For this week’s Green Felt Journal, I offer you an 800-word version of the 10,000-word paper I presented at the International Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking. It’s my attempt to assess whether the mid-decade spate of mergers was good for anyone…and from what I’ve discovered, it looks like the answer is “not really.” From Vegas Seven:
For the Las Vegas casino industry, the past decade has been defined by two things: consolidation and disaster. From 2000 to 2008, Las Vegas Strip casino operators acquired each other until two companies—today they are known as MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment Corporation—controlled nearly two-thirds of the Strip corridor casino market. The following three years is where the disaster, in the form of the recession, comes in. The timing of the two makes it difficult to assess whether the mergers were good or bad, on the balance, for Las Vegas, but the evidence we have indicates that we would have been better off with less-concentrated ownership.
via Casino Concentration and the Logic of Empire | Vegas Seven.
There’s a lot of research behind my conclusions that didn’t make the Vegas Seven article, but if the article makes it into the conference proceedings, you might be able to read the whole thing.
Glad my suggested headline (complete with Heinlein reference) made it to print.