Casino News Flashback, Business News, Pop Culture News
Packer plans 6-star casino in Perth...
James Packer has vowed not to undertake further luxury hotel-casino developments in Australia without bipartisan support after yesterday securing the backing of the West Australian government to spend $568 million to develop Perth's first six-star hotel.
The hotel, to be built on the Burswood Peninsula and called Crown Towers in line with the flagship in Melbourne, will feature 500 rooms as well as restaurants, bars, resort and convention facilities and take capacity at the casino precinct to 1200 rooms.
Crown set to join the Birdcage party at Melbourne Cup...
Business and gambling mogul James Packer has taken the lead by launching a Crown Casino corporate hospitality marquee in the Birdcage at this year's Melbourne Cup.
Race organisers have been flooded with sponsorship and hospitality deals that will push this year's spring racing carnival revenues 20 per cent above those before the global financial crisis.
It is believed the Victorian Racing Committee, the organiser of the carnival and the race that stops the nation, will soon unveil Crown Casino as a new marquee sponsor at the Melbourne Cup for 2012, along with another 18 new corporate private marquee clients at Flemington.
The decision by Crown to launch its Birdcage tent, which will be along millionaires' row that hugs the racetrack and overlooks the finish line, is part of a broader and deeper push by businesses to hook up sponsorship deals with the 2012 Melbourne Cup as well as ongoing deals that will now stretch out to 2015.
It is understood the Crown Casino marquee will have catering from some of the casino's best restaurants, such as Japanese eatery Nobu, part owned by Hollywood actor Robert De Niro, and popular French establishment Bistro Guillaume.
G. H. Mumm has just re-signed as official champagne sponsor for the next five years, The Age can reveal, while other new or extended sponsorship contracts have been inked by vitamins group Swisse, National Australia Bank, Yellowglen and Australia's largest brewer, Lion.
According to VRC documents, a suite of popular corporate sponsorships for this year's Cup, now less than 100 days away, have already sold out, including the Winning Post enclosure for Cup day, Trackside Enclosure on Stakes day and the private boxes for Derby and Cup days.
This has helped the VRC push its carnival sponsorship revenue up 19.4 per cent on pre-global financial crisis levels, while corporate hospitality revenue is up 32 per cent on 2009.
A study conducted by the consultancy group, IER, claims that the four days at Flemington generated a value-added contribution to Victoria's gross state product of more than $164.5 million - a figure that captures money injected into the Victorian economy from out-of-state visitors.
Victorian businesses also benefited from the $349 million in financial stimulus generated by the carnival, according to the report, while nationally, the economic output generated by spending associated with the carnival reached more than $746 million.
Fashion spending also increased, with racegoers spending $28.5 million ($26 million in 2010) in Victoria on items to wear to the Melbourne Cup carnival, representing an average outlay of $149.78 for each racegoer at Flemington.
Meanwhile, Black Caviar - whose presence at the track would provide a further significant fillip for Victorian racing - is undergoing a battery of tests to determine whether she will continue to race.
After she crowned her unbeaten career with a dramatic win in the Diamond Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot last month, Black Caviar was found to have suffered a number of muscle injuries.
Trainer Peter Moody and the mare's owners are expected to decide soon whether her racing career is over. (Fairfax Media)
Social concerns over proposed casino expansion...
The social welfare charity Anglicare is concerned about plans to add another 500 poker machines and more than 100 gaming tables to the Burswood Casino.
Yesterday it was announced that a 500 room, six-star hotel is set to be built alongside the Burswood casino complex in Perth.
The State Government has sold the land to the James Packer-owned company Crown for $60 million.
The hotel will cost nearly $500 million to build and is due to open in mid 2016.
Crown is also applying for an additional 500 gaming machines and 130 gaming tables.
Anglicare's chief executive Ian Carter says the impact the extra gaming machines will have on families should not be underplayed.
"We don't need an expansion of more opportunities for people to lose money," he said.
"We need to be clear here that the potential for family and marriage break down and for people to get into significant financial difficulty is associated with problem gambling.
"It's an issue in our community we're seeing increasing evidence of gambling opps being made available."
The new development also spells the end of the Burswood golf course.
Jeff McCann from the Burswood Residents Action Group, which has been lobbying to keep the course, says the news has come from left field.
"In many respects we feel deceived and we're very very disappointed," he said.
However, the Premier Colin Barnett has welcomed the development, saying the project will help ease the accommodation shortage in Perth.
