Caesars Bankruptcy update May 19

[Alan Mendelson]

New developments are summed up in this article in the Las Vegas Review Journal:

http://www.reviewjournal.com/busines...ankruptcy-plan

In short, Caesars parent company mght sell its online unit to raise money to pay more to creditors to resolve the bankruptcy. But the creditors are not impressed with an offer of $4B more.

Included in the $4B offer must be the $387.65 cents Caesars is saving from dropping out of the Fuel Rewards Network. LOL

It probably also means more cuts for the parent company even if they do get four billion or so for the online operations including www.CaesarsCasino.com and the games you find on Facebook.

[seemoreroyals]

I think in the coming months we can expect more penny pinching and belt tightening from CET as they attempt to deal with the resolution of their BK. There are still plenty of perks to take advantage of with CET as compared to other rewards programs but over the past year or two they have been slowly taking them away. The Fuel Reward Network perk although not a big deal to many players, it gave us almost $200 a year in free gasoline. At 50 cents times 20 gallons multiplied by 12 months adds up. In our case there was a Shell station close to us that always priced their gas in line with the competition so we hated to see it taken away. I don't know how many players are like us and took advantage of this but it would be interesting to know how much money they are going to save by this move.

Additionally over the past year at our home property Bossier City La. they have taken away the free bottle of wine perk. We used to be able as both a 7 star companion and as a 7 star cardholder go to the steakhouse bar and each of us get a free bottle of wine every night we were staying there. Needless to say we have accumulated a pretty decent collection of wine over the past few years. First, a few months ago they took away the free bottle of wine from the 7 star companion and on our last visit a couple of weeks ago they no longer offer it to the 7 star cardholder either. Not to defend them but in a way I don't blame them because even at their cost no telling how much they gave away in free bottles of wine. I know many of the locals came over every evening whether they played or not to get their free bottle or bottles of wine.

They have also cut back our food and beverage credit. Until about 6 months ago we used to have essentially unlimited food and beverage credit applied to our room. They cut in initially to $400 for a 2 day trip and the last couple of visits it's been cut to $200 for a 2 day trip. Upon request however they are still giving us more when needed. We have some friends visiting that are also 7 star players during Memorial Day weekend and upon bringing this to the attention of our host he has upped our food and beverage credit to our room to $500 for the 3 days we are going to be there. Compared to Vegas and most other CET properties where you have to use your RC's before you get any free food or beverage I am still okay with this arrangement. I feel that they are headed towards a policy eventually where all of the properties will be like Vegas where the only way you will get free food and beverage is through coupons or use of rc's.

And the changes they made in the free movies and media make sense to me as well. We used to get unlimited free movies and upgraded internet at just about every CET property we visited. We have found that one movie a day is adequate and that the basic internet package in doable as well. I am all for them making cost cutting changes as long as they don't go to far. Anyway, so much for my dissertation of all of the cost cutting CET has been doing. I could go on and on.

They still have the best rewards program out there and they know it. Having sold off some of their properties already, our biggest concern at the moment is as they go through the BK is will they be able to get through it without selling off or continuing to shut down many of their properties. I could see for instance where someone may come in and purchase both of the properties in Bossier City, both of the properties in Tunica, the property in NOLA, and the property in Biloxi. This of course is hypothetical but in our case would take away the primary advantage we get by putting all of our play with CET. In any given year we earn roughly half of our tier credits from our home property in Bossier City and the other half from other CET properties we travel to, primarily Tahoe, Vegas, and a mixture of the others.

The way the current system operates we are able to get to all of these destinations without paying for airfare with their junket programs and by taking advantage of free trips to Tahoe with Northern Nevada Air, and by taking advantage of our 7 star trip and our diamond level 2 fee airfare. We probably get close to $10,000 in free airfare every year. If they took this away or if they sold off our home property we would have to come up with a new strategy to continue reaching 7 star level each year. Either way, some time in the next 6 months I think we will find out if CET implodes under the pressure of their current litigation or whether they can continue to hold it together. I guess we will see.

[Rob.Singer]

Do you die-hard 7-Stars superstars ever consider how foolish all this whining about "CET cutbacks & belt-tightening" really is when you factor in how much MORE you could be doing had you not lost all that money to the poker & slot machines & tables in the first place?

You're all no different than the Dancers and Scott's of the gambling world. You try to give the perceptions that you've all been getting waaaay more comp values than your tremendous amount of losses, for whatever reasons. Please note: experienced gamblers know a whole lot better about what's really going on.

[Alan Mendelson]

My comps never come close to my losses. They never do. But I don't play for comps. What I'm paying for is entertainment. But these cutbacks are hurting the value of my entertainment. That's why it matters, Rob.