But I think that the delay from the part of the lawsuit which I am convinced is a nuisance lawsuit. I was there when they made their presentation and if I were on city council, I would have just said, you operate a tribal casino across the state line that pays much less in taxes and none of it goes to Illinois. Why the hell would we choose you? That’s all you needed to say. But if you didn’t know that and you just saw their presentation, it’s like that is the ugliest piece of shit I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t pick them for that. So I don’t think there’s any leg they can stand on where they should have gotten this license. I think they’re just — they make a lot of money in Milwaukee. They’re using a piece of it to try to delay us. But that delay is perhaps good because it’s allowed the high-yield market to come back.
I think it will come back more. It allows us to get Chamonix open and get it ready and have it being contributing cash flow that can be used for the permanent and allows us time to think more about the permanent so we build the smartest and best casino possible. So don’t get me wrong. It would have been better if the Potawatomi had not filed the lawsuit and we could have moved faster. But the fact that they did has some benefits to us as well.
Lewis Fanger: Only because we’re running out of time. Quick thing here too. I will tell you what always catches my eyes every month when I look at the gaming report from Illinois is number one in the state, like in April, $42 million from Rivers. Number two, $12 million of gaming revenue. It’s a $30 million gap between number one and number two in the state. It is a bananas thing to look at. And then when you start thinking, well, wait a minute, that is our closest competitor and we have these northern suburbs of Chicago that are just still underpenetrated in terms of overall gaming spend. I’m not saying that we’re going to hit $42 million of gaming revenue, by the way, but it just keeps my eyes wide open as to what the ultimate potential will be for us when we have a beautiful building that people actually want to walk inside of. So, anyway.
Dan Lee: Yeah. The Potawatomis up in Milwaukee also generate $450 million a year in revenue. Yeah. And so we’re doing 25% of what either of them are doing. Yeah. And I think we can do… In one of the wealthiest counties in the country. Yeah. So I think we’re in a great location, great barriers of entry. Nobody else can get a casino anywhere near us. I’ve got a flurry of stuff. There’s an Indian tribe out of Kansas or Oklahoma that’s getting some recognition of a potential Indian reservation southwest of Chicago. And I got a bunch of phone calls. Well, they’re obviously doing this to try to get a casino. Is that going to impact you? If you get out a map and look at it, it’s a long ways from us. It may impact… I forget whether it was — I think it’s Aurora.
It’s not too far from them. That’s not us. And then there’s a different Indian tribe who’s trying to get another casino up in Wisconsin. I think the Potawatomis are pretty opposed to that, and the Potawatomis are a force to be reckoned with in Wisconsin. So there’s lots of barriers to entry. It doesn’t mean people won’t try, but it’s very hard to build a new casino there. Whereas in a place like Nevada, Mississippi, Atlantic City, there’s very few barriers to entry. Okay.
Eric Ross: Okay. Yeah. That’s great to hear. And then maybe just a quick follow-up. Could you speak about some of the trends you’ve seen in a legacy portfolio in the first quarter and how you expect those properties to perform for the rest of the year? Thank you.
Dan Lee: We expect them to perform better. The Silver Slipper was a weaker quarter, and I don’t have a good reason for it other than we were a little distracted with Colorado, and we want to get back in and understand what they’re doing. We’ve got to get smarter at marketing or smarter at controlling the payroll or both. And that happens sometimes. It’s still done okay, but it should be making a little more money than it is. Rising Sun is doing okay. It’s always been a tough property. There is a new racino that opened in northern Kentucky in September of 22, I guess it was. And it’s been building some market share, which has been a little bit of a challenge. We’ve done relatively well despite that. And then Churchill also has built some stuff down in Louisville, the other side of us.
But we’re hanging in there. Tahoe, it’s often driven by weather, what goes on in Incline Village. If we get a normal month, all of a sudden we’ll have great income, and then all of a sudden we’ll have too much snow or too little snow. It’s just the nature of a tourist place like that. And Fallon, it depends on whether there’s a.
Lewis Fanger: Well, it’s really a Navy base. yeah. And in March and April, the Navy had increased in visitation. It didn’t happen in January and February, but it was back in March and April.
Dan Lee: It’s a little — when the aircraft carriers go into San Diego, a lot of people don’t know this. To take off a plane on an aircraft carrier, the carrier has to be moving. And you need that headwind of, like, 10 miles an hour, 15 miles an hour, for the planes to get off the carrier. And so when it goes into San Diego Harbor before it gets to the harbor, any plane that is capable of being flown has taken off and then they go Land & Naval Air Station. Well then while that boat is being outfitted or people are on leave. And so on the pilots and copilot and mechanics and everything they’ve got developed for training. And so it’s a Naval Air Station kind of in the middle of Nevada. And it gets a little frustrating because our business surges whenever there is a keg carrier Air Group in town, but it’s like considered the national secret when they’re coming.
