Rooms for 129 Dollars For The Boxing Show: Revel Resort For The Rich in Atlantic City, 284 Million Dollars in Debt in 20 Months, Delays Second Bankruptcy Auction
By Robert Brizel, Head RCM Boxing Correspondent
Atlantic City, NJ (August 11, 2014)– Save by the bell-but only for one more week. The 1400 room Revel Resort and Casino Atlantic City, which opened on May 25, 2012 at a cost of 2.4 billion dollars, and has hosted two major pay-per-view boxing shows since, has gone broke twice. The August 7, 2014 scheduled Revel bankruptcy auction has been postponed for a week, till 9 A.M. on August 14, 2014, to give Moells & Company, the investment firm hired to find buyers, more time to research prospective buyer bids and researching buyer backgrounds before selling Revel.
Tour the 2.4 Billion Dollar Revel Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey
In the annuals of the casino industry, The Revel, which just doesn’t match the scenery of Atlantic City Boardwalk hotels and casinos nor the personality of Atlantic City gamblers, is probably the biggest money loser in casino history during the brief time of its operation. The 24 hour casino operation does not have the look or feel of what works in ‘the Sin City of the East coast’, and never matched the successful promotions of its profitable competitors.
The luxurious Revel rooms, which were at one time at prices reserved only for the rich and famous, have dropped to a dirt broke low cost of only 129 dollars for some dates in the month of August. It remains to be seen where the Revel, host of such championship boxing bouts as Daniel Geale versus Darren Barker, Kiko Martinez versus Jhonatan Romero, and Sergey Kovalev versus Blake Caparello, will survive long enough to host professional boxing and MMA shows again.
Atlantic Club Casino (ACH), formerly The Hilton, closed in January. Showboat Atlantic City closes next at the end of August 2014. Trump Plaza will then close in Mid-September 2014. Together the four casino hotels employed over 8,900 area workers. If the trend continues, and more casinos continue to fold, there will no cookies left for the bookies.
The Revel lost 185.4 million dollars in 2013, and has lost at least 75 million dollars in 2014. Among its expenses is a two million dollar monthly expense above its electric bills because it built an additional power plant. The Revel’s operated losses have averaged two million dollars a week since the Las Vegas style resort opened in Atlantic City. After filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2014, Revel borrowed as additional 23.9 million dollars to remaining operating until it finds a buyer.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie provided the original Revel group with 261 million dollars in tax incentives after Morgan Stanley, which had begun construction, pulled out and took a 932 million dollar loss. The 284 million dollar loss figure cited in the headline is based on Revel’s losses in 2013, and its ongoing losses in 2014, plus the money it has borrowed in June of this year to continue operations. If Revel borrowed more money when it went to court in July 2014, the loss figure for Revel may already be over 302 million dollars, if the money borrowed figure increased from 23.9 to 41.9 million as estimated.
All total, Atlantic City casinos have lost 44 percent of revenue since 2006, and have lost over two billion dollars in revenue since 2003. It was hoped Revel, a high end style casino resort, would bring a glitz, glitter, class, elegance, and mega money to lift the fading Atlantic City economy. Instead, high rollers avoided Revel’s high tech non-smoking gaming areas. In addition, competition from new casinos and slot parlors in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland kept their area revenues at home, spelling the doom of Revel and the other three casinos on the Atlantic City Boardwalk which also failed.
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