Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING MARCH 2018 20 send over many of its resident Las Vegas acts, including the likes of Lady Gaga and Cher, to perform at the venue – a fascinating prospect if true given the intimate nature of the space. “MGM is the largest MICE operator in Las Vegas and that gives us the ability to attract our vast network of Fortune 500 leaders to host their conferences here at MGM Cotai,” Murren added during his welcome speech at the grand opening. MGM China co-Chairperson and Executive Director Pansy Ho has previously touted MGM Theater as the perfect venue to host professional eSports tournaments. At the heart of MGM Cotai is a huge public space known as Spectacle which takes MGM Macau’s Grand Praça concept and elevates it to the next level. Stretching four stories high and the length of a football field, Spectacle brings together elements from the natural world via an array of digital art and a massive indoor art garden. Twenty-five giant LED screens display over seven hours of continually evolving imagery which was captured by selected artists and aims to “highlight the beauty of the natural world.” Complementing this technological showcase is the world’s largest indoor art garden, home to more than 100,000 plants and 2,000 plant species including more than 200 different orchid species, many of which are native to Macau and Hong Kong. Intent on standing out from the crowd, MGM actually brought several extinct plant species from the 19th and 20th centuries back to life for Spectacle via botanical garden seed banks in Hong Kong and Europe. Such indulgence is also on display in MGM Cotai’s art collection, carefully compiled under the watchful eye of Ms Ho. The collection, worth more than HK$100 million, includes modern and contemporary Asian paintings and sculptures by renowned artists, freshly-commissioned works by local and regional rising talents and large-scale installations, among them 28 Chinese imperial carpets dating from the Qing Dynasty that previously adorned the Forbidden City in Beijing. Visitors in search of a meal are well catered for with nine dining outlets, ranging from 24-hour noodle and dumpling house Miàn Duì Miàn to the ultra-exclusive The Dining Room, available only to guests of The Mansion. If celebrity chefs are your thing, MGM Cotai has four of them – Grill 58° with a menu designed by Chef Mauro Colagreco; Aji, the first authentic Nikkei restaurant in Macau by Chef Mitsuharu Tsumura; Coast by Top Chef TV personality Graham Elliot; and pastry shop Janice Wong MGM. “Many people over the past six years have asked us to describe MGM Cotai and I don’t think we’ve ever done it justice because this is a property that you have to experience,” says Bowie. “This is a property we’ve designed with the intention of being able to transform constantly and continuously to be always relevant to the rapidly changing expectations of the Chinese consumer. “The challenge was how to create something that is truly new. MGM Theater is an example of architectural and engineering excellence which allows us to create a venue to host many different creative opportunities. “We are not trying to be everything to everyone, we are just trying to be important to those people for whom high quality, innovation and most importantly passion is an important attribute of creating their experiences and their interests.” COVER STORY MGMTheater