Taking a veiled stab at Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts, MGM Resorts International President William Hornbuckle said that a MGM 
megaresort in Japan would be “uniquely Japanese, not a copy of an integrated resort from Las Vegas or Singapore.” It would also spread the financial risk among “a consortium of leading Japanese companies.” Hornbuckle’s remarks accompanied a first glimpse of what MGM has in mind, including at least three hotel towers and a couple of cryptic pods. MGM Osaka would be built on Yumeshima, a landfill in the city’s bay.
While Osaka is considered more casino-friendly than the government of Tokyo, it’s still an underdog where consumers are concerned. But Melco Crown Entertainment has already come a-courtin’.
Hornbuckle also rolled out some diversity initiatives that may raise Nipponese hackles. He’s proposing more gender equality in the workplace, including a 30% share of managerial positions. We’ll see how that goes over in a notoriously patriarchal culture. MGM is even more bullish than Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on how casinos will increase tourism — 30 million by 2025. Hornbuckle was at pains to play up the impact of entertainment in Las Vegas — where it accounts for 69% of MGM’s revenue — and gloss over its lackluster performance in Macao.
A topic not addressed by Hornbuckle is the potential integration of pachinko parlors into casinos, which would require them to be legitimized and regulated as a form of gambling. Also, Abe’s government seems enamored of the Singaporean model of requiring citizens to pay an entry fee to patronize a casino. Where MGM, Melco and other aspirants stand on that remains to be seen, although they’ll likely go with the flow.
* Mall of America owner Triple Five is trying to dispose of the last five-plus acres it owns on the north Las Vegas Strip. The $86 million price tag is likely to scare off a lot of prospective buyers … unless it’s true that James Packer really paid $15.7 million an acre for the New Frontier site. Just south of the Riviera, the acreage is the remnant of a much larger assemblage of parcels for which it paid in the vicinity of $30 million an acre. Various hubristic megaresort plans were floated, then abandoned as economic reality caught up with Triple Five.
“Ultimately, Triple Five sold much of its north Strip property at a loss, through a process that lets people buy debt-laden real estate while avoiding the foreclosure process, county records show,” reports the Las Vegas Sun. (A near-casualty of Triple Five’s plans was the La Concha Motel, whose lobby was rescued and became the visitor center of the Neon Museum.) Triple Five still has 18 acres of “most vacant” south Strip land, so we’ve not heard the last of them.
* Signifying perhaps a larger malaise in the sport, Texas Station closed its poker room recently. The El Cortez eliminated its room earlier this.
