“What remedy will a parent in Miami have when she realizes her child ran up a gambling bill on her credit card after the child was targeted via data harvesting?”
—Dan Gelber, mayor, Miami Beach, Florida, who says the new Seminole gaming compact doesn’t protect personal data mined through online mobile sportsbooks
“With iGaming the concern is, ‘Everyone’s playing online,’ but the fact is, it doesn’t negatively affect revenues at brick-and-mortar. People are still looking for experiences—especially now.”
—Jason Guyot, CEO, Foxwoods, on iGaming in Connecticut
“We are literally on fire in Las Vegas right now. What’s fascinating is that’s people’s propensity to game is higher than we’ve ever seen. In 17 of our 18 properties, we broke slot records. We’re back with a vengeance.”
—Bill Hornbuckle, president and CEO, MGM Resorts International, on a slam-bang Memorial Day weekend that filled MGM hotels to 90 percent capacity
“Las Vegas is already showing strong signs of recovery, and we’re so excited to be a part of the city’s revival.”
—Scott Sibella, president, Resorts World Las Vegas, on the property’s well-timed grand opening this summer
“When we first bought it, everybody said, ‘You’re going to rebrand it, change it completely and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ And we said, ‘No, actually, we’re going to do the complete opposite. We’re going to lean into it and embrace what it is.’”
—Eric Birnbaum, founder and CEO, Dreamscape, on his plans for the off-Strip Rio Las Vegas, which the company bought from Caesars in 2019
“The tribal advocates of sports wagering can pump untold millions of dollars into persuading California voters to give them a virtual monopoly on what could be a multibillion-dollar expansion of legal gambling in California. …If betting on political contests were legal, the smart money would be on the tribes.”
—Dan Walters, California political reporter, in an opinion piece on tribal sports betting in the state
“We wanted vibrancy, we wanted a party and we wanted it to be safe. It would have been irresponsible to have that level of a party when you had to have anywhere from three- to six-foot social distancing, or 75 percent capacity, or no dancing.”
—Richard “Boz” Bosworth, president and CEO, JC Hospitality, owner of Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, which marked its grand opening in March and just threw itself a second, mask-free party
“In dealings with government lacks candor, doesn’t make full disclosure. Deals with lots of vulnerable people and take advantage of them. And each of those types of conduct is explicable by a profit motive. That is, ‘If I engage in all of those things, I will make more money than I otherwise would.’”
—Ray Finkelstein, Australian commissioner, in a damning summation of Crown Resorts’ failures to curb problem gambling at its casino in Victoria
“As a black CEO with four daughters, I take diversity very seriously indeed.”
—Gary Roudette, CEO, Players Publishing, on Gambling Insider’s failure to include more women and blacks in its annual GI awards committee
“It would be an injustice to kick long-term frontline employees who have contributed to Nevada’s success for decades to the curb once the pandemic is over. (The) law would prevent employers from using a global pandemic to get rid of older workers in a shameful attempt to force them into early retirement.”
—Rusty McAllister, Nevada AFL-CIO on the state’s new Right-to-Return law, which guarantees laid-off hospitality workers will get their jobs back
“Let’s get to work.”
—Steve Sisolak, governor of Nevada, signing the state’s Right to Return bill
