MGM gets potty-mouthed; New York casino flops

MGM Resorts International‘s casinos-without-gaming new ad campaign is playing to divided opinions. For instance, the company has 100,000 square feet of gaming at Bellagio but you won’t spot so much as a pair of dice in the ad, yet MGM claims that its shows and restaurants “form the nexus across the company’s 27 distinctive resort destinations.” Gambling? That’s so 2008. There’s 100% more Cirque du Soleil than gaming in the commercials, except in the YouTube version, which devotes a whole two seconds to gambling. True, you can get the casino experience close to home nowadays but the casino floor remains ubiquitous and unavoidable in Las Vegas. For instance, Aria reverted to the old-school business model of making hotel guests trek through the gaming floor to get to their rooms — a mentality that one thought had gone out with Bellagio. MGM may derive ‘only’ 40% of its revenue from gambling but you don’t see it building any casino-free hotels on the Las Vegas Strip, unless you count Vdara,

One gaming analyst took the ads in stride, saying, “We have known for a while that more and more of the revenue is coming from the hospitality side, so it shouldn’t be shocking.” Retorted ULCA professor of marketing Aimee Drolet Rossi, “Use of profanity, explicit or implied, only gets attention for a moment and is not a sustained brand communication strategy. It’s also a mistake for the parent brand MGM which is more than just a holy shit business.” She’s referring to some not-so-catchy MGM phrases as ‘The world’s leading producer of OMG” (so long, Baby Boomers) and “We are not in the hotel business, We are in the holy sh*t business.’’ Although “The right amount of wrong” is cited as a precedent, it’s hella catchier than MGM’s clunky equivalents. They’re supposed to be smartest guys in the room and this is what they came up with? OMG, dude!

Meanwhile, Drolet Rossi counseled patience, telling the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “You need to be consistent with your campaign over a long period of time.” From where we sit, these new ‘catchphrases’ aren’t going to cut it over the long haul.

* Casino gambling soon won’t be the only tourist amenity you can partake of around the clock in Sin City. Marijuana dispensaries are moving toward the 24/7 business model. Or as Oasis Cannabis CEO Ben Sillitoe puts it, alluding to his casino neighbors, “We are on Industrial Road. There are 24-hour businesses all around us. … It makes sense operationally.” Clark County Comissioner Steve Sisolak has emerged as an unlikely spokesman for pot around the clock, saying, “Right now they have to shut down [for four hours], count everything up, come back an hour or two later and start the whole thing up again.” His colleague, Chris Giunchigliani put it best, saying, “Business model-wise, we’re a 24-hour town. So it makes sense.”

* Although the National Indian Gaming Association is taking a reserved status on sports betting, that didn’t prevent the American Gaming Association from having a “Kumbaya” moment yesterday in Phoenix. “Working with NIGA and the tribal community is a top priority for AGA as we seek an end to the federal ban that’s driving a $150 billion illegal sports betting market,” said the AGA’s PR veep, Sara Slane. Whether Slane’s conciliatory words move NIGA President Ernest Stevens off the fence in the battle over the Bradley Act remains to be seen.

* New upstate gaming in New York continues to lay an egg. Rivers Casino, in Schenectady, is doing only three-fourths of the lowest revenue projection for 2017. Gaming regulators and politicians are circling the wagons, saying that it’s too early to reach any judgment and, hey, we expected this all along. Really? Then was Neil Bluhm just pulling numbers out of his ass when Rush Street Gaming issued Rivers’ financial forecast? One thing’s for certain: It’s not too soon for revisionist history. Assemblyman and apologist Phil Steck said, I never saw the casino as being a primary engine of economic development.” Oh really? That’s not what we were hearing when casino expansion was being sold to Empire State voters.

* Resorts World Manila has finished the remaking of the second-floor casino that was the site of a June 2 shooting attack. Understandably, it’s getting a soft opening. This isn’t the sort of event one trumpets, in light of recent history. The damaged second floor is almost 65,000 square feet in size — worth keeping in mind at a time when the Japanese Diet is considering limiting Nipponese casino floors to 15,000 square feet (one-tenth the size of Aria’s casino floor). The stigma of gunplay has largely lifted from Resorts World, where admissions and hotel occupancy are approaching pre-shooting levels.

* Lawrence Ho has hardly been hurting for business at Tigre de Cristal, near Vladivostok, but the arrival of two competitors in 2019 is expected to improve revenues, due to the tried-and-true “cluster effect” in the casino biz. Cambodian operator NagaCorp and casino newbie Diamond Fortune Holdings are the interlopers. Ho is also looking to Vladimir Putin for help. Read a corporate report, “We expect that … ongoing efforts of the Russian government to promote the Russian Far East as a tourism destination will accelerate the already explosive growth of foreign tourism and provides us optimism that there is additional room to further ramp up our business.”