Online Casino Edition – Casino News News about online casinos and gambling

February 17, 2013

Grocery Store Casinos Announce Expansion of Games and Promotions

Filed under: Casino — Tags: — OCE News @ 3:12 am

Grocery stores with casinos have become increasingly common throughout the Las Vegas area in recent years. However, the grocery stores that have gaming facilities are going to be undergoing a major overhaul at some point in the very near future. In the Las Vegas Valley, Golden Gaming is preparing to spend millions of dollars for the purpose of renovating all of the regions supermarkets that have casinos that are contained within them. The company is planning on upgrading more than 10 different locations that contain the gaming facilities. Some of the facilities that are going to be revamped by the company include Vons at South Durango Drive, and East Horizon Drive. In all, after the first 10 renovations are complete the company is looking to renovate more than 70 different locations over the course of the next two years and upgrade all of them.

This is not to be an extremely significant investment for the company, and is going to cost them millions of dollars, sometimes millions per site in order to do the proper renovations. The company is been making a number of changes to their structure, including the recently launched “Checkout Rewards” branding for their gaming salons. The salons are going to be aimed at offering greater privacy to the gamers that play there, rather than the level of privacy that is offered at their current locations.

Many of the supermarkets that contain these games actually contain older machines, which is thought to be one of the main upgrades that they are looking at changing. The new salons will have completely enclosed rooms along with updated games in modern decor. The ideas to make for a more comfortable and relaxing environment for the people that are going to be playing there.

The company first acquired the market share on the grocery store gaming parlors last year. Prior to their ownership, the stores had been known by their biggest competitor at the time, Affinity Gaming, which was formerly known as aHerbst Gaming. Golden Gaming as a company is also the largest owner of bars and pubs throughout the entire state. In all, it owns more than 40 bars and taverns with gaming equipment throughout the Las Vegas area. Most of the company’s locations have Artie received an update to the software and the machines, greatly improving them over what was there previously.

However, they are planning to make new adjustments to the machines and software in order to make the environment is comfortable as possible for the people that enjoy playing some games while they are out doing their shopping. The addition of the new software will make it easy for people to trade the points that they earn for the ability to spend at the grocery store. Even the stores that the company owns that do not currently have any gaming equipment are going to be receiving at least a few machines themselves, in order to entice more players to play while there at the grocery store, and earn a little bit fo extra money for all of your shopping efforts. This is a practice they are looking to grow moving forward.

February 16, 2013

Facebook Graph Search To Impact Casinos

Filed under: Casino — Tags: — OCE News @ 3:21 am

The new Facebook Graph Search may impact many online and off-line casinos. The new Facebook Graph Search links social media users to possibly millions of opinions of people that have had experience with some service or product. This would, of course, include casinos. The danger, experts say, is that the Facebook Graph Search could cause negative reputations for companies.

Casino marketing experts seem to agree that casinos will need to spend more time on customer service than ever before unless they want to be at risk of losing business due to a bad rep. In the past, a few unhappy customers could post on Twitter or Yelp and, generally, not too many people would see the post. With the new Facebook Graph Search, a new type of search tool that actually goes through people’s Facebook profiles to see what they are saying about companies, all of that has changed.

In simple terms, until now, someone could read some casino reviews and then decide as to whether or not they valued those reviews. Now, because of the way Graph Search works, those same people will see what all of their friends on Facebook say about a casino. The average Facebook user is estimated to have about 130 listed friends. And those friends have friends and so forth and so on. A few negative comments about a particular casino can explode into a huge mess in no time at all.

One of the problems that many casinos have is that they are behind in their customer service technology making it difficult for customers to voice their displeasure about something directly to the casino. Now, they can take that displeasure and post it to Facebook profiles and the issue could be read by potentially thousands of other people. Many modern casinos still use paper cards for customer feedback and this could mean trouble for them as more and more people turn to the Internet to voice their opinions. Casinos that want to fight back will need to make it much easier for their guests to give them feedback.

