The Casino Advisory Panel released its short list of eight locations in Britain that will be home to the country’s first Las-Vegas-styled casino. The eight are Blackpool, Wembley Stadium, Cardiff, Glasgow, the Millennium Dome, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield.
Kerzner International which recently completed the first phase of going private, is among the five casino operators with “interests in British projects”. The other companies are Harrah’s Entertainment, MGM Mirage, Las Vegas Sands and Isle of Capri Casinos.
Some of the casino operators are already involved in projects in Britain which is famous for its wagering tradition, primarily on soccer, horse racing and dog racing. Las Vegas styled casino are unknown. Casinos are currently small private clubs reserved for the super rich where the games are primarily card games and the stakes considerably beyond the average attendees at Las Vegas’ temples to the one-armed bandit.
According to one expert the development of Las Vegas-styled casinos in Britain is critical to the industry and the five companies vying for a footprint in the lucrative British market. Brian Gordon of Applied Analysis, a research company in Las Vegas, said that the casinos in Britain would be able to “feed Las Vegas’ voracious demand for visitors”.
He said that a “significant share” of international visitors to Las Vegas come form the United Kingdom, “with some of them visiting Las Vegas more than once a year”. Another expert from Wall Street-based Majestic Research, said that the British market is “doubly valuable” for Las Vegas for two reasons. One is what Matthew Jacob, a senior gaming analyst, called the “Britons’ high propensity to gamble; the other is Britain’s “potential as a feeder market”.
“It is the Harrah’s (Entertainment) model applied internationally, cross-marketing casinos there with the market here,” Mr. Jacob said. Harrah’s which has a commitment to do the casino at Baha Mar focuses on developing regional gaming operations and feeding customers into a computerised, national players network and major casino operations. The ultimate winner will depend on “how much a supercasino could add to efforts to redevelop one of the depressed areas”, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Marc Falcone. Kerzner is already involved with the Millennium Dome.
By: C.E. HUGGINS, Business Editor, The Nassau Guardian
