Something got a hold of my heart:<\/strong> MGM Resorts International\u2019s CEO Bill Hornbuckle and CFO Jonathan Halkyard took their places in the fireside chat hot seat to speak with Bernstein\u2019s Vitaly Usmansky to talk all things digital, Vegas and Macau (with some Japanese comment thrown in). They started as per their recent Q1s by extolling the virtues of the BetMGM business and touching on how iGaming, which provides the \u201creal value\u201d to MGM, can gain greater legislative acceptance. Hornbuckle said iGaming was \u201cone more step on\u201d from sports-betting for any legislator: \u201cOnce you are in the sports-betting business and you get confidence in the social issues, you can gain even more confidence. It will take time and education. That more than anything else. No one is going to go straight to iGaming; it\u2019s not for the weak of heart or the short of wallet.\u201d<\/p>\n The two of us: <\/strong>Asked whether the joint-venture nature of the BetMGM partnership with Entain worked against the unitary control of some of their competitors, Hornbuckle stuck to the script on the positives. \u201cThey (Entain) have proven they know how to make money in this space,\u201d he said. \u201cThey came with great management, great content, a very good tech stack. And we continue to improve on that. We have converted a European user experience into a really good user experience for US sports.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe downside is we don\u2019t own the whole thing and we’re not crazy about that. But we don\u2019t pay the 10\/12% for tech (that others do). Margins are better and it makes the business more sustainable. Plus, MGM owns the whole ecosystem side.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Back to the land: <\/strong>The MGM team had a similar message to LVS yesterday: while Vegas is \u201con fire\u201d according to Hornbuckle and likely to see \u201cout of scale margins\u201d for the next six months (see below analysis on US gaming), Macau is still finding its feet post-Covid. While there will be some \u201cebbing and flowing\u201d for the rest of this year, the longer-term is rosier with penetration into the Chinese customer base \u201cde minimis<\/em>\u201d as it stands. \u201cThe bigger the market gets, the more it becomes a destination,\u201d he said. \u201cIt just becomes more appealing.\u201d In Japan, meanwhile, Hornbuckle noted that the long drawn out IR bidding process – likely to be narrowed down to two cities including Osaka – should be concluded by this time next year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MGM Resorts International fireside chat Something got a hold of my heart: MGM Resorts International\u2019s CEO Bill Hornbuckle and CFO Jonathan Halkyard took their places in the fireside chat hot seat to speak with Bernstein\u2019s Vitaly Usmansky to talk all things digital, Vegas and Macau (with some Japanese comment thrown in). They started as per […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[337,324],"tags":[745,592,673],"class_list":["post-1893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analyst-notes","category-news","tag-genius-sports","tag-mgm","tag-playmaker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1893"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1896,"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions\/1896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wagers.com\/staging\/4285\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Additional articles available today on Earnings + more:<\/h3>\n
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