A judge by having a penchant for history and Shakespeare may have decided that March 15, 2016 will be a deadline that is good Caesars to get lienholders up to speed with its bankruptcy restructuring plan.
Baffling moments in gambling, you state? What?
As top gambling journalists, it is not our job become baffled; it’s our job to cut through the difficulties with razor-sharp commentary and observations.
Sometimes, though, you simply have to throw your hands in the fresh atmosphere and go WTF? Understanding that, here are the top five most baffling gambling moments of 2015.
CSIG Rhetoric
The Coalition to Stop online Gambling CSIG) is a specialist at churning out baffling statements, and in 2015, these may have hit 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 property’ as well as the variation that is slightly zingier 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 just 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 keen on quoting a scholarly research from 1999, the days of dial-up Internet, as evidence that ‘Internet gambling can’t be regulated.’
Finger on the pulse here, Professor.
However, the award for the baffling that is most CSIG statement of the season would go to a ‘news’ header on the organization’s internet site which screamed ‘Online Gambling Hurts Farmers.’
The logic of why this demographic is very at danger is lost on us, and we understand CSIG is not averse to resorting to the use of emotive language to make an intellectually dishonest point or two, but farmers? The only correlation we could make had been that spades might be used by farmers to dig things, so there you go.
The Daily Fantasy Sports Scandal
The fantasy that is daily (DFS) scandal was pretty odd when you think about it. DFS continued its unstoppable rise through the first nine months of the season, with the top two internet sites, FanDuel and DraftKings, securing vast sums of bucks in opportunities as the multibillion dollar industry began mulling international expansion and world domination that is eventual.
With all this at risk, you might have thought that someone at the two kingpin organizations would have remembered 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 data prior to the week’s NFL games had begun. In identical week, this worker won $350,000 playing at FanDuel.
Accusations of ‘insider trading’ were maybe overblown, and the employee was fundamentally cleared of wrongdoing, but the public’s faith in DFS was shaken, and suddenly the industry ended up being attacks that are facing 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 unprecedented industry high of around $20 billion was a proven fact that baffled the Nevada Gaming Commission at a meeting to discuss its messy bankruptcy proceedings this season.
The Commission called the problem ’embarrassing,’ and suggested that the company refrain from ‘building any Ferris wheels for a while’ to chuckles from assembled people of this press.
‘Everyone throws the economy underneath the bus,’ snapped commission chairman Tony Alamo testily.
In seeking Chapter 11 proceedings for the main working unit, Caesars was accused by its second lien creditors of restructuring its assets in an easy method that unfairly prefers its controlling personal equity backers, who had been the inventors that got Caesars in this mess into the place that is first.
Faced with lawsuits and accusations of fraudulent behavior, Caesars devised a restructuring plan that is new. Now the company is faced with the job of getting its lesser bondholders on board. The deadline with 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 of 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 so many baffling moments in 2010, we’d 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 electric bill. (Image: Tom MacDonald/WHYY)
Welcome back to Part Two of our operate down of 2015’s most baffling happenings, in which we ponder a few of the more mystifying occurrences associated with the year inside and around the video gaming universe.
Chukchansi Charges
In July, previous Chukchansi leader that is tribal McDonald accepted a plea discount and was sentenced to 485 times for false imprisonment after admitting to being the orchestrator of one of the most extremely idiotic moments in the history of the casino industry.
The earlier October, he had lead an armed assault on the Chukchansi Gold Casino, near Fresno, California.
McDonald had stormed the home with some 20 accomplices, delivering customers operating for cover, and ordering security guards at gunpoint in to a protected area associated with building. Guards were reportedly handcuffed and assaulted, but no casino customers were hurt.
This it seems, was the culmination of a bizarre power struggle between two rival Chukchansi factions vying for control of the casino. McDonald have been running the casino from a nearby business park up to August 2014, when a rival group, led by one Reggie Lewis, turned up the evening and literally took the casino over.
While Lewis is very good at surreptitiously taking over gaming properties, this indicates his admin skills aren’t quite so hot, as he failed to file the accounts, which meant that the casino was dealing with a $16 million fine from the regulator and feasible closure.
McDonald chose to take action that is drastic charged into the casino with firearms drawn. We are perhaps not quite certain what his goal had been, but he’ll have plenty of time to consider it in the pokey.
