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New casino boat opens today, replaces Argosy
Huge $335 million Hollywood casino seeks to defend its gaming market.
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Associated Press
Updated 12:36 PM Thursday, June 25, 2009
LAWRENCEBURG, Ind. — The owners of one of Indiana’s most successful riverboat casinos have replaced it with a new $335 million boat that’s the size of two football fields.
The new Hollywood casino doesn't just replace the 13-year-old Argosy casino when it opens today, June 25 — it also raises the stakes in a regional battle for gamblers’ dollars with two other Indiana casinos and a casino that Kentucky lawmakers might soon approve.
Argosy parent Penn National Gaming Inc. said the new casino’s 150,000-square-foot gambling floor will help it defend its turf if Kentucky approves a proposal to expand gambling to help rescue that state’s ailing horse industry.
“The capital we’re deploying today I think will help us ... defend our market if and when they get gaming,” said Tony Rodio, Argosy’s general manager, earlier in June.
The casino, less than two miles from a bridge linking Indiana and the Kentucky suburbs just south of Cincinnati, has been under construction for two years.
The boat’s decor evokes the heyday of 1930s Hollywood and will feature live entertainment and a huge, serpentine video screen to show live sports and movie trailers.
Pennsylvania-based Penn National expects to recoup its investment from patrons playing at 3,300 slot machines and 1,100 blackjack and poker tables. Together, that’s about 1,000 more gaming positions than what’s available on the old boat.
Penn also recently signed a deal to play host to a World Poker Tour each year.
Rodio said such an event is usually reserved for major Las Vegas venues, but the scale of the new casino, combined with the old one’s reputation for drawing crowds, allowed Penn to contend for the poker event.
“You put this on the strip in Las Vegas and you wouldn’t be a bit embarrassed,” he said.
Penn National purchased the Lawrenceburg boat three years ago and pushed ahead with expansion plans that already had been laid out by former Argosy executives to offer the additional capacity the casino needed at peak times, mostly on weekends.
The boat’s nearest competitors, the Grand Victoria at Rising Sun and Belterra in Switzerland County about 40 miles down river, are smaller and make less money.
Argosy averaged $36.3 million in monthly revenue last year, compared with Belterra’s $13.4 million and Grand Victoria’s $11.1 million.
Rodio estimates that more than 60 percent of Argosy’s patrons come from nearby Kentucky and Ohio counties. It’s so popular that gamblers often get turned away on weekends when the boat nears its 3,700-patron capacity. The new boat can handle more than 9,000 visitors and employees.
William Spencer, a retired Ford Motor Co. worker who was playing a quarter slot machine a few weeks ago on a visit with his wife, said more space would be welcome.
“It gets awfully crowded,” said Spencer, of Eastgate, Ohio. “I was here last Thursday night. You could hardly walk.”
Until rival Harrah’s Entertainment opened its new $435 million casino in Hammond on Lake Michigan in December, Argosy regularly ranked first in admissions and revenue among Indiana’s 11 casinos and the two Indianapolis-area horse tracks that offer slot machines.
Argosy posted $436 million in gross revenue last year and paid $62 million in combined wagering and admissions taxes, according to state records. The Hollywood is expected to increase gross revenue $60 million to $80 million in the first year.
Ernie Yelton, executive director of the Indiana Gaming Commission, said he sees no danger to the Hollywood boat from expanded gambling in Kentucky. Based on the size of the market, he said, the area could probably support two casinos.
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