Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | June 2013 20 IN FOCUS Analysts aren’t sure about Resorts World Las Vegas. Fitch Ratings Service is guarded, pointing to the 1,620 rooms that will be entering an oversaturated market in 2014 at the new SLS Las Vegas. Macquarie Securities says the city will need 800,000 more visitors when Resorts World opens in 2016 just to maintain current occupancy levels. L as Vegas was pumped for the arrival on the 4th of March of Lim Kok Thay. The chairman and CEOof Malaysian conglomerate Genting had come to announce Resorts World Las Vegas, a 3,500- room extravaganza the company says it will build on the 87 dormant acres occupied by the steel skeleton of Boyd Gaming’s moribund Echelon project. Flanked by Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Mr Thay promised a development he said would be “transformational” for Las Vegas. He called it “exciting,” an “unparalleled opportunity”. Senator Reid hailed it as an “incredible addition”to the city and the state and a “boon to the Nevada economy”. The governor labeled it “dynamic, fantastic”. It’s not so long ago that the US$4 billion Echelon Resort and Casino was generating superlatives like these. To be precise it was in 2007, the year before the crash, when just next door a new chapter was being written on how to make a pile of money in Sin City. In May of that year, at the frothy peak of the real estate bubble, convenience store magnate Phil Ruffin took the US division of Israeli hoteliers El Ad Group for $1.24 billion for a rundown Eisenhower-era casino at the north end of the Strip called the New Frontier. CityCenter was well under construction at that point, Fountainebleau was going up across the street, Echelon’s girders were rising next door, and Vegas was minting money, or it seemed so at the time, and El Ad wanted some, having eyes for a $5 billion megaresort Vegas on the Come There’s supply and there’s demand and there’s oversupply … Then there’s Resorts World Las Vegas ... Will a Malaysian conglomerate spark the revival of Sin City’s fortunes?