HORSESHOE CLEVELAND TO OPEN AS OHIO’S FIRST CASINO IN MAY

Total Investment in Cleveland Area Exceeds $1 Billion

February 15, 2012 (CLEVELAND) – The Ohio Casino Control Commission today announced that Horseshoe Casino Cleveland has been given the green light to open the week of May 14, 2012. The announcement confirms that Northeast Ohio will be home to the State’s first casino since a statewide gaming ballot measure was approved in November 2009. The casino developer and owner, Rock Ohio Caesars (ROC), is also developing a casino in Cincinnati which is slated to open in spring 2013.

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“We’ll be ready,” said Marcus Glover, general manager of Horseshoe Cleveland. “On behalf of our entire team who will start exciting new casino careers, I couldn’t be prouder to debut this first-class entertainment destination to the City, to the State and to the Nation in May.” Glover also commended the Ohio Casino Control Commission for its diligence to promptly define timelines for casino openings in Cleveland and Toledo. “The Commission’s efforts allow us to move forward with several critical steps needed prior to our launch,” he said.

Cleveland Investment

Horseshoe Cleveland is being developed inside the Historic Higbee Building in downtown Cleveland as a high-profile addition to the city’s impressive sports, entertainment, music and cultural attractions. “From the time that we embarked on this $350 million casino development we have looked for ways to create a more powerful impact for downtown Cleveland and our guests,” said Dan Gilbert, chairman of Rock Gaming LLC, majority owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. “We have doubled down on our commitments to Ohio. We believe more than ever that Horseshoe Cleveland – combined with the many other new and exciting developments under way in Cleveland – will be a big shot in the arm for this hard-working community.”

Additional developments include a parking structure and arrival center adjacent to the Higbee building which will serve casino guests and the public alike, the December 2011 purchase of The Ritz-Carlton, Cleveland, and an attached five-story commercial office building at 250 Huron Road. The Ritz will continue to operate the 205-room hotel under a long-term management contract and the office building will be utilized for casino administrative space and other services. These additional acquisitions and projects bring the casino project’s direct investment in Cleveland to more than $570 million.

Since his purchase of the Cavaliers in 2005, Gilbert and his ‘Family of Companies’ operate 10 businesses in greater Cleveland that employ more than 2,000 team members. The businesses include: operation of the Quicken Loans Arena; the AHL Lake Erie Monsters; the NBA Development League Canton Charge; the AFL Cleveland

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Gladiators; the Cleveland Clinic Courts Player Development Center; a Quicken Loans Web Center; Veritix, an electronic ticketing company; and Bizdom U Cleveland, an entrepreneurial accelerator. Investment in these businesses exceeds $450 million, bringing Gilbert and his partners’ total Cleveland-area investment to more than $1 billion.

Preparing to Open Horseshoe Cleveland

Gaming equipment, including 2,100 slot machines, will be delivered to Horseshoe Cleveland in the coming weeks as the final stages of renovation conclude. Approximately 300,000 sq. ft. across four floors of the long-vacant Higbee Building is being transformed into a first-class gaming destination in the City’s urban core. In addition to slot machines, 65 table games, a high-limits area, an action-packed World Series of Poker® room, and a VIP player’s lounge will occupy the 96,000 sq. ft. gaming floor.

The casino will offer an international buffet restaurant and a food court with local partners providing regional fare. Corky & Lenny’s – a Cleveland-area landmark deli – announced last week that it will open inside Horseshoe Cleveland. A main-floor feature bar will round out the food, beverage and entertainment offerings. Horseshoe Cleveland is projected to attract an additional five million visits annually to downtown Cleveland.

Work on the casino development and its adjacent parking structure has created about 2,000 construction jobs, and the casino began recruiting for 1,600 new casino jobs last fall. After receiving more than 36,000 applications, about 1,300 people are in training and/or have been hired to date.