According to casino marketing gurus, casinos will need to act fast to take measures that will improve their customer and guest service. The key, of course, is providing great service to every customer so they have nothing but good things to say. But, the other key is making it easy for those who have issues to get those issues addressed quickly. This is really the only way to combat what might be a huge problem for some casinos in terms of their reputations. Those who act fast will probable be able to avoid a lot of the possible consequences. But for those that put it off, remember, once a negative comment is posted it is there forever! This is one time that being proactive can really pay off for casinos, both online and brick and mortar establishments. On the other hand, great comments about a casino will remain online as well, and that can mean a lot of new business.

February 15, 2013

Pinnacle Entertainment Sees Record Revenue Throughout 2012

Filed under: Casino — Tags: — OCE News @ 3:12 am

Pinnacle Entertainment is celebrating a record turnaround after reporting record revenue throughout the year of 2012. After a few down years following the 2008 financial collapse, the company is happy to see their revenue rising at a rapid rate once again, leading to this record year. The company also announced that they are going to continue to move in on plans that would allow them to acquire Ameristar Casinos later in the year. That would allow the company to own its first properties throughout Nevada, which is a goal that the company has been attempting to achieve for the better part of the last decade.

Pinnacle, a company which currently operates out of five different states at this current time reported a net loss despite the record revenue that they posted. Their net loss was a total of $42.2 million, or $.72 per share. The total revenue that the company was able to generate was $301.6 million for the fourth quarter. The company had earnings of $25 million or $.40 a share and revenue of $275.8 million during the same quarter of last year.

In 2012 as a whole, the companies lost a total of $31.8 million, which comes out to about $.52 per share. Total revenue of $1.2 billion was seen by the company throughout the year, which was nearly a 5% increase over the previous year. Although many analysts tape that the company vastly under perform the expectations that have been set by them, pinnacle attributed many of its gains to record revenue performances.

The company is thought to be acquiring AmeriStar for a total of $869 million. The deal was first hinted at during the month of December, and since that time there has been a bit of a stall in the negotiations between the two companies. With a property in Nevada, Pinnacle would increase the number of properties that they own, and add a very important state in Nevada to their list.

The earnings report had a number of different highlights including the fact that executives say that their due diligence of the deal with AmeriStar currently indicate that the acquisition of the company would be a very good fit for Pinnacle Entertainment , the company that is looking to expand in hopes to become profitable at some point here in the very near future. In the earnings report, the company also said that they are beginning to see some real customer loyalty throughout the Louisiana market, which has been incredibly noticeable during the opening of a few recent properties there in the state.

The company also signed an agreement to sell off all of its current land owned by the company in the Atlantic City area for a total of $30.6 million overall. This was not a choice by the company, and instead was part of a financing contingency that the company had signed in previous years. That land sale is expected to go through near the end of the first quarter of 2013, although no exact date has been placed on the sale. The company also opened a new covered parking area at its River city property in St. Louis, as was reported on the earnings report.

February 14, 2013

Illinois Casino Revenue Continues to Suffer

Filed under: Casino — Tags: — OCE News @ 3:20 am

It was not a good year for Illinois casinos. The reported revenue from the state’s casinos (they have 10) does not meet pre-recession levels. In a report that was sent out by the Illinois Gaming Board, the revenue for 2012 was $1.6 billion. This is up just slightly from 2011 numbers, but it is down by nearly 38 percent from the year 2007.

Illinois Casino Gaming Association Director Tom Swoik, which represents Harrah’s, has reported the 2007 smoking ban as well as a weak economy to blame for the downturn. If the economy begins to improve, he says, he is confident that casino revenues will begin to improve as well. However, he also said he thinks it might be a long spell before casinos are able to see numbers that match the 2007 figures. This he reasons is due to the current smoking ban which was not in effect back in 07.

He went on to say that neighboring states which also have casinos allow smoking. He estimates that Illinois may have lost as much as 20 percent of its business in 2008, and estimates that they may have lost 19 percent more on top of that due to the struggling economy.