"I am told it will be the best hotel in Australia by a significant margin and will do so much to help overcome the high quality shortage of hotel rooms in Perth," he said.
The Tourism Minister Kim Hames says it will help combat the shortage but more needs to be done.
"This will be the start of the change in this," he said.
"We will continue to work as a Government with other sites such as the Elizabeth Quay Development, the sinking of the railway line, East Perth development and of course we have recently announced the FESA house development.
"They will provide opportunities for the future to further address the hotel needs we have in this state." (ABC News)
Six star hotel to be built in Perth...
A 500 room six-star hotel is set to be built alongside the Burswood casino complex in Perth.
The State Government has sold the land to the James Packer-owned company Crown for $60 million.
The hotel will cost nearly $500 million to build and is due to open in mid 2016.
Crown is also applying for an additional 500 gaming machines and 130 gaming tables.
WA Premier Colin Barnett says the development will create 700 construction jobs and a further 500 once the hotel is completed.
"I am told it will be the best hotel in Australia by a significant margin and will do so much to help overcome the high quality shortage of hotel rooms in Perth," he said.
The Tourism Minister Kim Hames says it will help combat the shortage but more needs to be done.
"This will be the start of the change in this," he said.
"We will continue to work as a Government with other sites such as the Elizabeth Quay Development, the sinking of the railway line, East Perth development and of course we have recently announced the FESA house development.
"They will provide opportunities for the future to further address the hotel needs we have in this state."
NRL rejects player gambling research...
Gambling counsellor and former Newcastle Knights player Ashley Gordon says the National Rugby League needs to investigate the impacts of gambling on rugby league players.
Mr Gordon says gambling is having a devastating impact on the lives of some players and their families.
As part of his work with Southern Cross University he put forward a proposal to the NRL to conduct research into player gambling, but it's been rejected.
"I think it has been part of the game and part of the culture for too long," he said.
"I think the NRL are aware of this and really we need to take some strong steps to address the problems.
"I would like to see some research done to the players to provide us with the information on their beliefs and their values around gambling and money and so forth and their behaviour.
"That would give us valuable information to then put in programs and structures."
"We gave them a proposal that was knocked on the head.
"They weren't able to come up with the funds to support that initiative.
"I think it is important to provide the NRL with some important information would have been achieved by this research.
"At the moment it's a band aid solution where someone comes out, talks about the issue and we try and help that individual and then we wait for someone else to come forward with another problem. We need to do more."
Packer jet's close encounter with Virgin...
Details have emerged of a close shave between a corporate jet owned by James Packer's Crown Casino and a Virgin Australia passenger aircraft over the skies of Armidale, New South Wales, late last year.
A report from air safety inspectors, released today, reveals that the Gulfstream IV, which is used to fly Asian high-rollers to Crown's Melbourne casino, and the Virgin 737-800 were flying towards each other on air routes which intersected about 35 nautical miles north-west of the city on October 8.
An air traffic controller identified the situation but the instructions issued to the pilot of the Gulfstream meant that the corporate jet was cleared for descent below the level at which the 737 was flying.
The progress towards what air inspectors term a "breakdown of separation" continued when the controller did not recognise the error during the Gulfstream pilot's read-back of the clearance, the report from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau states.
A breakdown of separation occurred about 3pm when the planes got within 4.8 nautical miles (8.9 kilometres) of each other.
The appropriate separation between planes is 5 nautical miles side by side, or 1000 feet vertically.
Fortunately, an automatic alarm was activated seconds later, and the controller issued an alert to the Virgin pilots advising them that the Gulfstream was at 1 o'clock in their line of vision at 4 nautical miles.
"The pilot of the 737 responded that the traffic was sighted and that a traffic alert and collision avoidance system ... traffic advisory alert ... had been received. This was reported to have assisted the pilot to visually sight the descending Gulfstream IV," the report states.
"Subsequently the controller acted correctly to recover from the ensuing breakdown of separation."
The ATSB's general manager of aviation safety investigation, Ian Sangston, said today that the report highlighted the various layers of defence in a complex air-safety system.
"In a complex situation there are a number of layers of defence ... and where there is an inadvertent slip up on the part of the controller, other layers in the system catch the slip," he said.
The report found no evidence the pilots of either aircraft were at fault.
The Virgin jet was flying from Brisbane to Sydney, while the Gulfstream was operating a flight from Melbourne to the Gold Coast Airport at Coolangatta.
The corporate jet is one of three Gulfstreams – two of which are V versions – the casino owns to fly high rollers to Melbourne from destinations throughout Asia.
