13th casino, which would hold the Missouri's last gambling license. The proposed casinos still in the running are in St. Louis, Cape
Girardeau and Sugar Creek, 10 miles east of Kansas City.
Ameristar, which runs casinos in St. Louis and KC, wants the state to approve the Cape Girardeau site -- and for obvious reasons. Any new casino in one of the state's major markets would eat into Ameristar's profits, infringing on company executives' God-given right to give out Vespas to Halloween trick-or-treaters.
But while it's obviously within Ameristar's right to fear and loathe competition, it's bizarre to release an "analysis" and expect people to believe its math. Here's what it's claiming, according to the Kansas City Business Journal:
The
Las Vegas-based company (Nasdaq: ASCA), which operates gambling houses
in Kansas City and St. Louis, said Tuesday that it estimated a new Cape
Girardeau facility would generate $88.7 million in annual adjusted gross
revenue.
More important, Ameristar said almost none of that would come at the
expense of other casino operations in Missouri. The closest casino to
Cape Girardeau is 80 miles away in Caruthersville.
On the other hand, the company said that a proposed casino in Sugar Creek would cannibalize 81 percent of its revenue from other Kansas City-area casinos and that two St. Louis-area proposals would take 66 percent to 72 percent of its revenue from that city's casinos.
The Missouri Gaming Commission will hear from the public today (Wednesday) in Sugar Creek. It will pick the winner by year's end.
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