Thomas Robert Reeg
Chief Executive Officer at Caesars Entertainment
Thanks, Bret. I'll start with some general housekeeping in the quarter. There's $10 million-ish of expense in the corporate line item this quarter that I would view as onetime but was not added back to EBITDA relating to lobbying efforts primarily in Missouri and adverse claims impact in our health care. Taking each segment one at a time. Regional, I told you last quarter that what we were anticipating was continuation of what we saw in the second quarter, where New Orleans would be significantly impaired on a year-over-year basis due to disruption, Reno would be impaired because of lack of a significant group that was in the business last year. Both of those came true. I didn't have -- our friends at Boyd opened their Treasure Chest move to land-based at a particularly for fortuitous time relative to what was happening at our New Orleans property, where the bulk of the gaming floor was under construction. So New Orleans had a particularly difficult quarter.
If I look at regionals across the enterprise, we have significant properties that continue to be impacted by incremental competition. We've got Horseshoe, Indianapolis with Terre Haute; we've got Tunica with Southland; we've got our 3 Chicago properties with the various Chicago market, Illinois openings; and we've got Council Bluffs, which has been impacted by the racino openings in Nebraska. We've really not had tailwinds to speak of within the portfolio in terms of things we were doing that would offset them. That changed last week when we opened Caesars New Orleans. As we've talked about repeatedly, there's a significant opportunity for a very high flow-through incremental revenue there because of the way the tax structure is set up in New Orleans. The property turned out beautifully. Anthony went through the particulars of what we added, but the early reception has been tremendous. We're very, very optimistic about what happens in New Orleans. Also, Virginia will open before the end of the year.
That's a significant increase in gaming positions in a property that is our highest win per position property in the enterprise, so we're very excited about that as well. The last thing I'd say about Regional in the quarter is, as you know, we have properties along the Gulf Coast and in Florida, and there was some weather impact that hit those due to the storms during the quarter. Hopeful that, that's nonrecurring. As you look toward '25, we sit here almost November 1, so we start to think about '25. We will have tailwinds in New Orleans and Virginia that start to offset some of these competitive impacts in Regional.
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So we feel very good about the way '25 looks versus the last 2 quarters in Regional for us. Looking to Vegas, what I told you last quarter is we'd expect to be flat to up for the third quarter. We ended up coming in down about $10 million in EBITDA. If you look at the specifics of that, that's all table hold related. So our non-gaming revenue, cash flow were records, our slot handle and win was flat. It was table hold that was the laggard. It was not poor table hold, it was within our range of expectations, just not as strong as last year.
As you look to Vegas moving forward, I feel good about the fourth quarter where we've got Versailles Tower online where it was not online last year. Early returns there are quite strong. We also had the catch-up accrual for the union contract in the fourth quarter that will not recur, and then you look into -- and I also want to touch on -- I know there's been a lot of chatter on F1 and fourth quarter generally in the market. For us, recall F1 was about $17 million, $18 million lift last year in EBITDA versus the same quarter, the same weekend in '22. If I were looking at '23 for that, for the race in particular, I would say flat to down a couple of million dollars versus last year, but highly dependent on hold, given that's a high-end business. So really, from an investment perspective, what it's doing to our cash flow versus last year basis, it's not worth mentioning, except that you've had all this chatter in the market.
Cash room revenue for the quarter, I know that you see rate surveys that are muddied by all that went on with F1 last year. I'd expect our cash room revenue to be up year-over-year slightly for the fourth quarter. So really nothing to read into Vegas other than continued strength. As we look into '25, again, first quarter was a difficult quarter for us, hold-wise, you were kind of the left side to standard deviations in terms of where our hold would normally be. So we would expect that we recoup some of that in the first quarter. And then I'd say you're looking at flat to slightly up as you look out through the rest of the year. The convention segment, the group business for next year was stronger in '24 than '23 and will be stronger in '25 than '24. And then if we go to Digital, tremendously pleased with the way Digital has been coming together. Eric talked about over 40% top line growth in aggregate, 83% in iGaming, which is extraordinary.
We had been outpacing our peers in growth by about 2x coming into the quarter. I'd expect we're closer to 3x in the third quarter, and that was without the rollout of the Horseshoe brand. I feel very good about the rollout of that brand. We've got data on Michigan, we've kind of got a full month or so now in Michigan, where that's how we migrated the WynnBET customers that we acquired over into our Horseshoe brand. And not only did we not have friction where we lost customers, we actually grew that business versus when it was Wynn. We've recently launched Pennsylvania and West Virginia and expect that to be a further building block in iCasino after a 83% growth in the quarter. This month is still growing on a sequential basis month-over-month.
So we feel very, very good about what's happening there. All of the targets that we've laid out, I know that we talk about this all the time, there's really no change to our expectations. We'd expect to have a strong fourth quarter, notwithstanding October has been not the best sporting outcomes, but you've got a lot of the quarter left and a lot of heavy sports calendar for the next 60 days, where we feel we can start to claw some of that back. But I'd expect a very good fourth quarter, and then into next year, expect continued strong growth. As Eric said, structural hold continues to increase in our business. You can see that in our results. And coupled with what's going on in iGaming, I think the future is very bright for our Digital business. I think that business is going to end up generating a hell of a lot more than the $500 million target that everybody has been wringing their hands about for the last three years.
So we feel very good about that. Stepping over to kind of strategic and financial. We announced the sale of the Promenade retail lease portfolio to retail and F&B lease portfolio today. The multiple on that trade is about 14x, so you can do that math, that EBITDA will come out. That was all in the Vegas segment. So that comes out next year. We executed a $140 million share buyback in the third quarter. You should expect that as we -- we've talked about -- we've gotten to our inflection point from a capital spending standpoint. With Virginia opening, you should expect capex next year to be running, on a gross basis, $650 million, so significantly below where we've been in the last couple of years. By the end of this year, we'll have paid back -- we will have reduced debt by 25% in absolute numbers since we closed the Caesars transaction.
Debt reduction remains our number one priority, but we did execute the $140 million share buyback. We've got another $500 million authorized. You should not expect a programmatic use of this authorization. It's not going to be x amount per quarter as far as the eye can see. We're going to be looking at returns in the various possibilities in terms of capital spending, debt reduction and share repurchase. Debt reduction will remain our number one focus, but if we can continue to buy our stock in the mid-teens or better free cash flow yield, you should expect us to be active there as free cash flow comes in and cash flow from asset sales comes in. So you should expect a piece of this Promenade sale does get used during the quarter for repurchase.
In terms of future asset sale activity, we have discussions around noncore assets that are ongoing, but I would tell you that World Series and Promenade were the 2 easiest ones to execute on, although Brian, who spearheaded Promenade, might dispute that Promenade was an easy one. But these were the 2 simplest ones for us to execute. So you should believe that we're still working down that path, but that the stuff that we're working on has longer tail and/or lower probability than the 2 that were executed. But as we look into '25, Bret talked about our refinancing, every 100 basis points of rate reduction from the Fed is $60 million of incremental free cash flow for us. So they're 50 basis points first move is $30 million a year for us.
The unsecured note offering that Bret just executed in the quarter is another $20 million. So you've got $50 million incremental annual coming in. You've got a much lower lease step-up this year just because of the mechanics of the leases, and you've got a significant step down in capital expenditures. So our free cash flow is going to increase dramatically as we move forward. So we think we can we can continue to reduce debt and we can buy back stock responsibly, and that's our plan as we move forward.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Andrew for questions.