In a VIP configuration, Crown's corporate jets can seat about 10 people.
Crown controls 80 per cent of the high-roller market in Australia. (Fairfax Media)
Shane McMahon Note...
YOU On Demand Holdings, a leading Pay-Per-View and Video On Demand platform in China of which Shane McMahon is CEO and Chairman, announced today via a press release that it has signed an agreement to offer Paramount Pictures titles through their Video On Demand and Subscription Video On Demand services in the People's Republic of China. The titles that will be available to YOU On Demand customers include Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Transformers, No Country For Old Men and Star Trek.
"Paramount Pictures is one of Hollywood's most iconic studios and we are delighted to offer films from its rich library to our customers," said Shane McMahon. "The addition of Paramount's roster now gives YOU On Demand the most vibrant and compelling titles available in the People's Republic of China."
WWE News: Ric Flair's Daughter Reports to FCW...
WWE may have signed their next huge female star.
Women's wrestling website Diva-Dirt reports that Ashley Fliehr Johnson, the daughter of wrestling legend Ric Flair, made her first official appearance for Florida Championship Wrestling at an event a few days ago.
It was first reported back in May that Fliehr had inked a deal with the company and was expected to join FCW imminently. She will follow in the footsteps of second- and third-generation Divas like Natalya Neidhart, Tamina Snuka, and Shaul Guerrero, who are all currently under WWE contract. (Guerrero is still training in developmental, while Snuka and Neidhart have been on the main roster for some time.)
Fliehr, who has a background in personal fitness, previously found herself in the public eye back in 2008 after an embarrassing—and volatile—family argument in her hometown of Chapel Hill, NC, which ended with the then-21-year-old's arrest. She was later sentenced to probation and ordered to pay a $200 fine over the incident.
At the time her signing was announced, it sparked interest in some circles that the aspiring Diva had elected to go to WWE and not TNA, the company to which her father contracted at the time.
Of course, shortly afterwards it was announced that "The Nature Boy" had acrimoniously parted ways with America's No. 2 wrestling promotion, which may have explained the move.
Although Flair's daughter may be on the FCW roster, his own future in WWE remains up in the air. While the promotion would surely love to have the popular and charismatic legend back—and had jumped at the chance to sign his daughter—the current TNA/WWE lawsuit for issues related to contract tampering looks to have prevented his return for the time being.
Movie News: Top Ten based on weekend estimates (USA)...
1. The Dark Knight Rises (Legendary/Warner Bros) Week 2 [4,404 Runs] PG13
Friday $18.0M, Saturday $25.6M, Weekend $64.0M (-60%), Cume $289.0M
2. Ice Age 4 3D (Fox) Week 3 [3,869 Runs) PG
Friday $4.1M, Saturday $5.2M, Weekend $13.3M, Cume $114.8M
3. The Watch (Fox) NEW 3,168 Runs) R
Friday $4.5M, Saturday $4.9M, Weekend $13M
4. Step Up Revolution 3D (Summit/Lionsgate) NEW [2,567 Runs) PG13
Friday $5.0M, Saturday 3.9M, Weekend $11.8M
5. Ted (Universal) Week 5 [3,129 Runs) R
Friday $2.1M, Saturday $3.0M, Weekend $7.3M, Cume $193.6M
6. The Amazing Spider-Man 3D (Col/Sony) Week 4 [3,160 Run]
Friday $1.8M, Saturday $2.9M, Weekend $6.8M, Cume $242.0M
7. Brave 3D (Pixar/Disney) Week 6 [2,551 Runs] PG
Friday $1.2M, Saturday $1.6M, Weekend $4.2M, Cume $217.2M
8. Magic Mike (Warner Bros) Week 5 [2,075 Runs] R
Friday $800K, Saturday $1.0M, Weekend $2.5M, Cume $107.5M
9. Savages (Universal) Week 4 [1,414 Runs] R
Friday $480K, Saturday $742K, Weekend $1.7M, Cume $43.8M
10. Moonrise Kingdom (Focus Features) Week 9 [853 Runs] PG13
Friday $363K, Saturday $614K, Weekend $1.3M, Cume $38.3M
The Critics’ Top 10 Greatest Films of All Time...
1. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
2. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
3. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
4. La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)
5. Sunrise: A Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
7. The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
8. Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1927)
10. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)
The Directors’ Top 10 Greatest Films of All Time...
1. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
3. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
4. 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)
5. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1980)
6. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
7. The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
8. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
9. Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1974)
10. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)
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