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Posted At : April 23, 2009 12:27 PM | Posted By : D McKee
Related Categories:
Regulation,MGM Mirage,Harrah's,Steve Wynn,The Strip
Back when Art Marshall was still on the Nevada Gaming Commission, he warned against the dark prospect of "corporate arrogance." Unfortunately, when MGM Mirage proposed to devour Mandalay Resort Group and Harrah's Entertainment followed with a "me too" takeover of Caesars Entertainment, Marshall opposed neither. He was far from alone in assenting to this anti-competitive duopoly on the Strip but he and others might do well to observe how the chickens have come home to roost.
For instance, according to a report in this morning's Las Vegas Review-Journal, if you're Harrah's Las Vegas and you've applied for a permit to overhaul the second floor, you don't actually have to wait for approval. You just go ahead and do it.
Never mind that Harrah's was caught red-handed by the R-J engaging in this sort of mischief over and over, something county authorities were either too lazy or disinterested to notice. (To its eternal credit, the R-J did ... and paid a terrible price.) There's still an outside chance that Harrah's will get a few light wrist slaps for its previous corner-cutting -- but that's obviously not been any great deterrent. Heck, even after Harrah's had been nabbed the first time, gaming regulators said everything was A-OK. Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.
The jury's still out on whether Harrah's is too big to fail, although MGM Mirage clearly is -- if recent intercessions by Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign hold any significance. However, Harrah's has clearly gotten too big for its britches, as its cavalier attitude towards following the building code indicates. Congratulations to Leon Black and CEO Gary Loveman for having brought a once-admired company to its present state.
(Say, Gary, whatever happened to that remodeling/retheming of Bally's Las Vegas you promised the world 46 months ago? Just wondering.)
In one particularly tart mini-essay, Steve Friess identified the two mega-takeovers as the point where Las Vegas began to go off the rails. Except for interested bystander Steve Wynn, there are still too few people willing to say it was a mistake -- and fewer still back then. Between the anti-regulatory fervor of the Bush II administration and a Vegas ethos that what's good for Kirk Kerkorian is good for everybody, a once-competitive Strip got steamrolled into an oligopoly.
And the market did sustain it ... for a time.
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