Atlantic City Casinos Up the Ante

Daily Mail: Soon it might be more difficult to concentrate on the cards at Atlantic City’s casinos.

The Tropicana Casino and Resort is creating a new ‘party pit’ where female blackjack and roulette dealers will wear skimpy bustiers and stockings. It’s part of a desperate attempt by the nation's second-largest gambling market to sex things up as the competition for the gambling dollar grows ever fiercer.

Steve Callender, Tropicana's vice president, said the casino is in the process of hiring dealers ‘with great personalities that look nice’ to work in the new pit. Existing dealers will not be required to wear the revealing costumes when the pit opens over the July 4th weekend.

Down the Boardwalk in the New Jersey gambling hub at Resort Casino Hotel a nightly adults-only Naked Circus is to be introduced in July. The casino has already caused outrage this year with a 60-foot-wide bare bottomed billboard that it placed on the highway in a bid to win back business.

‘It'll be as naked as the law allows,’ said Resorts co-owner Dennis Gomes, who is fast gaining a reputation for his willingness to push sex to promote his brand and generate publicity and buzz. He said the provocative female performers will wear just pasties and G-strings.

The casino has already facing two lawsuits after it introduced revealing flapper costumes for female cocktail waitresses. Older female workers said they were fired after being deemed insufficiently sexy in the new costumes. The black-fringed flapper dresses, worn with black fishnet stockings, are extremely low-cut in the back.

‘Sexiness is just part of it,’ Mr. Gomes said. ‘It's excitement, fun. Everything that Las Vegas has, we're going to have.’

Starting with the 1978 opening of Resorts, the nation's first casino outside Nevada, Atlantic City for years was the only place to play slots, cards, dice or roulette in the eastern half of the United States. But its 11 casinos have been battling for survival as they face competition right on their doorstep in Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware, as well as the recession.

In the last four years a billion and a half dollars of revenue has been lost along with thousands of jobs and tourists. Pennsylvania, which now has 10 casinos, is poised to knock Atlantic City into third place at some point next year.