Eldorado Resorts stunned the gaming industry last year with its $17.3 billion offer to acquire Caesars Entertainment, one of the leading gambling companies on the New Jersey Casino and Nevada Casino markets. Heading into the summer of 2020 amid a full-blown health crisis with the coronavirus outbreak, the deal remains on track to close this year.
With multiple moving parts, the deal has been under industry scrutiny since Day 1. With the widespread damaging effects from March’s coronavirus shutdown, many of those same industry insiders thought the deal would die a painful agonizing death. Check out the latest on legal online gambling.
Everyone knows that anything can happen in Las Vegas. Multiple reports from a number of business sources are firm in their prediction that the deal will go through pending regulatory approval. They are going as far as to suggest that it will close relatively close to the originally predicted date sometime in the second or third quarter of the year.
Wall Street remains bullish on the deal with its “buy” rating in light of Eldorado’s plans. Cited by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Deutsche Bank’s Carlo Santarelli had this to say about the pending merger:
“We have become more confident that the industry is about to experience a material transformation in an expense structure that has essentially been accepted as is for some time.”
As part of all the regulatory approvals needed to close, four distinct governing bodies carry the most weight:
- Nevada Gaming Commission (The institution regulating all of Nevada Gambling)
- New Jersey Gaming Commission (The institution regulating NJ sports betting and NJ online casinos)
- Indiana Gaming Commission (The institution regulating Indiana Online Gambling)
- The Federal Trade Commission
Eldorado has already shed its ownership of certain gaming properties in Nevada, Missouri, and Louisiana to appease regulators looking to keep the playing field level. The general feeling is that pending approvals will not derail the deal in its final stages of completion.
It has been a rather bumpy ride the past few months with Eldorado’s stock price falling from $12.75 to $8.40. The company is also facing a “tick fee” of $2.3 million a day because the deal did not meet a closing deadline of April 1.
The big winners in this merger are Caesars shareholders. This hefty fee will end up directly in their pockets upon closing. The new deadline in place is the end of June.
Eldorado Resorts is based in Reno, Nevada with added business interests in Lake Tahoe. Acquiring Caesars Entertainment will create a long sought after presence in Las Vegas. The company also owns gaming interests in Atlantic City with the Tropicana. All told, the ownership group operates 23 casinos in multiple states.
The company was founded in 1973 by Donald Louis Carano. The original property was the Eldorado Hotel Casino in Reno. Today, the company has more than 18,000 employees in 12 different states.
Caesars Entertainment is based in Paradise, Nevada near Las Vegas. This is one of the largest gaming companies in the world with over 50 properties in its portfolio on a global scale.
A few of the prominent brands’ names in this group are Caesars, Bally’s, Harrah’s. Check out the current best online sportsbooks bonuses of 2020. The company’s Las Vegas Strip casinos are highlighted by The LINQ, Flamingo, Paris, and Planet Hollywood.
