Tech mogul Larry Ellison has concluded agreements with creditors of the Cal Neva Resort & Casino and plans to buy the historic Lake Tahoe gaming hall and hotel out of bankruptcy for $35.8 million. The Cal Neva enjoyed a celebrity heyday in the early 1960s when Frank Sinatra owned it for a short time. More recent plans to redevelop it collapsed amid financial difficulties and it was closed in 2013. Ellison plans to complete the purchase in January. • Tracinda Corp., the private investment firm founded by billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, is selling 10 million shares of MGM Resorts International to UBS Securities for $33.89 per share. The sale leaves Tracinda, once MGM’s largest shareholder, with a little more than 6.5 percent of the company founded by Kerkorian, who died in 2015 at the age of 98. • UK-based Clarion Gaming will hold its third annual Japan Gaming Congress on May 10-11, 2018, at the Conrad Tokyo. The conference will focus on a variety of topics, including updates to much-anticipated legislation for the regulation of resort-scale casinos in Japan. Registration is available via the conference website: www.japangamingcongress.com. • The board of directors of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has approved the hiring of Atlanta-based TVS Design and a team of four Las Vegas designers and architects to design a $1.4 billion expansion and renovation of the Las Vegas Convention Center. The expansion is slated to break ground on January 8 and take three years to complete. • Belfast City Council has launched a public consultation on the prospects for bringing the first casino to Northern Ireland’s capital. The consultation, slated to last through March 5, comes in the wake of recent proposals for modernizing the city’s gaming laws. Jim McVeigh, the council’s lead casino supporter, said a casino would be a significant jobs creator that could be worth £300 million to the local economy. • The new gaming expansion law in Pennsylvania authorizes tablet gaming at airports, but Pittsburgh International Airport in particular got a concession in the law, which authorizes a continuation of $12.4 million a year from a slot-revenue economic development fund. The airport has used the money to pay down its debt, which is nearly complete. Continuation of the funding—which otherwise would have expired in 2018-2019—is expected to prompt a major renovation of the airport. • Pennsylvania’s Valley Forge Casino, a Category 3 resort casino, saw its year-over-year numbers go up substantially after it paid a $1 million fee to remove Category 3 restrictions that included patrons to spend at least $10 on the property to gain access to the casino. Valley Forge recorded $6.2 million in revenue for the first month without the restrictions, up 4 percent over last year. • Sands China has ordered that space it leases to Taivexmalo Day Hospital in Macau to be terminated. Operations at the hospital were recently suspended by Macau’s Health Bureau, which said the facility provided unauthorized services for cancer and fertility problems. The hospital was given 40 days to vacate the premises. ● A total of 891 people were fined in Macau in the first 11 months of 2017 for smoking in unauthorized areas inside the city’s casinos, according to government data. That’s an increase of 52.3 percent from the prior-year period, when a total of 585 people had been fined. ● Cambodia draws more tourists from China than any other nation—635,000 Chinese visitors arrived in the first seven months of the year, or one-fifth of the total. Cambodia hopes to draw 2 million Chinese tourists a year by 2020. ● The Macau government will quicken the pace of repairs on the underground bus terminal at the Border Gate linking Macau with Mainland China. The terminal transports thousands of visitors each day from the gate via casino shuttles. The terminal is used by around 3,000 buses each day. ● The Grand Lisboa Hotel was the title sponsor of a recent Dota 2 tournament held in Macau on December 8. It was the first international eSports competition held in Macau. • NetEnt, which provides digital casino content solutions, and IGT have announced they are teaming up to supply online casino games to Norsk Tipping, the Norwegian state lottery. NetEnt was a supplier to IGT in the competitive procurement process of Norsk Tipping, which IGT won in February. Under the terms of its contract with NetEnt, IGT will make many of its games available to the state lottery. • Gila River Hotels & Casinos last week won the Arizona Diamondbacks’ annual Most Valuable Partner award, a kudo for the casinos’ marketing partnership with the team. Promotions included game night promotions, the so-called “kiss came” and THE Card promotion. “Our partnership with the Diamondbacks means so much to our entire community, and the word ‘partner’ means we work hand in hand together on many endeavors,” said Gila River Hotels & Casinos CEO Kenneth Manuel. • Spain-based Cirsa Gaming Corporation has made two bids for the casino license available in Andorra, an independent principality. The bid to the Andorran Gaming Control Board included gaming, dining and other entertainment. The proposed Casino CIRSA Andorra Escaldes Engordany would include a new three-story building of 2,500 square meters, a restaurant, bar and event rooms. It would open in 2020. The second, the Cirsa Andorra Caldea would be located within the Escaldes-Engordany spa resort, which already has a restaurant, bar and events space. It would open next year. • Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa and its sister property Spa Resort Casino in Southern California have introduced valet texting service at their operations. Guests will now be able to text ahead using the new service. The service was designed by Fusion RS, an IT company the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians own. When guests drop off their car they get a valet ticket, but they can next text the last four digits from the ticket to the valet. This will alert the casino that they are ready to pick up.
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