In Australia, Echo Entertainment Group is considering selling its Townsville casino, because they want to focus their time, money and innovations into their other primary land based casinos that are located in Brisbane, Sydney and on the Gold Coast. The Townsville casino has garnered an extensive amount of interest from New Zealand and Singapore, with Lassiter’s International Holdings and the Sky City Entertainment Group considering bids for the casino. It is speculated that it could create a bidding war, but the current figure that is being considered for the sale of the Townsville casino is roughly $100 million. Although naturally Echo Entertainment Group is hoping for a bidding war between the two companies, the more money that they get the more time and money they will be able to spend on improvements for their other major casinos in Australia. This is the primary focus, because they want to improve and enhance the features already available at their casinos, making it more fun, pleasurable and comfortable for their players.
Sky City Entertainment Group would be an incredible wire for the Townsville Casino, because they already have a huge focus on offering casinos in smaller cities within Australasia. With casinos already located in Darwin and Adelaide, they also have two additional casinos in Hamilton and Auckland New Zealand. Adding Townsville to their line of casinos would be it a superior step forward for their business and marketing strategies. This is also an excellent benefit for Echo Entertainment Group, because they are currently remodeling their casinos on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane, in order to improve their attraction to international high rollers. By selling the Townsville casino, they could use the money to improve their other casinos, and they are selling it based on the fact that they reported a 60% increase in earnings for that particular casino.
In the United States, Nevada Gold & Casinos Inc. was considering investing in a proposal of a 200-room hotel and casino that will be closer to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The Houston-based developer has backed out of this investment, because as the president of the company stated, there are too many challenges in getting the finances required to follow through with investing in that particular project. For that reason, they are backing out and not adding any additional investments. They plan to focus on other investments that will provide them with faster rewards, so that they can continue to grow and thrive. Although they already invested $250,000 into that particular project, they are planning on writing off that money and moving on. The original proposal was for a 30,000 square foot casino with a 200-room hotel. However, they scrapped the idea, because Nevada Gold & Casinos Inc. CFO said that the project lacks significant movement forward in the metrics, including occupancy, room rates and gaming, making it a nonviable investment. Although this may bring construction of the new casino and hotel to a substantial slowdown or even halt, construction will likely continue once Lennar Corp. finds additional investors to keep the project going.