Dover Downs owner Bally's engineers sale-leaseback of Delaware property's real estate
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Dover Downs owner Bally’sCorporation has a lot on its plate these days, including a recent deal that offloads the Delaware casino’s real estate.
Gaming and Leisure Properties is buying the real estate associated withBally’sDover Downs casino for$144 million.
The company will lease lease the property back toBally’sfor$12 millionper year, subject to an escalation clause. The site includes banquet-convention areas and a 500-room hotel, the largest in Delaware.
The leaseback was also part of Bally’s recent purchase of the Tropicana in Evansville, IN for $140 million from Caesars Entertainment.
As part of the transaction, Gaming & Leisure Properties, Inc. acquired the real estate associated with the Tropicana Evansville for$340 million and will lease it back to Bally’sfor$28 milliona year.
The Evansville site comes with sports gaming, a couple of hotels, as well as meeting and convention space in the southern Indiana city.
Bally’s is building a nationwide footprint with pending deals that include the Jumer’s Casino & Hotel (Rock Island, IL) and the Tropicana Las Vegas as well as the construction of a casino near the Nittany Mall inState College, PA.
When those deals are done, the company will own and manage 16 casinos in 11 states.
The growth spurt got underway a couple of years ago with the purchase of Dover Downs. Owned by a publicly traded company that had been under the control of Rollins family interests, the Rhode Island company then known as Twin River, went public via Dover Downs.
Prior to that time the company had casinos in Rhode Island and small gaming sites in Colorado. At the time, Rhode Island casinos we’re facing competition from nearby Boston and a Vegas-style Wynn casino.
Twin River later acquired the Bally’s name from Caesars as a way to build a national brand. It also snapped up the Bally’s casino in Atlantic City.
The Bally’s in Las Vegas and the Tropicana in Atlantic City remain under ownership by Caesars, which was earlier acquired by Reno-based Eldorado.Eldorado, which was smaller than Caesars, sold off casinos to Bally’s as a way to shore up its balance sheet.
Bally’s has also moved aggressively into various types of online gaming with a number of deals, some still in the works. Its most high profile partnership is with the National Hockey League.
One disappointment came when its proposal for a massive casino-resort in Richmond, VA was quickly rejected by the city.
Once the dust settles from dealmaking, the company is likely to rebrand, many, if not most of is properties and players cards to the Bally’s name.
