By Steve Norton
CEO, Norton Management

Column: A Consultant Disses Lightfoot’s Casino Sites. Now What?

My comment:

I felt the initial casino revenue potential would be closer to $1.5 billion and the potential of the other sites, overstated. Plus, they would be drawing the majority of their play from residents, harming existing casinos, and VGT operators. The majority of win from a downtown Chicago casino would be from visitors, convention attendees and business travelers.

Convention and tradeshow organizers should look at the Las Vegas Strip results, and recognize that even though a few attendees may miss a meeting because of the nearby gaming, the total attendance and number of exhibitors will expand substantially because of the nearby gaming and quality entertainment that accompanies a destination casino resort.

I was President/COO of Las Vegas Sands, the year that we opened the Sands Expo Center (1990), and was the host organizer of Americas largest tradeshow, Comdex, representing the computer industry and needing accommodations for 170,000 attendees and exhibitors. That year Vegas passed Chicago as the convention capital of North America, and has continued almost every year, except for an occasional year by Orlando. Beside Vegas and Orlando, Chicago has the most hotel rooms in America, at 108,000 thousand.

Prior to 1990, the Vegas Strip preferred only in-house conventions where attendees never had to leave the property for functions, meals, entertainment or gaming. But with the Comdex show, the Sands had to house 170,000 convention attendees and exhibitors. The Sands succeeded in getting all major casino resort properties to participate, by tripling the then mid-week room rates, providing most of the functions to the larger properties, renting all of their meeting and exhibit space. Only Circus Circus declining our deal, yet they still were full of Comdex customers, but at their regular rates. The Sands charged a 10% commission for the bookings and provided bus service from each participating resort to all of the function and exhibit locations, including the LV Convention Center and the Sands Expo Center.