“Maybe one day, they will get used to competing on the basis of a quality product, if they ever build one, and they won’t have to buy the business.”
—Las Vegas Sands Chairman Sheldon Adelson, accusing Singapore rival Genting of enticing big-money players to its casino through overly generous incentives
“The gambling business is built on bettors’ willful suspension of belief in the laws of probability. If state officials approve another Philadelphia casino, they will be showing a similar capacity to ignore the inevitable.”
—Editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirercalling for delay or suspension of licensing for a second casino in the city, noting market saturation
“The market is becoming younger, increasingly international, more affluent, and spending more on food and drink. These are clearly not slots players.”
—Union Gaming Group analyst Robert Shore, on the popularity of the non-casino Cromwell Hotel in Las Vegas and its popular Drai’s nightclub
“It’s expected. Look at Las Vegas. The whole city, their public safety infrastructure, is incredible. It’s because of all the casinos that are there.”
?Stephanie Rawlings, mayor, Baltimore, MD, defending her decision to double the number of city cops at the new Horseshoe Casino
“Forget about it. Geezers like me, 50-year-old men, they take their girlfriend or their mistress over there, and they’re done. They don’t come here.”
?Vincent April, Mount Pocono, PA, businessman, on the failure of casinos to revive the mountain resort area
“It’s a new era for entertainment experiences. It coincides with the trend we are seeing that an entire generation is choosing entertainment experiences and choosing social collaborations and social collisions. It will be interesting to see how consumers react to these repurposed spaces.”
?Rehan Choudhry, founder, Las Vegas’s Life Is Beautiful festival. More multi-day festivals are getting a foothold in Vegas, including Electric Daisy Carnival and Rock in Rio, coming in 2015
“This idea of ‘Our county gets one, your county gets one,’ it’s so self-defeating. We’re a concentration of entertainment and social offerings. And then gambling is on top of it.”
?William N. Thompson, University of Nevada Las Vegas, who says populating one area with several casinos is better than spreading them out
“Despite the grandiose promises of casino developers, after 50 years of waiting and of struggle, our expectations in the Catskills are not high at all. Casinos don’t mean an end to our struggles, but just a new beginning to rebuilding our economy. Realistically, it’s like they said years ago: casinos mean jobs.”
?Steven Kurlander, New York attorney, who says casinos may not solve all the Catskills economic problems, but they will bring employment to thousands who need it
“I equate this to virus protection on your PC that prevents someone from getting in. We’re constantly evaluating the process. For instance, if someone is able to defeat the system, how do we fix it? Fortunately, it hasn’t happened at this point. We had to figure out all of the ways it could be beaten or spoofed to make sure all of the gaming was done in New Jersey. We never lowered our standards. What we’ve done is, we’ve gotten smarter. We continue to get better and smarter and do it in a way that makes sense.”
—Eric Weiss, chief of the technical services bureau for the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement to the Press of Atlantic City on the state’s geolocation system for ensuring online gamblers are within New Jersey’s borders
“I don’t care if it’s being done by casino industries or racetracks or corner bodegas. If it’s unregulated, that means there is no one policing it. And I can tell you, organized crime is attracted to gambling as a business. If it’s unregulated, they’ll find a way to exploit it. There seems to be a contradiction between the way we’ve approved controlling casino gambling and the way we’re talking about operating sports bookmaking.”
—Edwin Stier, former member of the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Jersey and former head of the state’s Division of Criminal Justice to NJ.com on New Jersey’s plans to allow unregulated sports betting
“iGames is a promising new operator targeting a very interesting growth market. I’m very happy to be welcoming them, the first of many new operators to be joining our network in the coming months.
—Alex Scott, head of poker at Microgaming on the company adding Armenian operator iGames.am on Microgaming’s Poker Network
“My term is a seven-year term, if I chose to stay for seven years, and I’ve been in for two and a half or three. And my expectation is to stay on and probably try to bring these casinos to fruition.”
—Massachusetts Gaming Chairman Stephen Crosby, explaining that he plans to finish his term despite the election of a new governor
