NEWS
Britannia is cool again for Playboy
From London to Liverpool, Britain’s
land-based casino sector is looking healthy They’ve been away three decades, but the Bunnies are coming back to London. Harrah’s-owned London Clubs International, working with Playboy Enterprises, will reopen a Playboy Club in the heart of the city during the first half of next year, writing a new chapter in a history that dates back to the Swinging Sixties.
Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire, which had established its first club in Chicago in 1960, sent the legendary Victor Lownes to London in 1965 to investigate the potential of exporting the brand’s sultry mystique to Britain. A year later the Playboy Club opened in posh Park Lane. “It redefined class and luxury, setting a new nightlife standard around the world," according to Michael Silberling, Managing Director of London Clubs International – indeed, the London venue along with locations in grittier Manchester and Portsmouth, and investments in betting shops and Bingo, effectively kept the Playboy business alive while its other entertainment and media ventures faltered.
By 1981 the London Playboy Club was the
The casino lasted just eight weeks before the bank crisis
most profitable casino in the world. But the same year it lost its licence amid unproven allegations of malfeasance, and it’s taken until now for the name to be resuscitated. The new Playboy Club will occupy the two- level, 17,000-square-foot premises currently used by The Rendezvous Mayfair – not the site of Lownes’s original, but not far away. With table games, high-limit salon privé gaming rooms, cocktail bar and restaurant, it’s the
latest evidence of a modest revival for the Playboy Clubs, also present in Vegas and planned for Cancun and Macau. It’s also, perhaps, a sign of renewed confidence in Britain’s land-based casino business. Some 150 miles northwest of London, in distinctly non- swinging Huddersfield, the independent Casino Red – which survived just eight weeks after opening in September 2008 before the banking crisis claimed it – is also to reopen, reportedly with new financing. And casinos continue to perform well for the broad-based leisure group Rank. Its Grosvenor Casinos division was a highlight of a generally healthy third quarter: compared with the same period in 2009 on a like-for-like basis (in other words, considering only locations that were open during both periods), customer visits were up six per cent, spend per visit up three per cent, and revenue up nine per cent. Broker KBC Peel Hunt called Grosvenor “particularly impressive”, although
there are signs that spend per visit is actually decreasing: across all Rank’s casinos, not just those that were in operation during both 2009 and 2010, it was actually down three per cent in the first 40 weeks of 2010 compared to the first 40 weeks of 2009, while all other indicators showed an increase. Still, Rank is pushing ahead with expansion. It opened in Scarborough in September and plans another new venue in Liverpool toward the end of the year, while Grosvenor sites in Birmingham, Plymouth and Walsall will be relaunched under the G Casino marque during the first quarter of next year. For the British land-based sector, the fortunes of Rank and Casino Red may not quite herald a return to the heady money-spinning of Victor Lownes, but they’re sure signs that better times, like the Playboy Bunnies, are coming back to town.
4 NOVEMBER 2010 INBRIEF
GOING PUBLIC Harrah’s Entertainment, which went private three years ago, is again to see its shares traded on the US stock market. It is expected that the company will raise $500m-$1bn to fund expansion including two Las Vegas construction projects: the completion of the hotel tower at Caesars Palace, and a new non- gaming complex situated between the Imperial Palace and the Flamingo. Wynn Resorts, meanwhile, is also to offer more of its shares on the stock market, and MGM Resorts International has just raised more than $510m through a similar stock offering.
SITTING PRETTY Casino seating maker Gary Platt Manufacturing is raising its profile in Reno through a joint venture with the University of Nevada in the city. The pair will supply Platt’s X- Tended Play chairs, branded with the university’s colours and its wolf logo, to the holders of box seats at football games.
WHAT A STATE In the first full month of table gaming in Pennsylvania, Harrah’s Chester Downs made gross revenue of $5.9m from 99 tables, while Presque Isle Downs brought in $1.89m from 48. Parx Casino, the only Pennsylvania location so far with electronic gaming tables, achieved gross revenue of $150,000 in August from nine units. Altogether, there were 636 table games across the state’s nine casinos. Meanwhile, the opening of a tenth site, SugarHouse, makes Philadelphia the biggest US city with a casino.
GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL China has clarified its laws on online gambling. Anyone running an Internet gaming operation can be jailed for up to three years, and fined. But operators of larger sites – which are defined in a number of ways, with criteria including a membership list of more than 120 or total volume over 300,000 yuan (about $45,000) – can go to prison for ten years. It appears that financial backers as well as actual operators can be punished. This year, authorities, say, nearly 8000 people have been arrested and almost $150m seized in China’s crackdown on Internet gaming.
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