About this app
What is Lion Thunder?
Bringing you series of articles such as Poker on Screen and Poker in Print has been a massive source of pride for myself and the team and I even got the chance to discuss poker in the movies and on television on the recent episode of the award-winning podcast, The Chip Race.
As ever, I am indebted to too many people to mention, but Derek, Bill, Jasmine and every one of the Calvin Ayre team, as well as Calvin himself of course, have all shown a lot of faith in me to carry the torch and I hope I’ve done them all credit.
Finally, I really want to thank you, the reader who has kept coming back to find out what else I’m writing about each day, week, month and year. It is you to whom I write, constant reader, and if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read, then feel free to follow me on Twitter, where a new destination will shortly be announced.
What is Lion Thunder?
Introduced in 1998, ClubGRANTS was designed to channel a share of gambling-linked profits from gaming clubs back into local communities. This includes health and welfare services as well as community development and sporting clubs.
According to the Gaming Machine Tax Act 2001, a tax rebate of up to 1.85% of a club’s gaming machine profits is made available to any registered club that records profits of over $1 million (US$715,000) during a tax year.
This is only possible if the club in question allocates at least 0.75% of prescribed profits over $1 million to community-focused activities and services. These profits make up two-thirds of the ClubGRANTS scheme funding.
How to play Lion Thunder
That window Scheinthal had hoped for seems to be moving further away. Caesars’ proxy filing showed that even during negotiations in the spring, Fertitta refused to go above its $31-per-share offer “due to higher financing costs and increased macroeconomic risks”. From the end of 2025 to late April of this year, higher borrowing costs had resulted in “approximately $40 million per year in additional costs from when the process started”, the filing said.
Diller, for his part, lodged an all-cash, $48.30-per-share offer for MGM days after the Caesars deal broke. People Inc. finished Q2 with $1.1 billion in cash, but between the 74% of shares it would acquire, as well as MGM’s long-term debt of over $6 billion, some level of financing would be required. MGM appointed an independent committee to review the bid but has said nothing since.
Moving forward, history suggests that this month’s rate hike might not be the last. During hawkish periods, the FOMC has paused after an initial rate hike just once since the 1990s, per the Wall Street Journal. Over that period, the US Central Bank has typically lifted rates six to seven times throughout an upward cycle. Warsh has signalled optimism in the economy’s stability moving forward.
