NEWS & NOTES

Rivers Casino in Portsmouth, Virginia held a virtual informational job forum last week in multiple departments. Rush Street Gaming leaders say they want to build a diverse local workforce, open new doors and inspire the community. The casino is set to bring more than 1,300 permanent jobs and about 1,400 construction jobs. ● Downtown Las Vegas’ newest resort, Derek Stevens’ Circa, is hosting tryouts for go-go “dancing dealers.” Expected to open October 28, Circa is hiring while other gaming resorts are announcing layoffs and extended furloughs. ● A campaign to elicit votes for the proposed Hard Rock Bristol Hotel and Casino has hit the airwaves. The ad focuses on the 2,000 direct jobs the project is forecast to create. Bristol Vice Mayor Anthony Farnum says it will “put Bristol back on the map, all over again.” Voters will decide in a referendum starting September 18. ● Wildwood Casino in Cripple Creek, Colorado will convert part of a local inn into employee apartments and develop small bungalows on the south part of the hotel. The affordable housing is designed to attract new employees to the casino town. ●   On September 7, the Kla-Mo-Ya Casino in Chiloquin, Oregon opened a Red Cross emergency evacuation tent for residents coping with wildfires in the vicinity. The facility has served hundreds of people and helped them to find temporary housing, and resources were also made available to residents’ animals, including horses, domestic pets and livestock. ● For the first time since the beginning of March, the Navajo Nation announced that no new Covid-19 cases have been reported. The total number of positive cases is now 9,903, and 7,157 people are reported to have recovered. The nation’s four casinos have remained closed, even as most gaming halls in Indian Country have reopened. ● Spectacle Jack LLC has announced that its planned Hard Rock casino in Terre Haute, Illinois will be smoke-free from the start. An outdoor patio for smokers will offer 117 slots and eight table games, about 15 percent of 1,060 gaming positions. The “Rocksino” is on track for a fall groundbreaking. ● A major Las Vegas convention has been rescheduled for fall 2021 instead of its usual spring schedule. The National Association of Broadcasters will hold its annual gathering October 9-13, 2021, in Las Vegas, a postponement of more than a year. The show was to have been held in April 2020. This show typically draws at least 90,000 attendees and more than 1,600 exhibitors to the Las Vegas Convention Center, which ranked the NAB Show 2020 as the fourth-largest convention based on attendance, with an economic impact of $153.3 million last year. ● Entertainer Justin Timberlake has invested an undisclosed sum in a group known as Music City Baseball, formed to push for a Major League Baseball team in his native Memphis. According to the group’s website, MLB “has been clear that there will be no movement towards expansion until issues related to current franchises are addressed. Our goal is to be ready when Major League Baseball is satisfied these conditions have been met.” ● A team led by poker pro Mike McDonald was among the standout performers at the inaugural World Series of Trading, a global cryptocurrency trading competition in which participants are ranked based on their profit/loss ratio using Singapore-based trading platform Bybit. The WSOT attracted 135 competing teams and 12,368 participants, with a total overlay prize pool of US$1.27 million in cryptocurrency paid out to the top 10 teams. ● After being closed since March due to the coronavirus pandemic, The BlueWater Resort & Casino, an enterprise of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, reopened on a limited basis on Monday, September 14. The hotel and other amenities will remain closed. Face masks will be required, patrons will have their temperatures checked on entry, and the property is accessible through the main entrance only. ● Quang Ninh Province in Vietnam has completed a vital highway linking Van Don Airport to the location of the Sun Group’s planned integrated resort in the Van Don Special Economic Zone. The $2.1 billion entertainment complex was first approved in 2016. ● The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas has pledged $250,000 to expand its Diversity and Inclusion Program and support local nonprofit organizations. Recently named one of America’s Best Employers by Forbes, the Cosmopolitan is on track to meet past yearly donations, $1.6 million in 2018 and $1.7 million in 2019, to caused associated with the military and veteran community, diversity and inclusion, health, education and hunger relief. ● Some 400 workers at the Tiger Palace Resort in Nepal, owned by Australian-listed Silver Heritage Group, have reportedly been terminated due to the company’s ongoing financial woes. ● Agua Caliente Casino in Cathedral City, California, which will open in late 2020, has announced a lineup of innovative food and beverage concepts led by Executive Chef Julián González Cruz and Food and Beverage Director Ryan Drushel. They include 360 Sports Cathedral City, a sister property to the popular 360 Sports Rancho Mirage located inside Agua Caliente Resort Casino Spa Rancho Mirage. The up-scale menu at the Coachella Valley property will be enhanced by sports on giant wrap-around screens with real-time score tickers and an “epic surround-sound system,” the property stated. ● Italy’s federal communications and advertising authority, AGCOM, is investigating Google to see if the search engine breached the country’s ban on gambling ads. In 2018, Google committed to removing all gambling-related content/services from Italian search results in keeping with the government’s “Dignity Decree,” which implemented a blanket ban on all gambling marketing, promotions, advertising and sponsorships. ● New Mexico’s Pojoaque Pueblo has taken over management of the hotels at Hilton Santa Fe Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino. Hilton has operated the Hilton and Homewood Suites hotels for a dozen years. Buffalo Thunder Inc., the tribe’s business arm, will operate them. Buffalo Thunder CEO Michael Allgeier commented, “It has always been the intention of the pueblo to be self-sufficient and manage the property itself. It’s time.” • The Colorado Community College System board has voted to endorse Amendment 77, a state constitutional amendment that would allow residents of the casino towns of Cripple Creek, Central City and Black Hawk to raise betting limits and add games without resort to statewide elections. The extra taxes raised would benefit the state’s community college system.