Of the 10 casinos in the state, the new Rivers casino, which is located in Des Plaines, is said to have earned the most revenue. The casinos that are located downstate Illinois are said to have earned a combined total revenue of some $38.5 million. The East Peoria Par-A-Dice casino says that it was able to earn $116.2 million in 2012. This represents less than one percent of an increase from 2011 numbers of $115.5 million. Rock Island Jumer’s was able to earn more than $87 million, which is an increase of 2.3 percent over 2011. As for the Metropolis Harrah’s casino, they came in with $97.6 million for the year 2012, and that represents a 2.3 percent increase from 2011. The Metropolis casino has a lot of competition that it has to contend with from bordering states, including the new Isle of Capri casino which is located in nearly Cape Girardeau.

Some believe that these numbers will have an impact on efforts that are being used to expand gambling within the state. Currently, there is a plan to bring in five more casinos which will include one for Chicago. This is now pending before Pat Quinn, Governor of Illinois. In the plan are ideas for horse tracks to be allowed to add slot machines.

Many lawmakers say that they are willing to consider anything that will bring in needed revenues to the state’s coffers. What objections there are seem to involve adding slots to horse tracks as tracks are usually very close to existing casinos and adding slots may siphon off casino players.

No further details were released as to what, if anything, the state plans to do to help increase casino revenues for the year 2013. One thing is certain, though, something needs to be done and done as soon as possible.

February 12, 2013

Dan Gilbert to Add Greektown Casino-Hotel

Filed under: Casino — Tags: , — OCE News @ 3:20 am

The founder of Quicken Loans, billionaire Dan Gilbert, has recently announced the he plans to purchase the Greektown Casino-Hotel. He is saying that this is the next step in his vision to help to remake the downtown Detroit area into a full-scale live-work-play district.

Rock Gaming, which is owned by Dan Gilbert, announced that it is in the process of making a deal for controlling interest with the corporation that now owns well known Greektown Casino complex. This is one of just three casinos that are located in Detroit.

In a statement, Gilbert said that his plans are in still in the beginning stages but that he sees making a large investment in the Greektown Casino-Hotel. He also plans to help with expanding the local economy in the process. He envisions his actions as helping those all the way to Campus Martius as well as all along Woodward Avenue. The area is already moving in the right direction.

Gilbert sees this as an opportunity to revitalize the downtown area as well as the local gaming business. He has already bought a reported 15 buildings within the downtown Detroit area. He also owns many other buildings that are located on Woodward Avenue as well as properties close to Campus Martius. He wants to blend the two areas into a better community.

However, Rock Gaming has so far declined to bring forth any specific details of Mr. Gilbert’s plans for investment into the Greektown properties. Rock Gaming also did not disclose the asking or selling price of the deal. They also did not reveal the time frame that is expected for the deal’s closing or the actual size of the stake. The deal will have to be approved by the Michigan Gaming Control Board.

Gilbert already owns three gambling sites that are all located in Ohio. These are owned through Rock Gaming. He also owns a horse-racing track located in Kentucky. It has been reported that the company is also planning to open a Baltimore casino sometime next year.

For those who have been following this story, Rock Gaming is known to be one of the leading proponents of the 2009 Ohio constitutional amendment that allowed casino gambling to start within the state. The corporation now owns two (of four) authorized full-service gambling casinos. These are the Horseshoe Casino in Cleveland and the Horseshoe Casino that is scheduled to open its doors in Cincinnati in March. Rock Gaming also owns a horse-racing track that is located in suburban Cleveland. That facility will be adding slot machines sometime this spring.

It was also reported that while famous Caesars Entertainment is normally a working partner in Rock Gaming’s gambling ventures, it will not be involved in this deal or transaction. No details were given as to why that is. But it was made clear that Caesars Entertainment would not participate in this current venture. To date, representatives from the Greektown Casino have not made statements. The same is true for the Michigan Gaming Control Board which must approve the deal before it can be finalized.

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