicine, a fact that so coincidentally took him out from the picture during the last crucial stage of the bidding process.
However, when the champion associated with the bid, Brookfield Asset Management, got wind of Revel’s astronomical power bill, a non-negotiable $36 million per it bailed on the deal anyway year. Straub stepped in, picking right up the $4.9 billion property for a song, at $82 million.
The idealistic designer initially said he desired to reopen Revel maybe not as a casino, but as an ‘elite university’ where the world’s brightest people could spend their days ruminating on solving global issues such as for example ‘famine, cancer and nuclear waste storage space.’
Once he’d their hands regarding the home, though, he decided that he’d probably simply reopen it as being a casino after all, albeit it one devoted to ‘life extension technology,’ whatever that is.
By April of in 2010, it was none among these things. What it ended up being, however, according to the Atlantic City Fire Department, ended up being a ’47-story fire risk,’ as Straub had been refusing to honor the agreement aided by the adjacent power plant and had been take off.
A not enough flowing water through Revel’s pipes, and no electricity to permit firefighters access to the floors that are upper suggested that a fire outbreak could be potentially catastrophic.
The seemingly cursed casino property continues to be shuttered while Straub’s unpaid power bills encounter the millions. Perhaps he can’t read them while sitting at nighttime.
Nov Macau: What occurred to the Gambling Fireball in 2015?
The fortunes of Macau were currently tumbling as 2015 started. The downturn actually started back in June 2014, once the gambling hub recorded the first-ever monthly dip in revenues since Stanley Ho’s casino monopoly finished in 2012, a move that had effectively opened the Asian gambling region up to investment that is foreign.
However, no one could quite have expected figures to fall so significantly, and consecutively, month-on-month, for all of those other and throughout 2015 year.
Macau’s casinos had been affected by the anti-corruption drive of Asia’s president Xi Jinping (center) in 2015, which largely impacted the gambling that is asian’s junket industry this year. (Image: Adrian Bradshaw/EPA)
Just What occurred?
Just two months prior to the downturn that is initial Macau had reported a record-breaking Q1 for 2014, with $12.6 billion in revenues. Which was up 19.8 percent through the quarter that is first of. And 2014 was on course to beat the season prior, itself a watershed year, and Forbes was calling Macau ‘one of the planet’s quickest growing economies.’ The enclave was ingesting in only two months what Las Vegas scored in a year.
Macau had benefitted significantly from the explosion in Chinese tourism in the preceding years. A greater freedom of movement and a burgeoning new middle that is chinese had certainly contributed to the gambling boom, and, as the Chinese economy began slow, so did the flow of gamblers from the mainland.
VIP Junkets Hit the Skids
But Macau’s bread and butter had for ages been Chinese VIP high rollers. These whales’ trips were facilitated by Macau’s multibillion-dollar junket industry with a fondness for high stakes baccarat. In reality, the junkets accounted for a few 60 percent of Macau’s revenues during the boom years.
Junket operators would work as middlemen, organizing trips and lending their clients large sums of cash in order to control restrictions in the level of money which could be brought from the mainland. VIPs would then settle their debts on their return to China.
A lot of these VIPs were, in reality, corrupt Communist Party officials whose fortunes were derived from kickbacks or embezzlement of general public money. Corruption had reached proportions that are epidemic China, and Beijing had had enough, vowing to track fraudulent officials ‘to the ends of the earth.’
Fearing casino-online-australia.net reprisals from Beijing, the VIPs started initially to avoid them of Macau, going to Manilla in the Philippines, or to Vietnam’s Ho Tram Strip to instead get their kicks.
Unprecedented Crackdown
The drive that is anti-corruption squeezing Macau throughout the latter half 2014. Also as scaring from the high rollers, Beijing had imposed restrictions on the use of UnionPay, Asia’s only bank that is domestic, which further stemmed the flow of middle-class money from the mainland.
Meanwhile, the introduction of a blanket smoking ban inside casinos did not improve issues.
But by early 2015, China had ramped it up a notch, initiating an ‘unprecedented crackdown’ regarding the junket industry, tightening regulatory settings and demanding more transparency through the junkets about their clients and the criminal history of their workers. By September, the junket industry was ‘broken,’ according to Rob Goldstein, LVS president.
Brand New casino resorts, conceived through the boom time, still opened their doors this 12 months, such as for example James Packer’s Studio City Macau, while Steve Wynn’s Wynn Palace Macau due to start in the centre of next.
Regardless of the general malaise and stingy dining table games allocations for new casinos from the Macau regulator that is bowing to pressure from Beijing, Packer said he remained positive about the region’s long-term future, while conceding that Macau’s downturn happens to be ‘worse than anyone expected.’
Leave A Comment