Harrah’s Won’t Be Buying Land After All

It seems that Harrah’s Entertainment was planning on purchasing some land in the UK as well as an online slots site, and that offer has been rejected. They were looking to purchase a large tract of British Land as well as the online slots gambling group Rank – and now it looks as though neither of those things will occur now.

The deal comes hot on the heels of the attempts of Apollo Management LP and TPG Capital to acquire Harrah’s Entertainment themselves. Harrah’s had purchased London Clubs International last year, and in doing so had started establishing themselves in the gambling world of the UK.

However, Government taxes went up as well, and this hurt many in the online gambling and B&M gambling world hard. Many companies that were looking to relocate to the UK as online slots casinos have now chosen to either stay where they are at, or go elsewhere because the numbers just don’t make any sense to go there.

The UK was hoping to bring in a lot of online slots and gambling sites for the revenue, and had been wooing them, promising them things that they just didn’t keep. There were hundreds of sites that were looking to relocate and with the changes the UK is now looking at thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

This also left companies like Harrah’s in the hole with their finances and put their buyout deal in jeopardy. For their part, Rank has been battered by both the tax increase and the fact that they had to remove many of their slots. The deal would have been very lucrative for Harrah’s had it gone through, but they are not the only group looking at the online slots and gambling site – Ladbrokes and Malaysia’s Genting are also looking at the site.

Back to December 2007 Archive.