Rio flush with success

By Liz Benston

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 | 11:15 a.m.

One Wall Street analyst has already dubbed it the "World Series of Poker Effect."

Matthew Jacob of Majestic Research said this month's famed poker tournament, which left the Rio resort Thursday after beginning in early June, did much more than just attract hordes of poker fans to the Harrah's Entertainment Inc. property.

The World Series of Poker "was a strong traffic generator for the entire casino," Jacob said in a research report released today.

Harrah's spokesman David Strow said the tournament boosted the Rio's gaming and non-gaming business.

"The World Series of Poker had a very positive impact on the Rio's operations during the six-week period," Strow said, noting that it wasn't just the new business that made the company's 2004 purchase of the World Series of Poker brand from former owner Becky Binion Behnen such a great move for the company.

The national media exposure for the Rio and for Harrah's has been invaluable, he said. And more big-time exposure is yet to come, with ESPN scheduled to broadcast the championship event and many other WSOP tourneys. The 2004 event's broadcasts -- shown again and again over the past year -- draw big cable audiences.

Asked to rank Harrah's deal to buy the WSOP as a poker hand, Strow rose to the challenge.

"The company's acquisition is a full-house," he said. "Aces full."

Excluding poker, the Rio's "game usage" rose 12 percent over the June 2-July 15 period of the tournament compared with a year ago when the tournament was held at a different casino, Jacobs' report noted. That outpaced the rest of the Strip, where game usage grew 7 percent including the opening of Wynn Las Vegas in April and about 1 percent excluding the new resort.

Game usage is a measure of a casino's efficiency and is based in part on a percentage of games played, Jacob said.

Table game usage, excluding poker, rose 29 percent at the Rio over the same period a year ago compared with less than 1 percent growth on the Strip. That figure fell 5 percent excluding Wynn Las Vegas, the report found.

Even with the Wynn resort opening, the Rio boosted its share of the Strip's overall casino volume as well as its table game business.

The poker tournament didn't do much for the Rio's slot machine business, however, Jacob said.

The Rio's slot usage grew 4 percent from a year ago compared with 10 percent growth on the Strip. Excluding Wynn Las Vegas, slot usage rose 4 percent. The Rio's share of the Strip slot business fell over that period, in part because of the Wynn resort, Jacob said.