Winner Takes All: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman, and the Race to Own Las Vegas |...

Winner Takes All: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman, and the Race to Own Las Vegas | Christina Binkley | Vegas Financial

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Winner Takes All: ...

	Winner Takes All: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman, and the Race to Own Las Vegas Christina Binkley Hyperion, 2008 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Definite Winner

This well written story of recent developments in Las Vegas is a captivating read. Author Christina Binkley has written a serious business book in the style of an engaging novel.

Much to like about this book! Las Vegas is a great "stage" for an interesting book. Wynn, Kerkorian and Loveman are such great characters, each so different. And, the race to be the biggest and the best is fascinating.

The real kudos need to go to the author. In every dimension, this book is well crafted. Well organized with a great many facts woven into the compelling story line. Well detailed with every scene painted as if the reader was present. And, well written with business terminology correctly used and judiciously sprinkled so as to not detract from the powerful story. In an age where so many books are so poorly written, the quality of the writing here really is noteworthy.

What I respect most about the author is amidst the captivating story she devotes time to asking the $64 million dollar question, i.e. how should one feel about a business whose purpose is to turn its customers into gambling addicts? A very thoughtful question that the author appropriately serves up for each reader to answer for themselves.

Christina Binkley...for your first book, you did great!

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Vegas Financial

Very interesting take on an historic period of corporate consolidation in Las Vegas.
Easy read with lots on insight into the various personalities and egos involved. Well researched and a nice job of conveying the tension inherent in deals of this magnitude. In some respects reads more like a novel than non-ficton. Definetely not another dry financial book.

Brilliant Book; horrible audio version

I began reading the hardback version of Wlass="textlinks">all Street Journal writer Christina Binkley's brilliant Winner Takes All: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman, and the Race to Own Las Vegas just before going on a long drive. So, I decided to buy the CD's to listen to the rest of the book in my car.

The audio version is GREAT comedy. The excellent research and superb interviews that Ms. Brinkley assembled in a very readable novel-esque narrative is totally subverted by the reading from some half-wit actress who did not bother to learn to properly pronounce even the most well-known Vegas names...never mind the myriad of artists, chefs, and lesser-known Vegas characters.

If I could write in Mark Twain phonetics, I would try to spell the way this reader pronounced some of this names (I especially loved her version of Tony Spilotro, Henri Matisse, Sirio Maccioni). And I cannot even imagine how to put "breathing marks" into text to show you how she inappropriately broke paragraphs and sentences in her reading.

Seriously, the audio version is SO bad that it was distracting to the point that it became comedy. I began calling people on my cell phone and playing portions of the book to them so they could share in the humor.

Fortunately, when I returned home I turned back to print version of the book...which, again, is EXCELLENT.

As a supposed Las Vegas "insider" myself -with decades in the gaming industry -I found the book accurate about Wynn (who she portrays a just a little Mel Books like nuts) and Loveman (who she characterizes as somewhat of a well-paid clod). The author seems to like the Kerkorian style better than either of the other two (as one might expect from a WSJ writer) and given that she may have been a little unfair to Steve Wynn.

Nonetheless, not only did I find nothing "wrong" with the book, but I found it to be an outstanding follow-up of contemporary history to what everyone knows about "old Vegas" and even mid-era "family attraction" Vegas. Ms. Binkley has indeed written an important historical account of the latest incarnation of the ever-redefined Las Vegas.

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A great peek inside Corporate Vegas

In Winner Takes lass="textlinks">All, Binkley examines a few of the major players in the Strip consolidation sweepstakes. She parlays her access (she's the former lead Vegas reporter for the Wall Street Journal) into a truly insightful book. Unless you've spent the past few years sitting in the executive offices of MGM Mirage, Wynn, and Harrah's, you'll definitely learn something from reading this. Binkley does a solid job of pulling back the curtain on the motivations and rivalries that unite and divide the movers and shakers on the Strip.

Binkley goes beyond petty corporate politics, though, and discusses the underlying business strategies that differentiate Wynn, Kerkorian (and his executives), and Loveman. Wynn believes in luxury above all; Kerkorian thinks that size matters (he's opened the world's biggest casino hotel three times) and is a consummate deal-maker' and Loveman brings scientific management to the wild west of the casino floor. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, you might learn a few lessons from each of these three approaches. If you're just a person who likes to come to Vegas, you'll get an insider's peek into some of your favorite resorts.

As a historian, I've got to grouse at a few historical inaccuracies. Suffice it to say that Binkley is an outstanding source for the material that she personally reported on, but might have relied on lesser sources for some of the background.

Although (or maybe because) the book is about Las Vegas, 1999-2007, it is dominated by Steve Wynn. Even when he's not there, he's there, haunting the thoughts of the author and the principals. In simple terms, MGM Grand, Inc. wants to be like Wynn, so the company buys Mirage Resorts. Harrah's realizes it can't compete with Wynn, so it relies on "propeller heads" (management wonks) rather than exploding volcanoes to better its bottom line. Las Vegas, it seems, is divided into wanna-be Wynns and anti-Wynns, but there is no one who is unaffected by Wynn.

