Scratchy Big

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Although the late LVS chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson hailed the Japanese market as “a holy grail” and the “ultimate of business opportunities”, the company dropped out of the game, scrapping its pledged $10 billion project.

Japan has drawn on Singapore’s IR development model, which embodies a balancing act between ambitious economic visions and restrictive conditions. But Andrew Klebanow, principal of Klebanow Consulting, believes Japan’s IR regulations swerved “too far into crafting regulations and policies”. Klebanow specialises in hotel-casino market feasibility studies, strategic planning and facility planning recommendations.

“As the RFP process played out, regulators introduced additional policies and regulations. As each regulation was introduced, developers adjusted their gaming forecasting models downward. Finally, those models reached a tipping point where potential revenues were insufficient to justify a project’s capital costs,” says Klebanow.

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The Commerce Department has jurisdiction over the USPTO, meaning Lutnick is the boss of the USPTO Director John Squires. Squires, who became 60th director of the USPTO a year ago, has been publicly effusive in his praise of Lutnick.

More relevant to DraftKings is the fact that under his leadership, the patent office has moved to significantly limit access to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) – the very board to which the gaming company is appealing in an effort to have the Cantor patent annulled.

Both Squires and his predecessor, Coke Morgan Stewart, made it harder for filers to get in front of the PTAB, typically citing patent ages or court rulings.

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The VGT dispute and construction reset are the latest chapters in a long and bumpy road for Bally’s since winning Chicago’s sole casino licence in 2022. Work has been halted for debris overflow and for unapproved contractors, and the company faced an $800 million funding gap that was eventually filled through a financing agreement with Gaming and Leisure Properties. Potential interference with city water lines also necessitated a significant redesign of the hotel plan.

At one point, the IGB ordered a temporary work stoppage at Bally’s permanent casino following reports of alleged ties between an unapproved dumpster service with organised crime.

Bally’s has been granted two years’ worth of extensions for the permanent project. State law allows for two-year temporary licences, but the Illinois Gaming Board approved an extension to three years in 2023. That pushed the deadline to this September, but Bally’s ultimately received another year’s worth of extensions through language included in the state’s omnibus revenue bill that was passed in June.