Put It All On Red

I have mentioned before that, in previous incarnations, I worked on the Hill. But, with Casey Serin revealing his intentions to sell casinos and get a big win of his own, today seems like an apt day to reveal a little-known Aspeth factoid:

A bridge that I traveled between the public and private sectors was just such an endeavor. I worked as a part of a multi-billion dollar multi-national that handled these types of financial transactions.

Passing a casino from one hand to another is an incredibly complex and fragile spiderweb of intricacies. The reason that these types of firms become involved in these transactions is because few entities have pockets deep enough to facilitate such a deal, and their role is further enhanced with a responsibility to keep everything clean.

In truth, there are only a dozen or so individuals in the U.S. who will qualify to take ownership of this type of property. Far from traditional real estate marketing, this type of effort involves a very short list of potential candidates, and conversations are quick, quiet, and to the point.

Since Casey Serin seems so intent on "selling" his vast real estate/financial/foreclosure experience via books and seminars, I'm not going to give him the cow, so to speak.

But suffice to say that money is just the first hurdle that one encounters in this type of transaction. The Gaming Review Boards are not to be fucked with. To even own a smaller mom-and-pop type casino worth under $10 million, the buyer(s) must first undergo an extensive background check, at their own expense, for the Gaming Review Board to search every nook and cranny of that individual's moral and financial background.

Just having someone like Casey Serin sitting at the table would muddy any potential deal. Hell, let's be honest. Just having someone like Casey Serin licking stamps in the mail room would muddy the deal.

In short, Gaming Review is the licensing body that is charged with ensuring that gambling remains profitable to gamblers, at a minimum of (x) percentage of the time. If you've ever had to get a liquor license, imagine if that process came with an automatic, gigantic anal probe. Now multiply that by ten and you've got the Gaming Review Board.

While the potential buyer(s) writes a blank cheque to the Board to investigate him or her or them, it is necessary for everyone at the table to sit down and pore over the financials. Hey Casey, do you have any fucking idea what EBITDA means? What a fucking multiplier is? Because everyone else at the table does, and they're going to knock you on your ass if you hold up the process.

Financials can be thousands of pages long, earmarking expenses and values of everything from the FF&E to labor to insurance to laundry to contracts. And that's before you even get to the tables and slots.

That's all I'm going to say about the process. It's enough information to point out just how laughable Casey Serin's sad little hope and dream of somehow landing a $1.5 billion whale is. I'm not applying an ounce of sarcasm when I say that he's actually got better statistical odds of winning the lottery, twice, or being directly struck by lightening six times.

Casey, get it through your tiny little bird brain...it's just not that simple. Just because a number is written on the wall doesn't mean it's up for grabs. Let's say that on some distant planet, in some parallel universe (am I speaking your language yet?) that you were actually able to facilitate a buyer and seller in this type of situation.

Let me tell you what would happen next. You would be like a small animal who happened across an elephant just as it was struck dead by a boulder. You might see it first and claim it as your own. But you're just a little guy in the food chain. And bigger carnivores like my team and I would swoop in and make it very clear, very quickly, just how rightfully ours that elephant ass is.

It's a good thing that the nice people at C-net helped you inquire about a job at Jamba Juice (hey, wasn't that your schtick with Nigel as well?) because you might be able to squeeze juice out of pet grass, but you're not going to strike it rich at the casino.