Just When Cubs Fans Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worse …
According to ESPN’s Around the Horn, casino owner Donald Trump has been telling Chicago radio stations he’s thinking of buying the 37-60 Chicago Cubs. Not only do Cubbie faithful have to watch their loveable losers battle to wrest last place in the National League away from the abominable Pittsburgh Pirates, they have this indignity visited upon them, just as they learn that star slugger Derrek Lee is back on the DL.
File this under “If Wishes Were Horses.” Never mind that Hell will probably freeze over before Major League Baseball gets cozy with the casino industry. Trump’s latest bloviation, er, business strategy brings to mind one of my Mom’s favorite questions: “Using what for money?” This is the same Trump, after all, whose casinos had to be rescued from bankruptcy by Morgan Stanley and who has been lately reduced to doing infomercials. If things are as dire at Trump’s casinos as I’m told they are, The Donald has bigger fish to fry than trying to become a cash-poor version of George Steinbrenner.
Heckuva Time for an IPO:
Undeterred by the U.S. Department of Justice’s smackdown of BetonSports, nabbing a top executive between planes in Dallas, brokerage Collins Stewart is pushing ahead with a initial public offering for Internet-gambling support company Continent 8 Technologies. With a massive selloff in online-gambling stocks driving share valuations down by as much as half, Collins Stewart has its work cut out for it in raising $100 million via an IPO.
The BetonSports bust has ‘Net-bet companies running scared. Meanwhile, Las Vegas Sun columnist Jeff Simpson asks some pertinent questions. Such as: Why are Las Vegas casino companies associating themselves with online betting houses of dubious legality? And: Where the hell is the Nevada Gaming Control Board in all of this?
But the most pressing question in the wake of the Dallas arrest of BetonSports’ David Carruthers is posed by blogger Tim Worstall. To wit: “Why did the bloody fool fly through the U.S.?” I’m still wondering about that one myself.
Adelson’s Motive Revealed? Speaking of Simpson, the object of a lawsuit by Las Vegas Sands supremo Sheldon Adelson, one motive for the latter’s “absurd lawsuit aimed vaguely at chilling free speech” suggests itself. Simpson is a favored media outlet for the musings of archrival Steve Wynn.
Nor has Wynn endeared himself to the umbrageous Adelson by referring to the ultra-profitable Sands Macao as “Sheldon’s box of baccarat,” amongst other public potshots. Somehow, I doubt that Mr. Mirage would appreciate anybody describing his $1.2 billion Wynn Macau as “Steve’s shack of slots.” Either way, Adelson vs. Simpson looks like a proxy skirmish in the ongoing Adelson vs. Wynn war. Tough to pick a dog in that fight.
