The Horseshoe Casino in Cleveland is hit with $180,000 fine, and the troubled Atlantic City hotel, Revel, starts to cut it’s fat with the announcement of 83 job losses.
In a story that shows the benefits that approved gambling regulation can provide. The Horseshoe Casino in Cleveland, Ohio, has been hit with its second fine of an eventful 2013, after once again falling outside of the demarcations set by the Ohio Casino Control Act, the Ohio Administrative Code and the Casinos Internal Controls.
The ship being operated by the Horseshoe Casino Cleveland Senior Vice President and General Manager, Marcus Glover, is in desperate need of steadying after they were hit with a combination of fines totaling $180,000; a mere drop in the ocean for a business that saw gross revenue increase from Jan to Feb by 6.7% to $22 million.
The first time the casino was hit with a financial penalty occurred at the beginning of the year, after someone working within the casino took the decision to use unapproved software in their slot machines. That fine was only $15,000 but a double volley of $80,000 and $100,000 has since followed for:
- – Using dice from an unapproved vendor in a game of Fortune Pai Gow Poker.
- – Encouraging cocktail waitresses to enter restricted tables in game pit areas.
- – Removal, storage and shipping of three slot machines with their accompanying software.
- – Failing to include the actual gambling hotline contact number on their problem gambling advertisement posters
The Ohio Casino Control Commission told NewsNet5 reporter John Kosich, “There is no do better next time approach here. We expect strict adherence to the law from the casino proprietors because it’s what the people of Ohio expect.”
Glover responded by saying, “They have taken steps to address the issues and embarked on significant training for personnel.”
Revel Starts Cutting Op-Ex
Casino business is just business at the end of the day. If you aint making money then you have two choices. You either earn more revenue or you cut out a slice of costs, and it is the latter that the acting CEO, Jeffrey Hartmann, has gotten his teeth into during his first few months of tenure.
The man who once ran the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut has declared the redundancies of 83 of his 3,300 strong workforce, meaning 2.5% of his payroll had been reduced with positional losses ranging from generals to foot soldiers. Hartmann believes this will be the end of the payroll slashes, as they now begin to concentrate on increasing revenues, which means controversially having a potential rethink on their non-smoking ban. In addition to the possible return of the nicotine stained walls, there are also plans to open a swanky new club called HQ Beach Club – an outdoor cousin of Revel’s HQ Nightclub. Also on the chopping board are the expensive ‘celebrity chef’ restaurants that seemed destined to be replaced by more affordable options.
According to reports emanating from the first bankruptcy court hearing last month, Revel came within days of running out of money, and a lawyer representing Revel stated that if the Judge had not approved a plan for $250 million in temporary funding, to get it through bankruptcy, it could have been curtains for a property many believe would only fetch between $246-$331m on the open market.
