Did Las Vegas reopen too swiftly and too soon? Has it, in fact—as we asked and Las Vegas Sands President Rob Goldstein heavily implies—jumped the shark? It has for 1,200 Las Vegas Strip workers. In addition to 828 already-reported sackings at the Tropicana Las Vegas, another 180 at Park MGM Theater and 164 at MGM Grand Garden have been pink-slipped. Bottom line: Big events aren’t coming back anytime soon. Put those Lady Gaga tickets back in the drawer. If you think we’re pessimistic, try Trop GM Mike Thoma for a dose of doom and gloom. “Significant drags on our business will likely continue for the foreseeable future,” he wrote. “We could not have anticipated when our properties would be allowed to reopen and how restrictive the new operating conditions would be, and the negative impact this would have on business volumes.”
We’re not sure we buy that. Manager Penn National Gaming, by waiting until September to reopen the Trop, should have had a good picture of the competitive landscape. And if didn’t now what conditions would be and how they’d impact business, Penn just wasn’t paying attention. 236 M Resort employees will get a Penn Christmas present in the form of termination on Dec. 21 or within the following fortnight. Help us through the holiday season and then out the door with you. About the only good news is that 17 Trop dealers marked for termination got an extension, presumably because business improved.
Once there is a vaccine (I think sometime in January) the economy will start improving and hopefully fast. A long cold winter would help Las Vegas and once there is a vaccine most people will want to go out and have fun again. Still though I think around 20% of the population will permanently change their habits because of Covid-19 and this will include going out to both restaurants and movies. Conventions should be back in the spring of 2021 and this will really help popular convention destinations like Las Vegas, Orlando and Chicago.
Congrats to the LA Dodgers for winning the World Series. Lastly the NBA will push their season back until March of 2021 because the owners want to have fans in the stands for NBA games. It won’t be full capacity but maybe around 60% and this includes fans in luxury boxes. About 40% of the NBA revenue comes from ticket sales at the gate so the bubble days are over for the NBA. I think the NBA season will start sometime around mid March.