Property Tax Plummet for Borgata is Sucker Punch for Atlantic City

Atlantic City just got hit by another storm recently; this one, financial. (Image source: LarryRivera.com)
Bad Atlantic City.
It gets battered by hurricanes, has its revenues siphoned off by ever-increasing competition from surrounding states like Pennsylvania and Maryland, and has seen a seven-year drop that is continuous gaming revenues from its 12 land casinos overall. Finally, it has online casinos prepared to launch on 26th, and things are looking up from the revenue stream standpoint november.
But then it gets another smack within the face from the taxation man.
Tax Assessment Reversal for Borgata
What turned out to be described as a huge victory for MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming wasn’t so much for the already faltering coffers of Atlantic City; the two video gaming behemoths got a 61 per cent decrease in property taxes on the jointly owned Borgata Hotel and Casino which also is one of the less miserable profit disasters in city and now AC has to return pre-paid taxation monies towards the two companies.
They can blame it on the Tax Court of New Jersey, which reassessed the top-grossing casino in the Garden State at $870 million, a huge drop from its 2010 evaluation of $2.26 billion. No doubt there had been champagne that is celebratory the MGM and Boyd Gaming conference rooms over that choice. But Atlantic City leaders needed to be putting their fists through some walls, because the final thing they needed was to have to do a huge payback when they seem to be on financial thin ice plus in risk of financial hypothermia.
‘ This will be a blow that is devastating Atlantic City,’ tax attorney A. Paul Genato told Bloomberg News via email. The expert that is financial some $48.8 million has become owed to MGM and Boyd for the tax years of 2009 and 2010.
That is a complete great deal of chips.
Show Me the Money
The larger question now facing the struggling city is how the heck they’re going to make this payback happen.
Asked by Bloomberg about the tax action, AC’s director of revenue and taxation Michael Stinson cut to the chase: ‘We certainly don’t have $50 million sitting in the bank.’
With that truth staring the beleaguered metropolis within the face, they are doing a similar thing you or i’d do in this situation: at least buying some time, if nothing else, with an appeal that is anticipated. But wait, there is more misery to come; Borgata’s more recent 2011 and 2012 assessments have also been challenged by MGM and Boyd, and while no judgments have been rendered there as yet, this may be the blow that offers Atlantic City a true technical knockout if it goes the way of the previous years’ decisions.
If those decisions do go MGM and Boyd’s means, at exactly what point is Atlantic City going to be in danger of becoming the next Detroit? MGM and Boyd might need to reassess the chance that they will win the battle(s), but lose the war, if the whole burg ends up drowning in its own monetary offal.
Atlantic City’s casino profits dropped almost 13 percent in September, compared to the same time duration in 2012; all 12 of this city’s casinos combined made a fairly meager gambling industry profit of $240.2 million for the month this 12 months.
Just Six Months In, Nevada Gaming Commission Considers Online Changes
The Gaming Control Board is reviewing and revising after six months of online poker in Nevada. a bit that is little.
It’s only been half a 12 months since on-line poker became legal in Nevada, and the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) is moving slowly when it comes to expansion of all kinds beyond the popular card game. That being said, the Board is looking at some possible changes that are regulatory.
‘We’re only half a year into poker,’ stated NGCB Chairman A.G. Burnett. ‘For now, we should prove out poker first.’
Slow But Steady Wins the Race
And even with poker, the Board is maybe not anything that is rushing. With only two appropriate sites up thus far Station Casinos-owned UltimatePoker.com and Caesars Entertainment Corp.’s WSOP.com brand the Board is not likely to approve any more sites until the existing sites’ technology is reviewed and assessed by independent screening laboratories, as well as the Control Board’s own lab that is in-house. (Obama, just take note: this is the way you are doing it.)
‘Nevada is poker only,’ reiterated Burnett. ‘That was the legislative intent from the beginning and the board has no plans to complete anything otherwise.’
Just What the Board is considering in terms of regulatory tuneups revolve around additional technical requirements for online poker, and also some language adjustments to match up with statutory changes that went into effect via Assembly Bill 114 during the latest session that is legislative.
Almost Such A Thing Goes, In Theory
All that is theoretically prohibited in the bill is battle and sports book wagering online; but Assembly Majority Leader William Horne, (D-Las Vegas), who sponsored the legislation, says he concurs with Nevada’s regulators about going slowly and cautiously beyond poker, if at all.
