Tom Reeg
Chief Executive Officer at Caesars Entertainment
Thanks Bret. To touch briefly on the fourth quarter results, I know we pre-released about a month ago, so they've been out there. If you look at the Caesar specific items that were going on in the quarter to get toward what is our -- where did we come run rate -- run rating out of the quarter, we had in Vegas, recall that we were accruing for the new union contract that was signed in the fourth quarter. The accruals that we had put in place since June 1 were not quite at the level where the contract ultimately landed, so there's a catch up payment in there. The Versailles tower that we were transforming at Horseshoe into the Versailles Tower of Paris, those rooms were entirely offline in the quarter. So we had 65,000 fewer room nights at over a $200 ADR. In sports, as has been well documented, a away from us November hold was historically in players favor. We quantified that to about $20 million in our pre-release in EBITDA, and we had construction disruption, as Anthony says, in Indiana and New Orleans in the quarter. If you put all that into the blender and figure out where we came out, I have us set $975 million to $1 billion of run rate EBITDA in the fourth quarter. We had stronger hold last year in Vegas than we did this year, both within our normal range. We were more middle of the range this year, high end of the range last year. That's not in those numbers that I gave you, but if you look at Vegas on any volume indicator room revenue was up despite the fewer room nights, food and beverage revenue was up double digits, slot handle was up, table drop was flat for us.
As you'll recall, in prior quarters, we talked about F1 as a big stimulator of demand for us. We had been talking about a 5% lift in EBITDA in the quarter from F1, our actual experience was about a 4% lift. So pretty close to what we were expecting. It was a huge lift for the high end properties in the market, as you've seen, including Caesar's Palace and Paris. For us, it was less so for mass market properties, but generally speaking, it was a phenomenal event for the market. It needs to get -- obviously, that will be first year of the Grand Prix in Las Vegas. It was a gargantuan effort to pull off a race at all. As with anything of that scale where you launch, you learn, what would I do differently as we move forward? We know at Caesars that this will be a better event when more of the city is energized, not just the four or five buildings that garnered the brunt of the benefit. So we're working with our partners in the city and with F1 to make sure that it is a more broadly successful event next year than even the success that it was this year.
Thinking about this year, as we look forward now, January was a debacle from a weather standpoint. I think that's well understood across the market, you had about three to four weeks that were significantly weather impacted. So we and everybody else starts in a January whole. What's good about that is January is a seasonally slower month to begin with. I expect even with what went on in January, we'd expect growth from each of our three segments. I expect growth in Vegas and EBITDA in regionals and EBITDA in digital, with digital being the most dramatic in my expectation.
If you look at what's going on in digital, we're particularly excited with what's happening in iCasino. I know we've talked about iCasino for a very long time. We're seeing the fruits of our labor there. Eric and Matt Sunderland and their team have done a fantastic job. You saw in fourth quarter hand on revenue was up 50% plus. We continue to grow on a month-over-month basis from there. So we're accelerating from their Caesars Palace online, as Eric said, launched second half of the third quarter. It's already to the point where it's about the same level of revenue as the business that preceded it in Caesars and it has created the shift that we anticipated to more slot play, more skewed towards female, in line with our Caesars Reward database, that's a higher hold business as well. So our iCasino numbers are ramping very, very quickly and continuing to accelerate. Keep in mind that in the digital business, iCasino is a higher margin business than OSB. So that bodes well for us this year.
And in terms of capital, free cash flow, recall that when we finished -- when we completed the merger with Caesars, we had a number of big ticket items that were either committed to as part of the merger like this $400 million of spend in Atlantic City or had been committed to by either the Caesars side or El dorado side. Prior, we were rebuilding the Lake Charles property. We had -- we extended the lease in New Orleans, and we're pursuing an expansion there that was tied to that lease extension. And we had been awarded the license in Danville, which has been home run out of the box. But chunky capital projects with really not much discretion involved with them, but I'm pleased to say that we're reaching the other side of that in '24. Atlantic City is in the rear view mirror, as is Lake Charles, the -- I'm sorry, the Caesars New Orleans project, should open late third quarter and the Danville project should open by the end of the year.
So as we look to -- by the time the Danville project opens, we have a significant reduction in capex as we move forward. Free cash flow should be continuing to improve, both from growth in EBITDA reduction in capex, and as Brett said, our financing that we executed in January. If you think about -- this is the second consecutive January, Brett and his team have executed a $4.5 billion financing for us. Nobody really would have set up a balance sheet with $9 billion in 2025 maturities, but that's what the market allowed us to do when we came to finance Caesars in the middle of the pandemic. So that's what we dealt with. Last year, when rates were going up, we did $4.5 billion and shifted our fixed to floating interest ratio to 75% fixed, 25% floating as rates rose. This year, we reversed that did the $4.5 billion. Now we're 50% floating, 50% fixed. So as we pay down debt and the Fed moves into the rate cutting regime that they are telegraphing, free cash flow further improves for us.
So we're very pleased with 2023, I add my thank you and congratulations to our team members who delivered an unbelievable year for us, just shy of $4 billion of EBITDA lift of over $700 million from 2022, and we're excited for what 2024 holds for us.
And with that, I'll open for questions.
