NORTH AMERICA
October 1, 2010
Philadelphia City Hall
Gambling on Philly’s first casino
Sugarhouse Casino, located on the Delaware River
waterfront about five miles north of downtown, was scheduled to open its doors
to the public on September 23 with 1,600 slot machines, 40 table games and free
parking (a must in the densely urbanized
area where the casino is located).
The $390 million, 45,000-square-foot venue, which
occupies about 26 acres, is owned by a limited partnership that includes
Chicago billionaire Neil Bluhm and a couple of local investors. The same
partnership owns Rivers Casino in downtown Pittsburgh.
Management intends to lure
gamblers throughout southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and northern
Delaware with the slogan: “Philly Loves a Winner”. Two million visitors a year
are expected, with $16 million in annual taxes and fees accruing to the city,
according to local news reports. Pennsylvania casinos pay to the state a 55
percent tax on gross revenues.
Meryl Levitz, president of the Greater Philadelphia
Tourism Marketing Corp., said the concentration of three casinos within a
30-mile radius — counting Parx Casino to the northeast and Harrah’s Chester to
the south — has prompted her staff to add a new gambling category to its Web
site.
“We don’t think it will cause an
avalanche of new tourists, though it will attract people in the beginning
because it’s on the water and because it is a novelty,” she told the
Courier-Post, a daily newspaper based in nearby Cherry Hill, N.J. “It will be
interesting to see if the three casinos engage in group marketing, or will they
continue to work on their own identity?”
Philadelphia is licensed for one more casino. That
project has stalled as a result of funding and other problems. West of the
city, Valley Forge Convention Center has been awarded one of the state’s two “resort
hotel” licenses. (The other is slated for the Nemacolin Woodlands resort in
Fayette County in the western part of the state.)
The state has one more racetrack casino license that
currently belongs to a Lawrence County project that also has run into financial
problems.
GTECH, SCIGAMES WIN CONTRACT TO RUN ILLINOIS LOTTERY
Illinois Gov.
Pat Quinn has awarded a groundbreaking contract to manage the Illinois Lottery
to a partnership between lottery giants GTECH, which holds the state contract
for lottery machines, and Scientific Games, which provides the lottery’s
instant tickets.
The joint venture, known as Northstar Lottery Group,
says it will generate $4.8 billion in net income over the first five years of
the 10-year contract, which could earn Northstar $331 million over five years
through a combination of management fees and incentives.
State officials said Northstar would increase net income
to $851 million in fiscal year 2012, the first year of the contract. Of that,
$650 million would go to schools and the rest to public construction projects
around the state. The lottery generated $662 million in income in fiscal year
2010, according to unaudited figures cited by the Chicago
Tribune.
Illinois will be the
first state to entirely privatize the management and marketing of its lottery,
a move lawmakers hope will help boost revenue and attract new players. The
state will retain ownership and regulatory oversight.
Northstar has said it will attract younger and more
affluent players through aggressive marketing, expanding the number of retail
outlets selling tickets, introducing new games and possibly by selling tickets
online.
Northstar beat out Camelot Group, which runs Great
Britain’s National Lottery. A third bidder, Greece-based Intralot, which was
eliminated from the competition in the first round, said it might challenge the
bidding, as it recently did over the Illinois Gaming Board’s contract for a
central communications system for video gaming terminals. Intralot protested
that a scoring error by the state added millions to the cost of its bid. The
contract for the system originally was awarded to Scientific Games.
GAMBLING IN CANADA TOPS $13.7B. IN 2009
Net revenue from Canada’s government-run
lotteries, video lottery terminals, casinos and non-casino slot machines
totaled C$13.75 billion in 2009, essentially unchanged from $13.67 billion the
year before.
Statistics Canada says revenue from gambling leveled off
at roughly $13.7 billion in 2007 after increasing steadily from $2.73 billion
in 1992.
Casinos accounted for 34 percent of net revenue last
year. Lotteries accounted for 26 percent, slot machines outside casinos, mainly
at racetracks, accounted for 21 percent, and VLTs accounted for 19
percent.
Gambling profits totaled slightly more than $6.7 billion
in 2008, or 4.7 percent of all provincial revenue.
In terms of participation, 51 percent of households with
incomes of less than $20,000 gambled in 2008, spending an average of $395.
Among households with incomes of $80,000 or more, 78 percent gambled, spending
an average of $555.
Average household
spend in 2008 was highest in Saskatchewan at $720, followed by Alberta at $645.
It was lowest in Quebec at $390
TRIBE SUES RIVAL TO STOP PLANS FOR COMPETING CASINO
The Gila River
Indian Community has filed suit with the U.S. Interior Department to stop
another Phoenix-area tribe, the Tohono O’odham Nation, from building a competing
casino in the metropolitan suburb of Glendale, Ariz.
The Gila, who own three casinos on reservation land in
the southern Phoenix suburbs of Chandler and Laveen, are challenging the
procedures under which the department earlier this year designated 54 acres of
Glendale real estate purchased by the Tohono O’odham as reservation by taking
it into trust on behalf of the tribe. The Tohono O’odham announced plans last
year to build a casino and hotel near a popular entertainment district in
Glendale that is home to the University of Phoenix Stadium where the Arizona
Cardinals of the National Football League play.
The city of Glendale, which also opposes the casino, was
planning last month to join the Gila River lawsuit.
VEGAS CASINOS TWEET, JUST NOT VERY OFTEN
Las Vegas
casinos are tweeting, but not a lot.
That’s the finding of
a recent University of Nevada, Las Vegas study which said 40 percent of the
city’s casinos have Twitter accounts but post to them fewer than once a day,
according to an Associated Press report.
The most prolific tweeter among the casinos is also one
of the newest, Casino Royale on the Las Vegas Strip, which tweets nearly 16
times a day, the report said.
David Schwartz, who
heads the university’s Center for Gaming Research, said some casinos post less
than once per week.
“If you don’t have a conversation going, it’s really not
as effective,” he suggested.
The study didn’t look
at the kinds of tweets casinos sent, just when the casinos opened the accounts
and how often they posted.
A pilot study by the university analyzed 11 casino
Twitter accounts for one week from June 1-7, finding that nearly 36 percent of
the posts were friendly responses to positive tweets from others who mentioned
the casino. Nearly 19 percent of the posts were “re-tweets” of positive
messages with minimal additional comment. The 11 casinos posted 6.5 times per
day during that study. The newer study, released last month, said only nine
casinos posted to the site more than five times per day.
Did you enjoy this article? Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