‘we think our intent from the outcome had been to take steps that are conservative’ Horne said of SB 114. ‘Nothing prohibits [the control board] from going beyond poker and we want our boards that are regulatory make that decision. I think we are using wise steps.’
Another essential topic the Board is reviewing is the matter of interstate compacts for online poker, something that is probably going to be critical for Internet gaming to thrive into the Silver State over the haul that is long. By having a population of pretty much 2,759,000 (compared to soon-to-be-competitor New Jersey’s 9 million), Nevada needs other states in order to enter their online games legally so that you can stay afloat in what’s going to be a market that is increasingly competitive the coming years. It’s expected that the Board will be asking Governor Brian Sandoval to push forward with this request, and there’s absolutely no reason to expect he won’t comply.
In another few days, Delaware will join Nevada with online gaming, unfurling poker plus a few casino games for starters when they launch on Halloween. Then on November 26th, New Jersey will bring their Internet casinos into the universe that is online a full choice of classic casino games, including poker, of course.
Ultimately, it might make more sense for more centralized regional servers to deal with entire parts of the U.S., if state and federal legislation complies. At a present regulatory meeting in Philadelphia, nj-new jersey State Assemblyman John Amodeo (R) discussed a possible new bill that would allow on the web gaming hardware and software to be situated outside of actual Atlantic City land gambling enterprises ( since they are now required to be), opening the floodgates to a more nationwide online gaming scenario.
Talking to the Press of Atlantic City, Amodeo suggested that ‘ultimately, we’re able to see Las Vegas handle everything west of the Mississippi, and Atlantic City could handle everything east of the Mississippi.’
Displaying Chance UK CEO Says Footballers Gambling with Payday Loans
The CEO of Sporting Chance, an organization that can help pro athletes with gambling dilemmas, says you’d be astonished where they get their money that is betting from.
You might have seen the adverts for payday loans on TV or on a billboard those solutions that will immediately cash your paycheck as that loan, only asking for an insanely high interest rate in return. You might have even used one in a pinch. But you’ve probably never considered the fact that a professional athlete might just take benefit of this service to help spot a bet or two on the side.
Yet that’s exactly what some UK footballers are doing to fund their gambling habits, based on Colin Bland, the CEO of Sporting Chance a charity that can help athletes deal with addiction. According to the company, about 70 percent of its referrals are associated to gambling, and numerous soccer players end in a recurring pattern where they need to utilize payday loans to continue betting.
Vicious Circle
‘It’s not unusual to really have a player in a period of payday loans and gambling,’ Bland told BBC Radio 5. ‘We are working together with a whole lot more current football players. We have had players who have got caught up into the scenario of taking away payday advances to place bets. We have had several of those over the last couple of years, so the circle that is vicious.’
This may appear odd to the working that is average, who wonders how a professional athlete could squander huge amount of money per year on gambling. But according to Bland, that can really be part of the problem. At least one athlete has told him that the issue was that almost always there is plenty of cash coming into their pouches, meaning that it’s always available and able to wager on a moment’s notice.
‘we have worked with players who have lost up to £7 million ($11.3 million) in three years in gambling,’ slotsforfun-ca.com Bland said. ‘ nevertheless the specific man that is young’m referring to said ‘it’s the quantity of bets I’m putting. I am placing 50 bets a day…it’s impacting my life, it is affecting my performance…it’s affecting what type of father i could be.”
Athletes Are Bettors
And while that might seem like an incident that’s out of the norm, it is no secret that athletes around the world love placing bets that are big. And some former soccer players in the British have actually fessed as much as losing lots of cash during their jobs.
For example, Stoke City winger Matthew Etherington publicly admitted to having a gambling issue earlier in his career. According to him, he lost about £1.5 million ($2.4 million) betting on poker, horse racing, and dog racing during their career. And while he relied on loan sharks to satisfy his gambling needs, that’s only because that’s what had been most offered to him.
‘ I don’t think the payday loans were about whenever I was gambling, otherwise I would probably be certainly one of [the players that turned to them] myself,’ Etherington has said.
‘It just snowballed to where I became usually spending my thirty days’s wages and money that is then lending loan sharks,’ he stated about his gambling addiction.
The gambling habits of high-profile soccer players have turn into a topic that is hot the UK in current months. Rangers midfielder Ian Black was suspended for 10 matches previously this year for gambling on at least 160 matches throughout the last seven years, while Crystal Palace striker Cameron Jerome faced a £50,000 ($80,000) fine for breaking Football Association rules related to betting.
