Casino

Bellagio $4.2B sale may be most expensive Las Vegas resort deal

Wednesday 23 de October 2019 / 07:36

⏱ 2 min read

(Las Vegas).- When the Bellagio was developed more than 20 years ago, it was the world’s most expensive hotel ever built. When it sold last week for more than $4 billion, the deal was, by all appearances, the most expensive sale ever of a Las Vegas resort.

Bellagio $4.2B sale may be most expensive Las Vegas resort deal

“I would say that’s the largest single trade in the history of the Strip,” said CBRE Group broker Michael Parks, a hotel-casino specialist.

Bellagio owner MGM Resorts International announced Oct. 15 that it reached a deal with New York financial giant The Blackstone Group that calls for their joint venture to acquire the Bellagio’s real estate and lease it back to MGM for an initial annual rent of $245 million.

MGM will receive a 5 percent ownership stake in the joint venture and around $4.2 billion in cash, the casino operator said. The deal is expected to close this quarter.

Known for its outdoor fountain shows and the crowds of tourists who gather to watch them, the Bellagio is a top moneymaker for MGM, and its sales price dwarfs other high-priced hotel- casino deals in Las Vegas.

The closest competitor appears to be the $1.73 billion purchase, in 2014, of The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas — also by Blackstone, which has been on a real estate buying binge in Southern Nevada for years.

MGM did not respond to a request Monday to confirm whether the Bellagio deal is the most lucrative ever.

Parks noted that other hotel-casino deals of the Bellagio’s magnitude were corporate buyouts involving multiple properties. The Bellagio, however, is a “trophy” resort and one of best-performing properties on the Strip, he said.

It generated more than $405 million in operating income last year, by far the highest among MGM’s Las Vegas properties, according to a securities filing.

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