Which leads to the big question: does she treat Wynn? Like the people she writes about, Binkley is hardly agnostic when it comes to Wynn. I'm not giving much away here: the prologue features Wynn, apoplectic with rage, screaming at Binkley that the MGM Grand buyout of Mirage was a friendly deal. So it's obvious that Binkley isn't going to be disinterested. But she veers into caricature at times ("His capped teeth gleam white, white, white."), which paradoxically makes Wynn even more of a larger-than-life character. Wynn-haters will glory in the chronicles of corporate extravagance; Wynn-lovers will say, "So he likes plastic surgery-he still knows how to build the best casinos in the world."

Winner Takes All is a valuable look inside the boardrooms of Las Vegas during one of its most explosive eras. I recommend it to those interested in a behind-the-scenes look at the titans who have rebuilt the Las Vegas Strip.

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For those of you who want to learn more about the Las Vegas scene, this is an excellent starter.

Every year millions of people are lured to the playgrounds of Las Vegas and as well-known casino developer Steve Wynn quipped, "they're coming here to play and that is what Las Vegas is all about. It's a playpen."

In Winner Takes All: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman, And The Race To Own Las Vegas journalist, Christina Binkley, who spent ten years covering Las Vegas for the Wall Street Journal brings to life three of Las Vegas most famous king pins of casino development and tells how they started and what distinguishes one from the other.

We learn about Steve Wynn who began his business career running the family's bingo operation after his father died. As a result of his initial success, he was able to save up enough money to purchase a small interest in the New Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas where he and his wife Elaine moved in 1967. From this time onwards he never looked back and after a successful land deal in 1971 involving Howard Hughes and Caesars Palace, he was able to secure a controlling interest in the famous Golden Nugget Las Vegas. It was here where he began to use his enormous creative talents in renovating, revamping and expanding the Golden Nugget from a mere gambling hall to a resort hotel and casino with tremendous success. And in the process he was successful in attracting a new upscale clientele to downtown Las Vegas. This was only the beginning of his subsequent acquisitions involving various other casinos as the lavish and luxurious Mirage with its indoor forest and out door volcano, Treasure Island Hotel and Casino, Bellagio with its opulence which cost over a billion dollars to construct and which even attracted high-end boutiques, restaurants and a museum-quality art gallery. Eventually, Wynn sold his Mirage Resorts to Kirk Kerkorian who controlled MGM Grand Inc and with the monies earned he made a come back with Wynn Las Vegas. What is remarkable about Wynn, as Binkley points out, is that his timing was uncanny for after he bought the Desert Inn, Las Vegas began to share off its reputation as a nursing home for failed acting and singing careers, cheesy hotels, and bad food.

Kirk Kerkorian is another kind of a casino business developer who as Wynn once stated, and as mentioned in the book, "Kerkorian never breaks a sweat... all those deals he's done-and he never sets foot in the building. He never misses a tennis game. He just likes bigger. He measures the cost of construction and the rate of inflation."
It was in 1944 when Kerkorian first flew into Las Vegas as a Cessna pilot and in 1962 he returned to purchase land across the Flamingo that eventually led to the building of Caesars Palace that leased the land from him. Eventually the land was sold to Casesars and Kerkorian wound up with a pile of money as a result of the years of rental and the proceeds from the sale. In the ensuing years he built the International Hotel Las Vegas and he bought the Flamingo, which he later sold to the Hilton. In 1973 Kerkorian purchased the famous movie studio, MGM and this in turn led to the opening of the original MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. One of the biggest ventures for Kerkorian was when he bought out Steve Wynn's casinos and other goodies such as his fantastic art collection. And what really led to Kerkorian eventually owning half of the business on the strip was his acquisition of Mandalay Bay Resort. Hal Rothman, a University of Nevada Las Vegas professor described Kerkorian as a master strategist who sees the industry clearly. He calculates his opportunities and pounces."

Dr. Gary Loveman, CEO of Harrah's Entertainment, is a much different breed of casino developer than Wynn and Kerkorian. His business experience includes a stint at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and as a professor at the Harvard Business School. He has a Ph.D from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Binkley hits the nail on the head when she asserts that Wynn and Kerkorian were selling products they loved to consume themselves while Loveman was selling something foreign to him, based solely on wits. Loveman with the assistance of his brainy associates, who he recruited, figured out all kinds of ways to keep even the losers coming back for more punishment. When he noticed how losers were miserable, he figured out how he could keep them gambling longer by reducing their perception of losing.

As mentioned on the front flap of the book, although all three of these moguls may be different in their approaches they all were vying for the same thing, to conquer the city that feeds the world's fantasies.
As a result, Las Vegas is no longer a city for only gambling but it is also one filled with top notch restaurants, unbelievable lavish hotels that cost billions, first class entertainment attracting some of the biggest stars, even art galleries featuring some of the world's most valuable art and much more.

No doubt all of this makes for some very interesting reading, however, I do have one complaint and that is that there is a lack of smooth transition between chapters. Very often they don't cohere leading to a disjointed quality. Perhaps, this is due to Binkley's background as a journalist and not as an author of a business books. At times it even felt that Binkley was in a hurry to jot down all of the information she had gathered during the ten years she spent on the strip gathering information for her newspaper column. Nonetheless, for those of you who want to learn more about the Las Vegas scene, this is an excellent starter.

Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor Bookpleasures

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4

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