Straub’s Strange Energy
Eccentric billionaire Glen Straub happens to be a lively and um, interesting source of activity this 12 months. The home magnate initially lost the auction to buy the revel that is distressed property in Atlantic City and immediately blasted the auction as ‘improper.’
Having suffered a bout that is bad of, Straub explained, he’d flown from New Jersey to his 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 of the bid, Brookfield Asset Management, got wind of Revel’s astronomical power bill, a non-negotiable $36 million per 12 months, it bailed on the offer anyway. Straub stepped in, picking up the $4.9 billion property for the song, at $82 million.
The idealistic developer initially stated he desired to reopen Revel perhaps not being 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.’
Once he’d their hands on the property, though, he decided that he’d probably just reopen it as being a casino after all, albeit it one devoted to ‘life expansion technology,’ whatever that is.
By of this year, it was none of these things april. What it was, however, based on the Atlantic City Fire Department, had been a ’47-story fire danger,’ as Straub was refusing to honor the agreement with all the adjacent power plant and had been cut off.
A not enough flowing water through Revel’s pipes, and no electricity allowing firefighters access to the upper floors, implied that a fire outbreak could be potentially catastrophic.
The apparently cursed casino property remains shuttered while Straub’s unpaid power bills run into the millions. Maybe he can’t read them while sitting at nighttime.
Nov Macau: What Happened to the Gambling Fireball in 2015?
The fortunes of Macau were already tumbling as 2015 began. The downturn actually started back in June 2014, if the gambling hub recorded the first-ever monthly dip in revenues since Stanley Ho’s casino monopoly ended in 2012, a move that had effectively opened the Asian gambling region as much as investment that is foreign.
However, no one could quite have anticipated figures to fall so considerably, and consecutively, month-on-month, for all of those other 12 months and throughout 2015.
Macau’s gambling enterprises had been affected by the anti-corruption drive of Asia’s president Xi Jinping (center) in 2015, which largely impacted the Asian gambling mecca’s junket industry this year. (Image: Adrian Bradshaw/EPA)
Just What occurred?
Simply 8 weeks prior to the initial downturn, 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 program to beat the entire year prior, itself a year that is watershed and Forbes ended up being calling Macau ‘one regarding the planet’s fastest growing economies.’ The enclave was taking in in just two months what Las Vegas scored in per year.
Macau had benefitted club player casino no deposit codes significantly from the explosion in Chinese tourism in the years that are preceding. A greater freedom of movement and a burgeoning new Chinese middle class had certainly contributed to the gambling growth, and, as the Chinese economy began slow, so did the flow of gamblers through the mainland.
VIP Junkets Hit the Skids
But Macau’s bread and butter had been VIP that is chinese high. With a fondness for high stakes baccarat, these whales’ trips were facilitated by Macau’s multibillion-dollar junket industry. In fact, 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 customers large amounts of money in order to curb restrictions in the amount of money that could be brought from the mainland. VIPs would then settle their debts on the return to Asia.
Many of these VIPs were, in fact, corrupt Communist Party officials whoever fortunes were derived from kickbacks or embezzlement of general public money. Corruption had reached proportions that are epidemic Asia, and Beijing had had enough, vowing to track fraudulent officials ‘to the ends for the earth.’
Fearing reprisals from Beijing, the VIPs begun to steer clear of Macau, maneuvering to Manilla in the Philippines, or even to Vietnam’s Ho Tram Strip to get their kicks instead.
Unprecedented Crackdown
The anti-corruption drive had been squeezing Macau throughout the latter half 2014. Aswell as scaring from the high rollers, Beijing had imposed restrictions on the usage of UnionPay, China’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 gambling enterprises neglected to improve things.
But by early 2015, Asia had ramped it up a notch, initiating an ‘unprecedented crackdown’ on the junket industry, tightening regulatory settings and demanding more transparency from the junkets about their clients and the criminal history of their employees. By the junket industry was ‘broken,’ according to Rob Goldstein, LVS president september.
Brand New casino resorts, conceived during the boom time, nevertheless launched their doors this year, such as for instance James Packer’s Studio City Macau, while Steve Wynn’s Wynn Palace Macau due to open in the centre of next.
Inspite of the malaise that is general stingy dining table games allocations for new casinos from the Macau regulator which can be bowing to pressure from Beijing, Packer said he remained upbeat about the region’s long-term future, while conceding that Macau’s downturn was ‘worse than anyone expected.’