So the Air Force base doesn’t tell us, yes we’ve got a whole bunch people coming next week. All of a sudden, we just find people in uniform showing up in our casino and then we’re scrambling to accommodate them. So yes, it’s a unique little market, yes very small for us at this point, but it’s okay.
Lewis Fanger: We have to ask people in the queue for trying to get through them real quick.
Dan Lee: I should mention the sports betting, the Illinois which is the bulk of it is doing fine. And some of the other licenses are not being used now. And we continue to look for either partners or possibility of doing something very modest where we don’t lose money and offer sports betting online ourselves, mainly for the people who are in our database as kind of an amenity. And I think that could be done without losing money. Other questions.
Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Chad Beynon from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Analyst: Hi, this is Sam on for Chad. Thanks for taking our questions. So monthly GGR the temporary in Waukegan just taking a step up into the $9 million to $10 million range, what further required at the temporary to get another step up into the $11 million range? And what do you think run rate EBITDA would be at that mark?
Lewis Fanger: I’ll be frank, it’s time. I think people don’t realize sometimes that when you open these new casinos different marketing promotions work in some places and they don’t work in others. And so for us it feels like we’ve really cracked the code for us on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, no other days in the week. It feels like we’re still making tweaks and figuring out what brings and those players in real time. And I’m not going to — don’t spill the secret sauce for what we’ve learned already. We spent the last year and change learning it ourselves. But I will tell you we’ve run some recent events that we think are promising. And so I think we’re getting there, but at the end of the day that database continues to grow that probably the most important thing. We’re over 71,000 people in the database now. And it’s that and really just learning and quite honestly using that’s take us now to maximum benefit.
Dan Lee: Last year at this call, we would about talking about 10000 or 20000 people in the database. So but actually the other thing I noticed yesterday when Illinois results came out from the Gaming Commission and looking through it and they have a column of square footage and it shows us a 70,000 square feet and River Zone A little bigger than us. But based and I looked at it at that it shows us as being one of the largest in the state and square footage. And I actually stopped and thought I wonder if that’s including our restaurants that are in the tent or not including the restaurants? I’m not sure, but I think it’s the more I think about — I think it’s probably accurate because places like Grand Vic and I were and Juliette those are riverboats and they are stacked and crowded and not a whole lot of square footage are places a large single level casino 70,000 square feet.
And so, I don’t think we’re if you go in there on a Friday night. Sure it’s busy. I mean of course busy, but we’re not close to capacity. I mean I remember at the bears down in Lake Charles we used to do $500 per machine per day. We’re not doing that here yet. And interestingly a couple of reverses doing they might be close, but it’s we can do a lot more revenue in our 70,000 square foot than we’re doing now and I think it will continue to build.
Unidentified Analyst: Thank you. And then as a follow up what are the marketing plans for Germany as we head into the summer months and the potential for increasing group hotel revenue?
Dan Lee: Well, the group’s book quite a ways in advance. So we’re trying to — we have a sales team now. It’s for a very small. We’re trying to augment it. And that’s really about putting business on the books for the fall, the winter and thereafter. Because if you call up the group now and say, hey why don’t you bring your group to replace in June while they already have a book somewhere, they’ve already told their attendees where they are and so on. So that’s a — that’s a more long-term thing. Now summers, people go to the mountains in the summer. So I think we will fill with gamblers and retail customers in July and August even midweek. But there is a lot of stuff as you go in part of the way the hotel business has evolved.
The Expedia contract says if you offer a $150 rate on your website than Expedia has allowed to offer $150 rate on their website and they keep 20% of it before they give you 80% of it. And so whenever you’re booking, go to the hotel website where you’re traveling and look for a button that says offers. And they will have offers and it’s very hard for the Expedia backed us try to compare the offers and all of a sudden you’ll see well rooms $150. But if I do this weekend package I get free valet parking and breakfast and a bottle of champagne in the room or something. And then — so wait a minute that’s much better than booking and Expedia. And so more and more you’ll see hotel chains kind of doing that. Well if you go and look at our competition in Colorado and click on the offers button there’s all sorts of creative stuff there that we will have as well soon that says, hey, if any and you tried to direct business to the midweek, and so in an email goes out to people that maybe there’s a database that we’ve been able to purchase.
That tells us these are retired people in Castle Rock who tend to gamble and we will send them a saying that says, hey come on up and try us. We’ll give you a meal coupon on the weekend. But if you want to come during the week, we’ll give you a hotel room. And so you’re try to drive business to the midweek. And that’s the case. That’s always been the key in Las Vegas as well. I mean the hotels in Las Vegas would naturally fill every weekend by people who drove over from LA and that’s still the case. And the entire convention business that’s been built up period 60 years is about trying to fill the midweek and that’s why you’ll notice when Comdex [ph] show starts it’s like well it starts on Monday morning because they want you to fly in on Sunday night because their hotel is otherwise going to be empty on Sunday night.
