Deutsche Bank analyst Carlo Santarelli visited Las Vegas this week and saw signs of life on the North Strip: “Despite limited 
progress, some recent concrete work is evident on the steel structures at Resorts World. We believe the project remains at least 3 years off and even that assumes the pace of activity accelerates meaningfully from the current state. We believe interest in Fountainbleu has picked up and believe a transaction with a potential developer could be a 2017 event. Given meaningful interior work remains at the asset, we anticipate it would take at minimum two years to open the property post work commencing at the asset.” [emphasis added] In other words, wait until 2020. Can SLS Las Vegas hang in that long?
Santarelli also reported in on MGM Resorts International‘s much-touted Profit Growth Plan, which is bad news for consumers: “Examples include raising beverage prices during a busy fight weekend and re-pricing theater tickets when demand is strong enough to charge higher prices for better seats.” I didn’t say it wasn’t standard business practice, but that doesn’t keep it from being a kick in the pants. The company is also taking the view that remarks about having to rebid for its concession in 2020 were “lost in translation.”
MGM National Harbor is still on a shakedown cruise, as it were. The company avers that it could use more than the 300 hotel rooms it has. 
Food and beverage, and retail are the weak spots on the balance. So too, apparently, is poker. In any event, the poker room is literally being kicked upstairs to make room for more slots and table games. There’s nothing calamitous about these revelations: MGM is new to the market and, besides, any other operator would probably being experiencing the same phenomena.
* Melco Crown Entertainment got shut out at the Asia Gaming Awards and Las Vegas Sands nearly went home empty-handed, had not its Assistant Casino Manager Long Jiawei Jace been tapped as an “emerging leader” in the industry. It was a big night for Galaxy Entertainment, which was named Best Gaming Operator while Galaxy Starworld nabbed Best Gaming Property and Galaxy Macau was named Best Integrated Resort. Wynn Palace was selected as having the best-designed casino floor while MGM Grand Paradise was singled out as the most socially responsible operator. (Jim Murren is sure to make a talking point of that.)
“The scale of development here is something that you can’t find anywhere else in the world,” said American Gaming Association President Geoff Freeman, on hand for G2E Asia. He did allow that 
the existing properties would need to be refreshed to ensure repeat visitation. That being said, “There’s nothing like this else in the world. Las Vegas is great, but Las Vegas is not Macao and vice versa. The experiment that is going on here is very compelling … We don’t just have buildings here in Macao, we have destinations.” Freeman added that the new properties were growing the market, not cannibalizing it, and the math seems to be proving him correct.
* “Gameball,” with its 12-sided dice in plastic pods definitely isn’t your father’s baccarat, maybe not even yours. Then again, mechanization of table games isn’t going over big with Asian players. Apparently part of the motivation for robot dealers is that human ones have seen their salaries rise by as much as 150%. How dare they! Besides, said International Game Technology veep Charles Cohen, “You have to remember the human factor. If you had a ‘super dealer’ who was able to deal at twice the speed of a human dealer; would it be enjoyable to play at that table? Could you really increase the number of hands per hour?… I think it would be exhausting. I don’t think that’s why people come and sit at the table to play, it’s a leisure activity.”
