See Vegas and die

Incidences of Coronavirus shot up with their biggest one-day increase ever last Friday: 970 in Clark County and 1,099 statewide. That’s where the ass-clownery of dissing social distancing will get you: the sick ward. In the casinos it was another, more docile story. “It is what it is,” rationalized one tourist, “I’d rather be here than not be here.” He warned a reporter, “The more you drink, the more lackadaisical you are.” Indeed, that glazed fatalism seems to have settled over Sin City visitors. A pause for silence, incidentally, to the Caesars Entertainment employee who has died of Covid-19. Let’s hope he or she didn’t get it from some schmuck customer.

Contrary to what Wall Street says, Station Casinos seems to be bracing itself for a long period of softness in the locals casino market. The company has asked the North Las Vegas City Council to suspend the gaming and liquor licenses for both Texas Station and Fiesta Rancho until June 4, 2021. (Fiesta Henderson and the Palms remain in limbo.) “Uncertain economic conditions” were named as the inciting factor, with Station probably feeling overexposed in the North Las Vegas market. Stock analysts have read an initial spike at locals casinos as significant of underlying strength in the Las Vegas economy but Station clearly is reading the tea leaves differently.

Strangely, Luxor was one of the casinos MGM Resorts International rushed back to market. We say “strangely” because the corporate rumor mill has the death-themed casino marked for demise. The arguments are that the pyramid structure is intractable to modification, that weak mid-pandemic demand would provide cover for a closing and the expiry of union contracts would make it easier to push the plunger on the Egyptian-inspired resort. Oh, and it has settling problems, the proverbial house built upon sand. (It’s karmic payback from sucking Vegas’ water table dry, causing vertical structures to exert more weight as the depleted ground beneath them subsides.) The call is no longer in the hands of MGM brass, though, but of their REIT, MGM Growth Properties, which gets to decide what the highest and best use of the underlying real estate is.

Black lives may matter but not in the upper echelons of the hospitality industry workforce. A study by The Castell Foundation discovered a 19% presence of African Americans in the hostelry industry overall—but only 1.5% in the top ranks, well behind a (still reprehensible) 5% of industries overall. In fact, 630 of companies surveyed did not boast one black executive. The report stated that such a scenario “could only occur in an industry that is structurally biased against black employees … Hospitality is even more dependent on black employees than other industries in North America, so equity, equality and inclusion are vitally important.” And if black men are marginalized, black women are virtually invisible, usually stashed in HR.

“The ratio should be one in five [black executives]. It’s one in 145 at the C-suite level. I didn’t really get the scale of the problem until I saw that,” said project director Peggy Berg. Warning that numbers like those are actionable, Berg asks what it will take for the industry to change. Just how it has been getting whiter in the casino sphere, we’d say something radical will have to happen.

Jottings: Osaka‘s plan to authorize a casino megaresort has been—wait for it—put on hold. MGM Japan execs are getting really good at waiting … Beijing is the latest hot spot for Covid-19. So much for relaxing those Macao visa restrictions … There has been a small but significant shift in Georgia opinions on gambling. Casino and parimutuel-wagering authorization made it out of committee 13-3. Each county would have the prerogative of voting it up or down. There’s nothing like a budget crisis to concentrate the minds of the Lege.