Vol. 4, No. 8, August 2008
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That’s Entertainment!
Casino heads hope big acts will bring back tourists
This was back when gaming was its own attraction—when ritzy rooms, the best in retail and rollicking nightlife antics were all secondary to a roll of the dice. The majority of casino revenue was generated by gaming, and players would take a break from blackjack long enough to catch a show at the Sands before heading back to the tables.
These days, the tables have turned. Big acts like Elton John and Bette Midler, and Celine Dion before them, draw visitors to Vegas who have no intention of putting their hard-earned dollars into a slot machine, let alone playing poker all weekend. They are here for the entertainment, the nightlife, the Las Vegas experience. Penny slots are an afterthought.
In today’s current economic climate, gaming revenue is down, and casino executives are betting on the draw of entertainment to bring tourists to Las Vegas. Times have changed since the old days—shows are not only expected to attract visitors to town, but also to keep them here.
From Sinatra to Saxe
When locals and tourists alike envision entertainment in Las Vegas, images of crooners like Old Blue Eyes come to mind—dinner, drinks and dancing to the best the music business had to offer. However, lounge acts and small-scale headlining shows like Frank Sinatra’s have evolved as the city has grown into the gleaming metropolis it is today.
There are two types of shows in the Las Vegas entertainment industry today as production company owner David Saxe describes them: there is A-list entertainment, and then there is B-list entertainment.
Saxe, who produces shows at the V Theater he owns at the Venetian, jokingly refers to himself as “King of the B Shows,” but he acknowledges a distinct schism between the top-dollar acts and the smaller variety shows that he produces.
“The celebrities—such as Elton John and now Bette Midler and Celine—they’ve made their impact, and they’re A-list,” Saxe said. “And then there’s the rest of us.”
David G. Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and also a contributing editor for Casino Connection, said casino properties have upped the ante since the ‘60s to keep visitors coming back for more.
“The shows were definitely much lower profile than they are today,” Schwartz said. “There were two main kinds of shows: there were headliner shows and there were the revue shows. Some of the shows like Celine kind of merge the two.”
Saxe specializes in the revue-style acts, like V : The Ultimate Variety Show and Popovich Comedy Pet Theater. In the past, gamblers came to Las Vegas for the thrill of the game, and would catch the kind of shows Saxe has spent his entire career crafting in between stints at the tables. While the big performers, like Elvis Presley and Sinatra’s gang, might have drawn a few non-gamers to town, in today’s market, gaming is no longer solely the domain of Las Vegas. Casinos need more than just a flashy game or loose slots to bring frugal Americans to the Strip.
“People can get the same games anywhere,” Schwartz said. “You can play Wheel of Fortune slot machines anywhere on the Strip, but you can’t see Bette Midler anywhere on the Strip.”
The Golden Ticket
With the legalization of gambling in states across the country, Las Vegas casinos have been searching for new ways to draw tourists to the city. Aside from the in-progress metaresorts, many properties are designing major productions for extended performances by some of the world’s biggest stars.
Caesars Palace kick-started the trend after building the Colosseum for Celine Dion’s A New Day… show, which was rejuvenated during Dion’s breaks by Elton John’s The Red Piano performance. Now the space plays host to resident diva Bette Midler. Other properties are honing in on their own headlining acts. The Flamingo housed a Toni Braxton show, though Braxton was excused before her contract ran out due to health problems.
This strategy of crafting shows around big artists is intended to draw non-gamers to the city, a strategy which has had a great deal of success, according to Schwartz.
“The V variety show and that kind of thing is more something that people would do while they’re in Vegas, but I don’t think people would come to Vegas and say, ‘Wow, I’ve got to see that show,’” Schwartz said. “But I think if someone is a big enough fan of one of the headliners, they would come to Vegas just to see them.”
Saxe agreed his shows are not international hits, but he chooses not to break into the A-list game. His shows are geared toward the average Las Vegas visitor, a businesswoman or family man with time to kill while shopping at Planet Hollywood’s Miracle Mile shops.
“I think I’m that guy that makes shows that aren’t the highest budget, but the audience really likes them, and they appeal to middle America,” Saxe said. “I don’t need $200 million and hydraulics in the water. I’m impressed by that, too, and I like it, but I kind of focus more on just the talent.”
The Greatest Show On Earth
While Caesars is raking in the cash from their Colosseum ventures and Saxe is entertaining the masses at V Theater, the executives behind the Cirque du Soleil franchise have built enormously popular shows at properties up and down the Strip.
With five full-scale productions currently running and a new one in the works (the Luxor’s provocative take on magic, Criss Angel: Believe), Cirque du Soleil has taken over Las Vegas, with many tourists putting a Cirque show at the top of their to-do lists. The Mirage last garnered rave reviews with the opening of Love, the Cirque troupe’s acrobatic interpretation of classic Beatles songs.
Though Cirque shows rival the headliners in ticket sales, Saxe said audiences attend Cirque productions because of the spectacle, not because of their entertainment value. He said MGM Grand’s Ka and the Bellagio’s O were “unbelievable shows, but I fell asleep.” Saxe continues to recommend Cirque shows to friends, but thinks his acts are the ones truly entertaining visitors.
“Every single night for six years now we’ve had at least one person say, ‘I saw O the other night and then I saw this show, and this show blows O away,’” Saxe said. “That makes me feel good, because we didn’t have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get that. We just got it through good old-fashioned figuring out what the audience likes.”
Schwartz said the case for Cirque is in the number of people who visit Las Vegas just to see what people are raving about.
“Some of the old properties are still doing well with the smaller shows,” Schwartz said. “But when people go to a newer property, they expect to see something of Cirque caliber.”
The Strip vs. Broadway
Broadway shows have long taken up residence on the Las Vegas Strip, but the high-profile (and short) runs of such shows as Avenue Q and Spamalot have led many to believe there is a curse on productions that attempt to move from New York to Las Vegas.
“A lot of problems with the Broadway shows are the mindsets of people when they come to Vegas are totally different—they don’t care about quality,” Saxe said. “It’s got to be something they’ve never seen or really over-the-top.”
Schwartz argued that Broadway shows are simply hit-or-miss. Productions like Phantom have been successful for many years, and smashes like the new Palazzo rendition of Jersey Boys are a safe bet to draw tourists to Las Vegas.
“The success of some shows as opposed to others has to do with which shows click with people,” Schwartz said.
Jersey Boys has definitely clicked, with the Las Vegas Sun calling it a “true theater experience.” Saxe attributed Jersey Boys’ success to the popularity of Four Seasons songs, just as Mamma Mia! has held court at Mandalay Bay for years due to the ubiquity of ABBA Gold.
And in the end, whether a show succeeds or fails, casinos will move on to the next big thing in typical Las Vegas style. After all, the city that coated entertainment in its gaudy veneer is a treasure trove of talent that will continue to attract tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of the heart of Las Vegas: a heart made of glitz, glamour and, yes, sequins.
