With Caesar Augustus now decked out annually in full Electric Daisy Carnival regalia, and the Bellagio Fountains having incorporated a three-track medley from DJ superstar Tiesto into the musical lineup just last week, there's no doubt that Electronic Dance Music has now gone mainstream on the Strip. Tiesto ranked #3 this year (tied with 24-year-old Avicii) on the now annual Forbes "Electronic Cash Kings" list and has ditched a decade-long gig on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza, the former EDM capital of the world, for a residency at MGM Grand's Hakkasan. After ten years, "it felt there was nothing special [on Ibiza]," he observed last year, "and then I got the offer to play in Las Vegas … They made me a great proposal, not just the money but also what they’re going to do there, the biggest club in the world."
Just a few years ago, it looked as though the Las Vegas nightclub scene was in serious danger of imploding, with fines of $500,000, $650,000, and $1 million imposed by the Gaming Control Board on Planet Hollywood, the Hard Rock, and the Palms, respectively, following undercover investigations that revealed a list of offenses including excessive drunkeness (in 2010 a guest inebriated on grain alcohol drowned in the Rehab pool), the handling of incapacitated individuals (which, at Planet Ho, amounted to club security ejecting them unceremoniously directly onto the main casino floor, or the outside taxi rank), public sex acts, date rape, prostitution, "inappropriate" service charges, drug abuse and distribution, violence, admittance of minors, and failure to cooperate with law enforcement. These scandals followed the 2008 raid by federal agents of Pure nightclub at Caesars Palace on charges of tax evasion relating to a tip-concealing racket that saw the operator fined $141,306 and sentenced to eight months under house arrest (he avoided a prison sentence only due to ill health, but others involved served time).
In the case of Planet Hollywood's Privé tenant, the investigation led to a swift eviction notice, while its hotel-casino landlord was left to foot the bill. The nightclub and "daylife" venues at the other two resorts survived their respective scandals (although Moon at the Palms was closed for some time shortly after for a remodel, while Rain was permanently shuttered as part of the ongoing upheavals and revamps at the off-Strip party hotspot). But in the wake of all this highly unwelcome publicity, the state Gaming Control Board issued a very stern warning to casinos ahead of the 2012 pool-party season, stipulating that properties risked losing their gaming licenses if they were found to be in violation, whether or not they owned or were leasing any venue found to be the scene of illegal activities.
Despite gaming revenue having ceased to be the mainstay of Las Vegas' income several years ago, with Strip beverage departments first exceeding the $1 billion mark from drink sales back in 2011 in defiance of the general economic malaise that saw collective hotel-casino revenues here tumble by 16 percent, Las Vegas is still fundamentally a casino destination, and no sane property is going to jeopardize its gaming license for the sake of an out-of-control nightclub. Hence, Gaming Control's words appear to haven fallen on very attentive ears and we do not recall hearing of any major breaches of protocol since then. Meanwhile, Las Vegas boasted no less than eight of the Top 10 (actually, Top 11, as there was a tie for third place) venues listed in Nightclub & Bar's Top 100 Nightclubs in U.S., based on revenue, for 2014. No less than 24 Las Vegas venues made the list, including all of the Top 4; it was Encore's XS that claimed the #1 spot, having generated more than $90 million in revenues last year.
Hence, we would wager that the nightlife scene is pretty secure for the time being. But nothing stays the same forever, and of nowhere is that more true than Sin City, so we have to share your assumption that at some point, a new entertainment trend may rival or take over from the current EDM juggernaut.
One of the top contenders, we would have to say, would be the related business of live music. This weekend welcomed the return of the iHeart Radio extravaganza, hosted by not one one but two MGM Resorts venues; the LINQ's anchor tenant is the Brooklyn Bowl, which has already seen some big names passing through; and this weekend also saw the inaugural concert at the new Downtown Las Vegas Events Center, ahead of next month's second annual Life Is Beautiful Festival, which has already been extended by one day longer than the inaugural event. 2015 will see the first Rock in Rio music-and-culture extravaganza at the new 5-stage, 80,000-capacity City of Rock venue being built across from SLS (see QoD 9/17), while MRI's joint-venture arena with AEG is underway at the other end of the Strip. So, Las Vegas is now firmly on the live-music map and getting bigger by the day.
Right now, another business sector in the running would seem to be retail, although we really can't get our heads around how or why shopping turned into such big business here. According to the latest Las Vegas Visitor Profile report released by the Convention and Visitors Authority, average retail expenditure was up by a whopping 40% from the 2009 figure last year, at $140.90 per person. And as anyone who's been tuning in to this column recently will have noted, there are shopping complexes springing up the length and breadth of Las Vegas Boulevard -- henceforth to be known as the Strip Mall -- and out in the suburbs, too, with Downtown Summerlin scheduled to introduce more than 1.6 million square feet of retail, dining, and entertainment space to the mix when it debuts early next month, and Tivoli Village, also on the west side, continuing to expand. Perhaps this fad is already running its course to some extent, however: Our inquiries last week revealed that the $100 million retail add-on announced for the Tropicana at the end of last year has not yet begun construction and is unlikely to anytime soon (if at all, we sensed as the unspoken sub-text during a chat with the engineering department over there).
This brings us to our third suggestion -- a tongue-in-cheek long shot that's so bizarre, it could just happen! Taking your question at its most literal, what comes after a heavy night of EDM is often most likely a hangover of some sort, and Las Vegas has already jumped on that bandwagon, with Hangover Heaven offering a free shuttle service to its off-Strip clinic, which operates Friday through Monday (logically enough) or even on-the-spot treatment courtesy of the Hangover Heaven Bus. Likewise, MGM Grand is now home to the REVIV Wellness Spa, which specializes in treating "dehydration and low energy levels."
While M Resort was apparently ahead of its time when it opted to be the first casino here to debut with an on-site pharmacy (it didn't last long), now the Strip is awash with them, with the project under construction on the former Holy Cow site being anchored by a Walgreens, and a giant CVS being the only named tenant to date at Treasure Island's new mall. Casino Royale is also adding a Walgreens as part of the ongoing renovation that is expanding the busiest Denny's in the world. That will bring the total to five Walgreens and two CVS stores on the Strip alone (and yet another Walgreens to the north, on Las Vegas Boulevard at Charleston). So, we are thinking that perhaps after everyone is all partied-out in the nightclubs, and we've all gorged ourselves half to death in this all-you-can-eat-and-then-some gourmet/gourmand heaven, perhaps Las Vegas' next incarnation will be as a giant health retreat, with a new flagship resort-casino, perhaps called The Colonic (sounds kinda classy, no?, and in keeping with The Cromwell, The Delano, and so on), or better still the Hangover Heaven, if the clinic decides to take our vision and run with it.
Those are our three ideas. Perhaps we'll now throw this concept open to your suggestions in a future Reader Poll...
