Ultimate Sports Entertainment (USE) showed up in Las Vegas in 2005 and in March 2006 announced extremely ambitious plans to build and operate "the most extraordinary sports and entertainment resort in the world." This $4 billion "sports hotel-casino destination" was planned to occupy 116 acres in North Las Vegas near the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with 10 sports venues ranging from a 1,000-seat ice rink to the 26,000-seat main arena, plus a driving range, shooting range, swim and dive center, bowling center, and more. There was also supposed to be a 150,000-square-foot casino with 3,500 slots and 130 table games; a 5,500-room hotel, and a million-square-foot convention center, along with the usual five-star restaurants, trendy nightclubs, luxurious spa, upscale shops, 20,000-space parking garage, and various sports Halls of Fame. The only thing missing was a partridge in a pear tree.
At the time, we called it, euphemistically, "a grand vision."
At the time, we also commented that because of the enormous price tag, along with the North Las Vegas location, the start-up nature of the company, and the long list of pipe-dream projects announced in Las Vegas over the decades, many experts were skeptical that it would ever get off the ground.
And get off the ground it never did, though the president of USE, Matt Rose, was immediately sued by a former partner, Knockout! Sports Network, Inc. (KSpN!), for appropriating the idea for the metaresort. The first lawsuit was dismissed on technical grounds; KSpN! came right back with a second suit, seeking punitive damages of $8 billion.
For a peek of the grand vision, the Ultimate Sports Resort's highly slick website, ultimatesportsresort.com, is still up, though when you click on the media links (for example, the 3/10/08 press release), you get the familiar "The page cannot be found" screen.
The press release mentioned above concerned the acquisition of Ultimate Sports Entertainment by American Southwest Music Distribution, Inc. The newly combined company was renamed Ultimate Sports Resorts. According to the press release, private financing for USE "proved unrealistic," so the company went public by merging with American Southwest. For its part, American Southwest was excited about partnering with Ultimate Sports and believed it enhanced shareholder value and so forth. No details of the deal were provided.
History shows that March 2008 was the bottom (so far) of the current recession, with the credit markets completely drying up, so the timing of the acquisition announcement for the multi-billion-dollar resort couldn’t have been more unfortunate.
In early June 2008, Matt Rose replaced American Southwest’s two board directors and was named president and CEO of the newly merged company. In July 2008, however, American Southwest announced that the merger had been terminated and the company had accepted the resignation, after five weeks as CEO, of Matt Rose; it also announced it was unable to file its 10-K with the SEC. Two months later, its stock was delisted by the OTC Bulletin Board for failure to comply and two months after that, it voluntarily deregistered its shares.
Since then, we’ve heard nothing more about American Southwest, Matt Rose, or the Ultimate Sports Resort. An email to the website’s address bounced as undeliverable and the phone number was disconnected.
