Twin River Worldwide Holdings isn’t wasting any time taking its new brand out for a spin.
The Rhode Island-based regional casino operator – a little more than two weeks after paying Caesars Entertainment $20 million for control of the Bally name, brand, and intellectual property – will be known as Bally Corp. starting on Nov. 9, the regional casino operator said Wednesday.
The company will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the BALY ticker symbol.
Over the next months, the company, which is in various stages of acquiring five casinos in five states, implement a unified branding initiative and give the Bally name to much of its portfolio. By the time the new Bally finalizes its current acquisitions, the company will operate 14 casinos in 10 states.
“The Bally’s brand embodies a rich history in American gaming and entertainment, aligns perfectly with our current and future growth strategy, and is ripe with untapped innovation potential to help us launch future entertainment services,” Bally/Twin River Chairman Soohyung Kim said in a statement.
Kim is a co-founder of the hedge fund Standard General that owns 39% of the company. When the acquisition was announced, Twin River said the purchase “enables the company to rebrand virtually all of its portfolio properties under the Bally’s name and logo.”
On Tuesday, Twin River said it was buying Tropicana Evansville in Indiana from Caesars in partnership with real estate investment trust Gaming and Leisure Properties for a combined $480 million.
Twin River announced on Oct. 7 it was acquiring Jumer’s Casino & Hotel in Rock Island, Illinois for $120 million in an all-cash deal. The company has two other pending transactions involving Caesars – the purchase of Bally’s Atlantic City for $25 million, and the combined purchase of Eldorado Shreveport in Louisiana and the operations of MontBleu Resort Casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada for $155 million.
Earlier this year, Twin River acquired Lady Luck Casino Vicksburg in Mississippi and Isle of Capri Casino in Kansas City, Missouri, from Caesars’ predecessor company, Eldorado, for $230 million. The properties were renamed Casino Vicksburg and Casino KC. But that could change.
“The Bally’s brand is core to our drive to become the first omni-channel gaming company to seamlessly integrate and operate physical casinos with digital solutions,” Twin River CEO George Papanier.
How many of the Twin River properties become Bally has not been announced.
The Bally name has a long history in the gaming industry. Bally Manufacturing was a pinball and arcade-games developer when it branched off into slot machines. The gaming equipment business was sold and evolved into Bally Technologies and was one of the industry’s largest manufacturers when it was bought by Scientific Games in a $5.1 billion purchase in 2015.
As for the casinos, only two properties in the U.S. still carry the Bally name.
Bally Manufacturing off-shoot Bally Entertainment added the Atlantic City resort in 1979 and spent $594 million in 1986 to acquire the original MGM Grand on the Las Vegas Strip, which became known as Bally’s Las Vegas. The company also owned Bally’s Reno, which is now the Grand Sierra Resort and owned by the Southern California-based Meruelo Group.
Bally’s Las Vegas, after several high-profile gaming industry mergers, remains under Caesars’ ownership. As part of the agreement, Caesars has a “perpetual license” to use the Bally’s brand in Las Vegas.
Shares of Twin River closed at $23.75 on Wednesday, down 20 cents or 0.84%.
Howard Stutz is the executive editor of CDC Gaming Reports. He can be reached at hstutz@cdcgaming.com. Follow @howardstutz on Twitter.
