Loveman snows Boston, NECN lets him

Folks, Gary Loveman is brilliant, a great showman and....shall we label him a liar?

Harrah's (now Caesar's), the Holiday Inn of budget Slot Barns, determined that 90% of their profits originated from 10% of their patrons.

They then marketed, targeted, comped and pursued those patrons to ensure their return to feed the reverse ATM machines and buy their loyalty.

Folks, Caesars/Harrahs wouldn't make a profit if it didn't create NEW Gamblers and create NEW Gambling Addicts.

Caesars/Harrah's ONLY profits from Gambling Addiction, pure and simple.

Mr. Loveman went above and beyond marketing to outrageous statements bearing no resemblance to facts.

You can easily expect the Gambling Addiction rate to be 6%.

You can easily anticipate that CRIME will increase as a consequence of GAMBLING ADDICTION, and along with that: personal bankruptcies, embezzlement, child and spousal abuse, divorces, foreclosures and a host of other negative you won't want in your community.

The video is worth watching to see what Mr. Loveman said with a straight face. A stellar acting job which is all it is, convincing me that Mr. Loveman is amoral, totally devoid of conscience for his business actions. His sole interest is in obtaining a license, Corporate consequences be damned!

My recommendation is to do your homework before falling for the Loveman advertising campaign.


NECN failed to note that:

1. Studies and experience have proven that Slot Barns destroy tourism
2. A Slot Barn at Suffolk Downs will cost Massachusetts taxpayers + $500 MILLION for infrastructure
3. Any 'local' vote for approval of this monster will exclude most of the community


Caesars pitches Hub casino

(NECN: Peter Howe, Boston) - Caesar’s Entertainment grosses nearly $9 billion a year from its 50 casinos around the world, and Tuesday Caesars chairman and CEO Gary Loveman was in the city’s most plugged-in gathering of the rich and powerful seeking to assure them they’d be happy to have Boston be Caesar’s 51st location.

Caesars is in a consortium of investors pitching a $500 million-plus casino complex at the Suffolk Downs horse track in East Boston, which it would manage, most likely under the Caesars name. It’s competing with the Foxborough casino plan floated by New England Patriots owner Robert K. Kraft and Las Vegas titan Steve Wynn for the sole casino license to be awarded by the state in eastern Massachusetts.

For most of his remarks, Loveman sought to assure attendees at the Boston College CEOs Club that, for all the years of controversy that preceded Governor Deval L. Patrick’s signing casino gambling legislation late last year, they and most residents of Massachusetts will likely come to find casinos are a non-controversial industry, just one more form of entertainment people are willing to pay for.

"Casinos have been around, they’ve operated for a long time, and they’ve become entirely noncontroversial in the context of people's lives in their communities," Loveman said. "We believe we can build a very successful business that all of you will be proud of. Some of you will visit us. Some of you won't. But it will come to be a very widely respected and very welcomed part of the Boston community over time … While this is a very contentious issue, and continues to be locally, across the world it's becoming increasingly mundane" with places everywhere from Iowa to Singapore adding casinos. And suffering the consequences as a result.


Loveman quoted a Boston Globe editorial lamenting that "unfortunately it's too late to bar the door from the wolves of the gambling industry" and got the crowd at the Boston Harbor Hotel laughing when he said, "That's me! It's too late! I'm here!"

Attorney General Martha Coakley, who was in the audience and will appoint a member of the new five-person state gaming commission that will license casinos, joked that Loveman clearly was trying "to convince us that you're really a sheep in sheep's clothing."

She asked Loveman which states he thinks do the best job regulating gamblings, and Loveman cited Nevada and Mississippi as states that combine strict controls with pro-innovation and pro-expansion regulatory policies that "don’t just keep the bad guys out … but encourage the good guys to come in and invest."

Loveman acknowledged squarely that gambling addiction – and the attendant personal bankruptcies, family neglect, suicides and more – is a real issue, but said he believes 99 percent of adults have no problem with casino gambling and only 1 percent at any time are addicts.

"Addiction is a very problematic issue for a lot of people, and gambling is one form of addiction. We have to take that exceptionally seriously. And everybody who wants to worry about addiction is doing the right thing. My employees don't want to come to work and be of the view that they're servicing someone's addiction. They want to work on identifying addictions, helping people find care for addictions." Harrah's/Caesars offers a multitude of incentives that encourage their employees to get those Gambling Addicts to continue to play - Play to Extinction.

But making a comparison to obese people’s right to buy Big Macs from McDonald’s, Loveman said choosing to gamble is a fundamentally American right and said, "If the country wants to get in the business of deciding what decisions all of us can make responsibly, we have a big agenda ahead of us."

Hold your nose for these untrue comments --
Loveman disputed assertions casinos lead to prostitution, muggings, kidnappings, and other crime. "As a matter of fact crime goes down where casinos are around," Loveman said. "Where casinos are around, there's a tremendous amount of law enforcement. There's a tremendous amount of activity. Community values tend to rise real estate values go up."

While Loveman wouldn’t take any direct shots at the Kraft/Wynn proposal local wags have dubbed "FoxVegas," he said he’s confident Boston is a much more attractive location, especially for Chinese and other international visitors who may generate much of the business for the Massachusetts casinos.

"Urban locations offer the most commanding opportunities in our view, because the businesses have the advantage of offering everything that the urban location can provide," Loveman said. “It tends to be a much bigger draw as a result."