Two New Jersey residents have filed a lawsuit accusing Caesars Entertainment Inc, MGM Resorts International and other casino-hotel operators in Atlantic City of colluding to artificially boost Room rates in violation of U.S. antitrust law.
The 109-page lawsuit, which is a proposed class action, also named Hard Rock International Inc. as a defendant, in addition to Florida-based technology company Cendyn Group LLC, which sells the shared pricing algorithm platform at the center of the alleged conspiracy, according to a Reuters report.
The complaint alleges that the corporate defendants and their respective hotels, including Harrah’s Atlantic City, Bally’s Atlantic City and Borgata, used Cendyn’s platform to set room rates higher than they otherwise would have been able to in a competitive market, Reuters reports.
Caesars, MGM and other defendants have asked a Nevada federal judge to dismiss a similar price-fixing lawsuit over room rates in Las Vegas filed in January.
Atlantic City casino-hotels charged 25 percent more for rooms in 2022 than in 2019, despite renting 5 percent fewer rooms, the lawsuit alleged.
The lawsuit asserted that “no market factors” such as increased demand or rising costs “can explain the kind of increase in room rates and corresponding revenue that casino-hotel defendants each have obtained during the class period.”
The suit alleges the operators “misrepresented to guests, through omissions, half-truths, and misrepresentations, how they determined room rates.”
The lawsuit said the prospective class is made up of “tens if not hundreds of thousands” of consumers. The plaintiffs seek unspecified compensatory and triple damages under federal antitrust laws.
Representatives for the operators, Cendyn and the plaintiffs had not commented on the case as of press time.
