NEWS & NOTES

Century Casinos’ Casinos Poland subsidiary has opened a new casino in Poznan. The venue is part of a four-star hotel in the city and contains nine table game 50 slot machines.  •  Sweden’s government-sponsored gambling monopoly, Svenska Spel, is creating professorship at Lund University’s Faculty of Medicine to study problem and addictive gambling. The company is budgeting €280,000 over the next five years to finance the program.  •  Union Gaming Group is opening a Hong Kong office. The new branch will provide research, sales, trading and banking services and will oversee the investment brokerage’s Macau-based analyst team.  •  Britain’s Aspers Group has reported a 43 percent increase in revenue for the latest fiscal year to £67.8million but will post a pre-tax loss of £5.4 million, which it attributes mainly to the closure of its casino in Swansea, Wales.  •  London’s Ritz Club is suing a Singaporean high roller who bounced a £5 million check to cover losses at the high-end gambling salon. The casino’s petition before the UK’s High Court is seeking payment of the £5 million plus interest it says is accruing at a rate of £1,000 a day.  •  BET Investments broke ground on a 16,000-square-foot retail development on Atlantic City’s Boardwalk adjacent to the Boardwalk Hall arena. The development is planned on three quarters of an acre. The company, however, owns the entire 2.5-acre site that was the site of the Trump World’s Fair Casino. Originally, the site was occupied by the Playboy casino hotel. The casino structure was demolished in 2000. BET bought the site for $25 million at a bankruptcy auction in 2005. Initially developers planned luxury condominiums on the site, but backed off that plan after the bottom fell out of the real estate market in the late 2000s.  •  A lawsuit  has been filed by two tribal members alleging that the $360 million Hollywood Casino Jamul proposed by the Jamul tribe in San Diego County, California would desecrate a tribal burial ground. The lawsuit, actually filed against the state’s transportation department (Caltrans) claims that there are several unmarked graves in the casino site. A total of four lawsuits have been filed so far against the casino, which is one of the most controversial ever proposed in Southern California. Many residents of Jamul oppose the casino because they feel it will create major traffic issues.  •  A resident unhappy with the vote by Glendale, Arizona’s city council not to oppose the casino proposed by the Tohono O’Odham tribe, has indicated he will try to gather enough signatures to put a referendum on the ballot to reverse the council’s action opposing a bill in Congress to prevent the tribe from building. Gary Hirsch, who calls his measure Neighbors for a Better Glendale, would need nearly 7,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot. Hirsch claims he will be able to gather 10,000 signatures by the deadline.  •  The National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) has published a revised final rule for Self Regulation of Class II Gaming. It released the final rule on April 4. The rule makes it easier for tribes to qualify for self-regulation certificates and makes it less expensive for tribes to self-regulate the day-to-day Class II operations. Under the old rules only two tribes had qualified for the certificate.  •  California’s Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, which operates River Rock Casino near Geyserville, is poised to expel 70 members, including two former chairmen. It has joined many other gaming tribes in culling membership rolls, a process called disenrollment. Critics say this is so the remaining members can collect more casino money. The tribal council has declined to comment why it has chosen to dis-enroll virtually the entire Cordova family, which includes the two former chairmen. The Bureau of Indian Affairs rarely overturns such decisions by a sovereign tribe.  •  The National Council on Problem Gambling has appointed media agency UM and creative agency Goodfellas for a campaign pertaining to the World Cup series. The campaign, targeted to launch during the European soccer season and throughout World Cup 2014, is designed to educate the public on the negative impact of gambling, and to promote awareness of the problem.  •  The Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency has had to beef up its staff to keep up with the pace of hiring for the new Horseshoe Casino Baltimore. Nearly all of the 1,700 job openings require a gaming license, which means a background check. Horseshoe has filled about 500 of the 1,700 positions available at the casino, but only nine have received gaming licenses so far. The lottery agency is in charge of the background checks. The $442 million casino is expected to open in late August or early September.  •  A Pennsylvania man mistakenly threw away $1.25 million worth of winning lottery tickets, and that money will stay with the state, according to a report from the York Daily Record. The tickets were bought by a lottery regular in 2013, and many months went by before the Pennsylvania Lottery made a public announcement that the winner had until March 13 of this year to cash all 25 of them in. However, no one did. The tickets had been sold to a man in York, Pennsylvania who spends $100 a day on tickets. By the time he realized he had won, the lottery’s deadline had passed.  •  The Kentucky Baptist Conference has said that religion is the reason expanded gambling bills cannot get through the state’s legislature. According to a 2010 Religious Census, Baptists make up 25 percent of the state’s 4.4 million population, but 40 percent of the General Assembly. The rural Baptists are against gambling on moral grounds.  •  Baseball Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson is seeking a settlement of $9.9 million from the Seminole Indian tribe over injuries he suffered in a 2012 fall from a stage at the tribe’s South Florida Hard Rock casino. Attorney Jack Hickey said the Baltimore Orioles’ great will sue unless a settlement is reached. The case is complicated by the tribe’s lawsuit immunity protections, which generally limit damages to $200,000 for an individual who suffers an injury at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood.  •  Monticello Raceway in New York State has received the necessary support from local lawmakers to proceed with plans to build a $750 million casino in the area. Developers with Empire Resorts want to break ground in the Town of Thompson in the Catskill Mountains, where the old Concord Hotel formerly stood. Their proposed resort is called Adelaar.  ?  Baha Mar Chairman and CEO Sarkis Izmirlian, along with President Tom Dunlap and Senior Vice President Robert Sands, recently met with the Chinese ambassador to the Bahamas to discuss the Bahamian-Chi
na visa accord, which will help to “diversify the Bahamas’ global tourism base,” Izmirlian said. The $3.5 billion resort is set to open in December.  ?  SLS Las Vegas is now taking reservations. The first rooms are available for August 25 ahead of the property’s grand opening in Labor Day Weekend. Guests can make reservations online at the newly launched property website, SLSLasVegas.com.  ?  Vince Lombardi’s Legendary Sports Bar and Grill has opened at the Oneida Casino in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The sports bar, the only Lombardi-themed venue in the U.S., is a partnership between the Oneidas and the Lombardi family.  ?  Las Vegas City Council is considering allowing horse-drawn carriages in Downtown Sin City. Horse-drawn carriages were banned in Vegas after a 1985 accident in which four people were injured. Council reversed the ban in 2007.  ?  Rampart Casino in Las Vegas marked its 15^th year in business last week by officially opening the doors to its Bingo Room. The 300-capacity attraction will be open daily from 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Guests must be 21 years or older with a valid form of identification to participate.  ?   Nevada Senators Harry Reid and Dean Heller are among the senators who co-sponsored the bipartisan Travel Promotion, Enhancement and Modernization Act. The legislation combines private donations with revenue generated by fees collected from international visitors arriving in the United States to fund Brand USA, which promotes tourism in the U.S.  ? About $8 billion has been committed to development in Las Vegas. Some 4,800 new jobs should be created this year and an additional 10,700 jobs over the next two years, according to Union Gaming.