The Rave

About The Rave

The law came at the request of Full House Resorts, the Las Vegas-based regional gaming operator that expressed interest in relocating its Rising Star Casino in Rising Sun to a more attractive market, specifically in the northeastern part of the state.

During the lawmaking process, Full House’s exclusivity was stripped in favor of welcoming any company currently licensed as a commercial casino in the US to bid on the possible license. Lawmakers also threw in a one-time $150 million fee for the concession and a mandatory investment minimum of $500 million, all but ending Full House’s interest.

“The bill changed many times. We make money in Rising Sun. We always have, not a lot of money, but we make money. We continue to make money in Rising Sun. And we will continue to do that for our shareholders, as well as for the good of the state,” Full House CEO Daniel Lee said in March.

What is The Rave?

“The largest black market operators have scaled to create recognisable brands with traffic that can compare to domestically licensed operators,” the report’s authors wrote. “The top group of sites by common owner has a 12% share of traffic, while the largest single brand has 10%.”

Beyond offering crypto payment solutions, a number of black market operators are licensed in “light touch” offshore jurisidictions which use opaque offshore operating structures to help to obscure company ownership and make local enforcement against these companies complex, the report noted.

By comparison, the long tail of smaller black market sites rely heavily on affiliates to generate traffic.

How to play The Rave

The CEO highlighted the synergies between Sun International’s land-based and online operations, with the potential of capturing more of its existing customers’ online activity.

“We look increasingly at our business as one customer ecosystem or one customer platform, if you will,” he added. “I keep saying that SunBet probably wouldn’t be where it is today without a land-based business, and a land-based business probably wouldn’t be where it is today without SunBet.

“We continuously leverage off one another. Now, having said that, we know that almost all of us, or at least the vast majority of our land-based customers are playing online, but not all of them are playing with SunBet, so we see that bit as the opportunity.”