The importance of being Steve Wynn; Sheldon’s fan club

“Even the Red Sox aren’t that popular in Everett,” says Steve Wynn, alluding to recent poll numbers. Heady stuff. So, while he comes down off Cloud Nine, let’s look at a pretty impressive 3Q13 — if not as boffo as Las Vegas Sands‘ — for Wynn Resorts. Revenue from Macao rose 10%, while the Las Vegas Strip resorts eked out a 1% increase. Wynn had an interesting explanation for the latter phenomenon. Competition for DJ talent is stiff, he said, driving up the price of talent (J.P. Morgan analyst Joe Greff pointed the finger of blame at Hakkasan). I wonder if that’s the first time high-priced DJs have ever factored in a Wall Street conference call.

Wrote Deutsche Bank‘s Carlo Santarelli, ” we think the results were modestly better than expected, though no true surprise,” adding that the door was still open for a year-end dividend. Still, he liked what he saw enough to raise his price target and earnings-per-share estimates. Greff called the quarter “uneventful,” which was — he added — “a good thing.” He liked that Wynn Palace on the Cotai Strip could not only be paid for out of cash on hand and cash flow, but that it should be open in time for Chinese New Year 2016. Back home, Wynncore was generating 88% occupancy and $250 ADRs.

But the headline item was Wynn complaining of “deal fatigue,” as his company is probed by regulators from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. El Steve had to walk a fine line here, obviously wanting to blast away but having to be careful not to wreck his chances, either. “And that burns me up,” he said of the scrutiny, unable to hold his anger completely in check, but “I try and get over it because then people say that you’re arrogant or you’re disdainful of the process.” Wynn explains his recent ‘buy American’ drive as an effort to change the “homely and unattractive” look of regional gambling by putting forward a romantic vision: “the era of the grand hotel could come back again, beautiful hotels that people actually go and stay for the weekend, eat in fine restaurants, have meetings.”

While Wynn sounded discouraged about his Massachusetts prospects — and said they’d be on the docket at his next board meeting — he didn’t come across has having given up hope. Even so, Wynn Resorts “intends to stay an Asian company primarily.”

Party of One. Geopolitical mastermind and occasional casino owner Sheldon Adelson has a fan in Boston Globe columnist Shirley Leung, who penned the mogul a mash note right about the time he — pardon the phrase — went nuclear. Leung hasn’t done her homework on Adelson and her fallacious column reflects it. Ask yourself when was the last time Sheldon operated a racino or went into a project as a minority investor? If you answered, “Never,” go to the head of the class. (Add a gold star if you said, “Fucking never.”) “Boston shouldn’t have the kind [of casinos] that prey on little old ladies with oxygen tanks, one hand glued to a slot machine, the other gripping a plastic cup of nickels,” Leung naively typed, as though such customers would be barred from an Adelson-owned casino.

Then the Boston Globe put Leung on a plane to Florida to check out Hard Rock International‘s style of operation. Confronted with the Hard Rock’s catholic appeal and money-making mojo, Leung was compelled to drop her reflexive anti-Hard Rock stance. But she managed to get in one last complaint about “the music, it’s always on, blaring. In the lobby, in the poker room, in the restaurants, by the pool. Madonna, Mumford & Sons, DJ Steve Aoki.”

Funny, that sounds a lot like my visit to Palazzo earlier this week.