If storm knocks down a rival, are customers in play?

September 20, 2017 12:25 PM
  • Nick Sortal, CDC Gaming Reports
September 20, 2017 12:25 PM
  • Nick Sortal, CDC Gaming Reports

Natural disaster recovery brings out the best in people, we like to think. Neighbors work together to clear fallen trees. Rival companies team up to help the unfortunate.

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Then there’s the casino business, where Gulfstream Park Racing & Casino is pursuing slot players from neighboring casinos that couldn’t reopen after Hurricane Irma. Gulfstream is advertising that it will honor coupons for free slot play that rival Mardi Gras Casino routinely mails to its top players. A mini-tornado flooded Mardi Gras, one mile to the north of Gulfstream in southeast Broward County, Florida. The casino is closed indefinitely.

Mardi Gras President Dan Adkins says clean competition is one thing, but courting a foe’s top patrons after Hurricane Irma is going too far.

“It is sad and pathetic, but not surprising,” Adkins said. “But here at Mardi Gras we have a little friend named Karma. When we rise from the ashes, the grandeur of Mardi Gras, along with Karma, will more than overcome these senseless, childish opportunists.”

Gulfstream Park also honored free play vouchers for Calder players, but rescinded the deal once the Miami Gardens casino reopened Friday. Calder Director of Marketing Matt Harper declined comment.

Gulfstream Park is simply providing players a nearby venue, assistant GM Ernie Dellaverson says. The free-play offer was capped at $250.

“We’re just doing something that’s been done since the beginning of casino marketing,” he says. “If the roles were reversed, I’d expect them to do it.”

Casinos routinely try to court players from the competition. Adkins notes that he has seen shuttle buses from rival casinos in his parking lot, and he himself placed a large electronic advertising sign one block away from rival Casino @ Dania Beach during its grand opening last year. Dellaverson, on board at Gulfstream for only 10 months, wasn’t around for that, but did note Gulfstream tried to “tastefully” promote its Irma offer.

“It’s about helping the players, and I haven’t heard a complaint so far,” Dellaverson says.

The Casino @ Dania Beach, meanwhile, is welcoming Mardi Gras players, but with no special incentives, CEO Scott Savin says.

“We welcome them until Mardi Gras reopens but will offer the same benefits we are currently offering all players,” Savin says. “We trust our hospitality and our environment and perhaps check out the return of live jai-alai.”

Ken Adams, founder of the annual Nevada Gaming Almanac, says rivals made offers to casinos displaced during the 1997 floods in Reno, Nevada, and in 2005, with Hurricane Katrina.
“Any advantage you can get … it’s the nature of the business,” Adams says. “Was it fair when Wal-Mart came into small towns and displaced local businesses?”

Veteran Gulfstream and Mardi Gras officials possess a mutual dislike that only Dolphins and Jets fans can comprehend. When Mardi Gras asked the state to permit “decoupling” – i.e., an end to the requirement for greyhound racing on the property to keep the slots spinning – Gulfstream representatives spoke up, not out of support for dog racing but to complain that the drag of the added expense of dog racing keeps Mardi Gras from gaining a competitive advantage. Kind of like “misery loves company.”

And Adkins has taken his shots at Gulfstream Park, which has expanded in recent years under billionaire owner Frank Stronach, a horse-racing devotee. Stronach has spent money on a shopping mall and restaurants, erected a 130-ton statue of the mythical winged horse Pegasus and muscled out Calder to dominate the horse racing market, all of which prompted Adkins to call Gulfstream “a billionaire’s hobby.”

Of the eight horse tracks, dog tracks and jai-alai frontons with slots in South Florida, the pair battle for sixth place. Mardi Gras won last year, collecting $51 million to Gulfstream Park’s $50 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2017. But considering all the amenities Gulfstream Park has, Adkins considers that a big win, and Gulfstream’s latest move has fired him up even more.

“It’s so sad when you have a community that’s battered and someone feels like now’s the time to be an opportunist,” he says. “It’s indicative of their their nature and that’s OK with me.

“When we reopen, we’re going to go back to kicking their ass.”