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About Rock Ohio Caesars

Rock Ohio Caesars LLC (ROC) is a joint venture comprised of Midwest-based Rock Gaming LLC and the world’s most geographically diversified casino entertainment company, Caesars Entertainment Corporation. ROC is developing and will operate full-service casinos in downtown Cincinnati and downtown Cleveland under the Horseshoe brand.

Developers of four new Ohio casinos looked eagerly to the future Wednesday, even as opponents concocted plans to stymie their efforts and surrounding states braced for economic losses.

Penn National Gaming Inc. president Dan Wilmott showed off the site where a 300,000-square-foot Hollywood Casino-Columbus employing 2,000 people is expected to materialize by the end of 2012.

“I know there’s been a lot of things said by the opposition, a lot of mistruths, a lot of blatant lies about what the casino will bring to the city of Columbus, to the state of Ohio,” he said. “I can assure you that we’re going to develop here, we’re going to create these jobs, and we’re going to get people back to work.”

Republican state lawmakers unhappy with the vote began work immediately on a 2010 ballot measure, however. State Rep. Clyde Evans said he plans a constitutional amendment that makes changes to the terms of the casino deal, including increasing the tax rate from 33 percent to 60 percent. That measure would need approval by a Legislature where political control is mixed.

Dennis Forst, a gaming industry analyst for KeyBanc Capital Markets in Los Angeles, also predicted there will be lawsuits forthcoming that delay the plan. He expects casino operators to turn their sights now to Kentucky, a lone casino holdout in the region.

Penn National officials enthusiastically pushed the Ohio facilities’ benefits. They pledged to assuage the concerns of their rivals, work cooperatively with restaurant and hotel operators worried about competition, and wow city planners with architectural renderings.

Penn National partnered with Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert in an expensive ballot campaign that touted the jobs casinos in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo would bring to a state where unemployment has topped 10 percent.

After a campaign that topped 2008′s $40 million in presidential campaign spending, the pro-casino Ohio Jobs & Growth Committee turned around an historically anti-gambling state that had rejected expanded gambling four times in the past 20 years. The pro-casino campaign spent $21 for every yes vote.

Victory came despite warnings from the opposing TruthPAC, backed by MTR Gaming Inc. chairman Jeffrey Jacobs, that the jobs numbers were exaggerated and the lengthy constitutional amendment had other problems.

U.S. Sen. George Voinovich vowed to “be their conscience” and hold casino operators to their jobs promises. He predicted casinos would take a particularly heavy toll on Cleveland, a national poverty leader and a city where he was once mayor.

“I am terribly disappointed,” Voinovich said in a statement.

“As a result of the passage of Issue 3, there will be a great deal of pain and suffering in Ohio. I feel for the families of those who will experience casinos for the first time in their lives and, once lured in, will become addicted to gambling.”

KeyBanc’s Forst said economic benefits of Ohio casinos will be mixed.

“It’ll certainly help Ohio’s economy, through the tax dollars and the jobs and keeping the money in the borders of the state,” Forst said. “On a regional basis, I’m not sure it does anything at all, because whatever is gained by Ohio is potentially lost to Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.”

A newly released report by the Indiana Legislative Services Agency predicted that state would be hard hit by casinos in Ohio, losing $93 million in gambling taxes based on revenues in the first year alone. Analyst Joseph Greff at J.P. Morgan categorized the Ohio initiative as a “mild negative” for the southern Indiana casino industry.

Michigan tourism leaders were also keeping close watch on behalf of Detroit, where casinos bring in $1.3 billion a year with the help with thousands of Ohio gamblers.

MTR Gaming Inc., which operates the popular Mountaineer Casino & Resort over the border in West Virginia, was a big loser in Tuesday’s election. Jacobs spent $6 million on his aggressive campaign against the ballot measure in hopes of protecting MTR’s interests both out of state and in Columbus, where it owns a struggling horse track.

Gambling industry expert Jeffrey Hooke, of Hooke Associates, said Ohio casino licenses could have commanded from $350 million in Toledo to $700 million in Cleveland if they had been competitively bid. The constitutional amendment calls for collecting $50 million per license.