The Mirage, the first megaresort on the Las Vegas Strip, will be sold to Hard Rock International.
Subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, Hard Rock International will acquire the Mirage operations. Hard Rock is planning to build a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.
Bill Hornbuckle, CEO and President of MGM Resorts, said in a media release that he knows how special The Mirage is and that it presents a great opportunity for the Hard Rock team. Mirage employees have delivered world-class gaming and entertainment experiences to guests for more than three decades.
Hard Rock International is building a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.
The Hard Rock brand has found a home in Las Vegas before.
The Hard Rock Hotel was sold in the summer of 2018, but was previously operated just east of the Strip. The property reopened as Virgin Hotels Las Vegas earlier this year.
Hard Rock International bought the rights to the Hard Rock's brand and related trademarks in Las Vegas from a private equity firm last year.
In a May 2020 statement, Chairman Jim Allen said that Las Vegas will always be one of the most popular entertainment markets in the world.
Allen said Monday that Hard Rock International, which is owned by The Seminole Tribe of Florida, plans to welcome 3,500 employees and enter a long-term lease agreement with a real estate investment trust.
"When complete, Hard Rock Las Vegas will be a fully integrated welcoming resort meetings, groups, tourists and casino guests from around the world to its nearly 80 acre center-Strip location," Allen said.
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The Mirage's opening was in 1989 and 21 years later it was acquired by MGM Resorts. The property changed the Las Vegas Strip by opening a new era of high-end resorts financed by Wall Street, according to historians and casino industry experts.
"It really started the modern era of casino resorts in Las Vegas on the Strip," said David Schwartz, an affiliate professor in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas department of history.
There is a new vision for the Las Vegas Strip.
When the Mirage opened, Las Vegas was still known as a value destination with affordable rooms, free entertainment and 99-cent cocktails.
The cheap amenities worked on certain crowds, but not all were impressed by them, including Alan Feldman, a former executive at MGM Resorts and a distinguished fellow in responsible gaming for UNLV.
In the 70s and early 80s, when he was growing up in Los Angeles, he found it cheap and tacky. I didn't find that appealing when my parents said they were going to Las Vegas.
The Mirage casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip will reopen on August 27 after being shut for more than five months due to the coronaviruses epidemic.
Las Vegas' deals and casinos had been enough to draw in visitors for decades, but the tried and true attractions were starting to decline in the face of new competition. In 1976, New Jersey citizens approved gambling in Atlantic City, and in the '80s, American Indian casinos began to take off after a Supreme Court ruling confirmed that tribes have the right to conduct gaming activities in certain states.
Americans can now scratch their gambling itch without going to the desert.
The early '80s saw a decline in the number of visitors. Las Vegas Strip properties brought in more than half of their revenue from casinos in that period.
Las Vegas was doing well in that era. Michael Green, an associate professor of history at UNLV, told USA TODAY that it was not setting the world on fire.
Steve Wynn's Mirage was ready to reignite the world.
When it first opened, the property had more than 3000 rooms spread across 29 stories. It was the most expensive hotel in its time, with a price tag of $600 million.
"A lot of other resorts pointed the way toward size and scale," he said. "The Mirage certainly did that, but it ushered in a whole generation of quality that a lot of folks didn't realize Las Vegas was capable of delivering or didn't even think, necessarily, that the audience for Las Vegas cared about."
In a new era.
The Mirage has a lot of non-gaming attractions, including performances by illusionists Sigfried and Roy. The Dolphin Habitat was added in 1990.
Roy, of the world- renowned illusionists, performs with a white tiger during their 15,000th live show at The Mirage in Las Vegas.
The megaresort would be an inspiration to Las Vegas Strip properties for a long time to come. You can see the Y-shape hotel towers at Treasure Island or Park MGM. More than half of Strip resort revenues come from outside the casinos, and that's thanks to the focus on non-gaming revenue.
Green said that the Mirage set a template. The Mirage was unique in having all of the ideas at the same time. It isn't a long way to a yellow brick road or a pyramid.
The financing behind the project was innovative. Wynn turned to Milken to help fund the project.
It was thought that it would go bankrupt. The Mirage was a huge success, with 50,000 guests showing up on the first night. The year after its opening, Las Vegas had almost 21 million visitors. The property filled 98% of its rooms on an average night by 1993.
The financing of the property was a defining feature of Las Vegas.
"Up to that point, Las Vegas was relying on secondary and tertiary financing, which is a very polite way of referring to mob money," he said. You had banks trying to get money from Las Vegas developers.
It's hard to imagine later properties like Resorts World Las Vegas without that shift.
Schwartz said things have changed since the Mirage opened. Rooms have tended to get bigger. It set a standard when it opened and has a lot of potential today.
Why did MGM sell the Mirage?
Why sell an icon?
It may have to do with the location. The Mirage is an outlier in MGM Resorts' portfolio, surrounded by competitors on the north end of the Strip while its sister properties lie in the central and southern segments.
MGM Resorts has already sold off two other northern Strip properties, Circus Circus and Treasure Island, while announcing in September that it would purchase The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
The Mirage sale is a fantastic outcome for MGM Resorts, as we are able to re-prioritize future capital expenditures towards opportunities that will enhance the customer experience at our other locations in Las Vegas, said CFO and treasurer Jonathan Halkyard in a news release.
The Mirage was one of the MGM Resorts properties that welcomed guests back after the COVID shutdowns. The property reopened in August 2020.
MGM Resorts CEO Bill Hornbuckle said during a November earnings call that they have enough of Las Vegas. We think there is an opportune time to sell an asset in Las Vegas. The Mirage was the obvious one.
Bailey Schulz is a reporter for USA TODAY.
The Mirage casino was sold to Hard Rock International for over $1 billion.
