Trop’s doom sealed; Bally’s Chicago delayed

Enjoy those lounge chairs while yet ye may. All that stands between the Tropicana Las Vegas and a late-2024 implosion are the owners of Major League Baseball. If 75% of them vote to move the Oakland Athletics to the LasVegas Strip, it’s goodbye Trop, thanks to avaricious Bally’s Corp. Speaking of avarice, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has waived the A’s relocation fee, which may get other teams’ noses out of joint. Let’s hope so. Nevada taxpayers would foot a $380 million bill for a baseball stadium on the Trop site and get nothing in return save for MLB’s worst franchise. OK, Southern Nevada would get a measly $2 million “financial” commitment—or 1% of A’s ticket sales, whichever is larger. (Our money is on the $2 million, so to speak.)

It’s all something of a formality, as the so-called Las Vegas Stadium Authority is two-thirds comprised of A’s shill SteveHill (CEO of the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority) and Steve Zanella, chief commercial officer of MGMResorts International, which stands to benefit from surrounding aforesaid ballpark on two critical sides. (The former Hooters casino is on another.) PR executive and stadium gadfly Michael Schausnailed the A’s-to-Vegas circus as “a cavalcade of mismanagement, public relations disasters and political cronyism.” Which is to say it’s one of the most successful disasters in human history, as almost nothing stands in its way. The A’s have no mechanism in place to raise the $1.1 billion needed to finish their vanity park, so Silver State taxpayers will almost certainly get soaked again. And as with Allegiant Stadium, the revenue streams will be outsourced to for-profit entities and the public sector gets bupkes.

The Stadium Authority hearing was a charade, one featuring outdated renderings of the proposed field of schemes, 30 rent-free years for the Athletics and the begging of nearly all pertinent questions related to the project. As Schaus put it, “every entity involved in bringing this crony corporatist vision to life is hopelessly in league with each other—leaving no room for any meaningful accountability or oversight.” Were Las Vegas getting something worthwhile out of the arrangement we might feel differently. But the A’s stink like week-old fish and are hardly worth the taxpayer outlay. As for the Trop, it’s just so much collateral damage. Nobody had a kind word for the old gal.

On another front of the Bally’s empire, it squeezed out another year at its temporary casino at Medinah Temple. Regulators for Illinois had little choice but to grant an extension into September 2026 after Bally’s sandbagged them with news that construction of $1.7 billion Bally’s Chicago (above) can’t begin until mid-2024. Given that the alternative was to close Bally’s Casino in autumn 2025, regulators were obviously caught between a rock and hard place. The official story is that Bally’s won’t control the site for another eight months—but are they really just now finding this out? We’re skeptical. Bally’s has enjoyed preferential treatment by Land of Lincoln politicians from the get-go and other concessions seem almost inevitable. Also, what reason do other casino operators now have to finish their permanent gambling houses on time? If you can just ask for a year’s extension and have it granted, why not? Who’d blame them? Heck, Bally’s won’t even have its full, multi-billion-dollar offering on line by Sept. 9, 2026, just “a portion.” (Guess which portion.) Let’s hope for greater clarity in 48 hours, when Bally’s tells all—we hope—in its quarterly earnings call.

A gambling-related election is flying largely under the radar. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) is seeking a second term, opposed by Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R). The latter has been hindered by his far smaller war chest, maladroitmessaging and troglodytic views on women’s rights. (‘Got raped? Too bad for you.’) The Courier-Journal recently contacted both candidates for their views on the dominance of the horse racing industry over Kentucky’s gambling scene and was it being taxed fairly? Neither candidate won prizes for candor. Beshear, an enthusiastic proponent of sports betting and of getting rid of black-market slots, upheld the status quo. He vaguely described the current tax structure as “fair” and tied Cameron to the slot bandits, which he described as “an unregulated, predatory industry that my opponent strongly backed.”

Cameron appeared to wave the white flag on black-market slots, saying, “My concern as Governor will not be on re-litigating the legislative issues of the past.” He otherwise ran and hid from the issues behind a thicket of platitudes about how “I have run a campaign based on ideas.” One of these is to eliminate Kentucky’s income tax. It’s not clear how Cameron would then fund “the boldest plan in America to address learning loss and declining test scores in our schools.” But if we were the horsey set, we’d be ever so slightly concerned about *our* next tax bill.

In their last strike-free month, casinos in Detroit dipped 1% from last year to reach $100 million in revenue … but were 11% down from the halcyon days of 2019. Predictably, MGM Grand Detroit was tops with $44.5 million but fell 7.5%. Upstart Hollywood Greektown leapt 15%, garnering $24 million. All of which left MotorCity with $31.5 million, off a percentage point.

Jottings: One Nevada gambling palace on the brink of demolition is Terrible’s Hotel & Casino in Jean, soon to be razed for the sake of progress. Photojournalist Austin Shepardgot a look inside and found that Mother Nature had already wreaked substantial havoc with the place. Its dilapidation is mute testimony to the ineptitude of JETT Gaming, those Herbst family scions who ran Terrible’s into the ground … A Chinese court has reaffirmed the conviction of former Macao junket boss Alvin Chau, whose travails we have chronicled in these pages. The good news for Chau was that his fraud convictions were overturned. But his 18-year sentence for gambling crimes was uphead and, to add insult to injury, his fine was increased to $3.1 billion. Chau probably didn’t help his case by showing up for court looking like a Triad member … Finland is looking to end its state-run casino monopoly. Major private-sector operators have two years to get ready for the new regime … Should 86’d players be paid if they sneak back into the casino and win? We think so, putting the burden of enforcement on casinos, but Nevada regulators—always carrying water for Big Gaming—are likely to side against trespassed gamblers … The staggering Las Vegas Raiders play the Detroit Lions tonight. The Silver & Black has to be hoping the Lions are still demoralized after Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens dismantled them last week.