Proximity!

Steve Wynn and the birth of the "convenience casino."

by Isaiah Thompson

	print	email	reply	rss feed

Published: Mar 3, 2010

When Steve Wynn gets excited, his voice cracks. It happened to the casino mogul just last week when, during a conference call with investors, he was asked about his proposed takeover of the failing Foxwoods Casino project on the South Philly waterfront: "I'm two blocks from a Vietnamese neighborhood, I'm five blocks from Society Hill, I'm in a town with seven universities," Wynn replied, his voice rising. "On the other side of the bridge is Cherry Hill, New Jersey, all full of my old friends: Italians and Jews and every conceivable stripe of ethnic group that love to shoot craps and gamble. And they're" — crack! —"10 minutes away in their cars. ... I love my proximity to these people!"

He should. Proximity, these days, is everything. Wynn knows it. His gambling empire, Wynn Resorts Ltd., lost money on his Las Vegas casinos last year. (The company's overall profit for 2009 was just $20 million, down from $210 million the year before.) It's the times. Glam is out, glum is in. The "destination casinos" of Vegas and Atlantic City, with their shows and getaway hotels, aren't worth the bother. Gamblers — the profitable kind, anyway — don't want Tony Bennett. They don't want boardwalks and fine dining. They want privacy, darkness and rows and rows of slots, the closer to home or work, the better. 

It's the convenience casino.

Tourists are finicky, few and far away, and Wynn knows this, too. This week, he announced that his Philly casino would be only three stories tall and wouldn't include a hotel.

These casinos aren't for tourists; they're for us.

It's a winning model — maybe the only winning model. Casinos were legalized here on the premise that people were already gambling, they just did it in AC. And sure enough, as Pennsylvania's casino revenues rose, Atlantic City's fell. But not equally: Pennsylvania gambling revenue growth is outpacing AC's decline by a factor of five. "The cannibalization effect on Atlantic City has stabilized," the Gaming Industry Observer recently reported. It predicts "23.8 percent growth in eastern Pa. for 2010, while Atlantic City declines 4.3 percent."

Pennsylvania hasn't just stolen gamblers back from Atlantic City. It's discovered new ones — created them, one might say, right here at home.

"They're 10 minutes away in their cars," said Wynn, his voice cracking. "I love my proximity to these people!" I'll bet he does.

A Million Stories
Bring Back Croce
The Bell Curve