MGM National Harbor advances good and bad casino stereotypes

It’s safe to say that descriptions of the launch of MGM National Harbor last month have been remarkable.

Washingtonians flocked to the property on December 8^th, all but breaking down the doors to get in. The property reported $42 million in slot and table game revenues for just the final three weeks of December.

The resoundingly successful opening has done more than just make a mid-Atlantic splash. The property has also served to advance many of the stereotypes and perceptions – both good and bad – which surround the world of casinos and gambling.

Because one of my New Year’s resolutions is to be more optimistic, I’ll start with the positive ones.

In a culture where leisure and entertainment has become preeminent, the resort’s opening demonstrated the region’s pent up demand for the thrills that come with visiting a resort casino. In a culture that is becoming technologically more advanced by the day, it’s becoming ever more unusual to deliver “shocking and awe” to consumers in the manner that the best casinos can.

In this sense, MGM has not “created gamblers” as much as it has offered a product that consumers in the area already strongly desired. This is one of the beauties of the free enterprise system: risk-takers – and MGM incurred no insignificant amount in undertaking this project – are rewarded, through profits, for providing goods and services which consumers want.

MGM, at its National Harbor property in particular, has also done a phenomenal job of advancing the gaming industry’s image of being good corporate citizens. The property has hired many permanent and contract employees from Prince George’s County – the most economically depressed region of the Washington metro area. And the effort to build a regional supply chain that taps into the area’s abundance of minority-owned businesses is particularly notable.

The property’s charitable contributions in the region and its worker-training partnership with Prince George’s Community College have also earned praise locally.

National Harbor is already pulling its weight in providing non-coercive tax revenues for the state of Maryland. The property’s December draw was the key driver behind the state’s record performance of $133.5 million in total gambling win for the month, a significant portion of which will go into the state’s Education Trust Fund.

However, many of the casino industry’s negative stereotypes were also on display during National Harbor’s inaugural month.

The opening weekend’s traffic backlogs were the talk of the town and Internet forums, though the traffic problems were minimal during the holiday season, when most of the Washington professional class disappears for two weeks. The jury is still out on what the property’s impact will ultimately be on the region’s already precarious traffic situation, but the initial problems were significant enough to conclude that this might be an ongoing issue.

The big news from opening night, aside from the lines, was a fight that broke out on the casino floor, recorded on a mobile phone and posted to social media. Even less flattering was the news that the chairman of the Prince George’s County liquor board had been arrested on DUI charges after leaving the property. While these were isolated incidents, they were hardly desirable ones for a facility that is trying to attract segments of consumers that wouldn’t normally patronize a slot parlor or a smaller-scale casino.

Another incident before Christmas: a B-list rapper named Trey Songz and his entourage were allegedly escorted from a $25 table and kicked off the property because of belligerent language and disruptive behavior.

In addition to raising questions about why a touring rapper and his crew were gambling at a lowly $25 table, details of the event have made repeated rounds through local and music news sites as Songz became the first (relatively) high-profile individual to be booted from the grounds.

None of these incidents, taken separately, are unique to casinos. The same things happen at sporting events, concerts, and other gatherings that draw large numbers of people and where alcohol is served. But they do offer case-in-point evidence to gaming skeptics and opponents who argue that casinos bring crime, congestion, addiction, and generally seedy people to otherwise peaceful communities. Those opponents include local media outlets like the Washington Post, which has strongly argued that greater access to gambling in the region is not a positive development.

Sports, concerts, and other large gatherings don’t face the same level of community opposition as do casinos, so casinos are forced to operate at a higher standard of integrity. They must demonstrate that the positive externalities they bring outweigh the negative ones in order to keep opponents off their back. Overall, it is probably safe to label National Harbor a success story, with the benefits to the region – as demonstrated by the 170,000 people who visited during the first month alone – far outweighing the relatively few negatives. And while there will always be more challenges, the MGM team has handled its initial ones quite capably, which is very promising for the future.