Real Life ‘Monopoly’: Fascinating Breakdown Of Las Vegas Strip Owners
If you’ve played the game Monopoly, you know the goal of the game. Take over as much of the neighborhood to dominate the market and win. Well, over the last few decades there has been a real life board game happening on the Las Vegas Strip that goes deeper than you think.
A new YouTube video from neo puts the spotlight on the Las Vegas Boulevard and the long and complicated history and it can be downright dizzying. Names like Promus and Park Place Entertainment are long lost relics of the Strip’s past. It’s present almost entirely taken over by the likes of MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment.
Excalibur, Luxor and Mandalay Bay are all MGM Resorts properties today, but did you remember that they were all originally owned by Circus Circus Entertainment?! It’s true!
But here’s where it gets crazy (and the video explains a lot of it). So, you may have heard how the casinos themselves have been being sold lately. This is part of a tax scheme called a “Real Estate Investment Trust“. It’s a loophole that helps lower tax liability, and breaks off the very valuable land and properties on the Las Vegas Strip from the more precarious casino business which can be greater affected by recession.
Caesars Entertainment created a secondary and separate company after their 2017 bankruptcy called VICI that “bought” several Caesars properties. MGM did the same, creating MGM Growth Properties. But it gets crazy…
Here’s what you didn’t know about the Las Vegas Strip…
Last year, VICI actually bought MGM Growth Properties for over $17 Billion. What does that mean? It means the land and often the properties the land are on, from Luxor to MGM Grand, Caesars Palace to even the Venetian… are all owned by the same company. T-Mobile Arena? They own the land underneath it, too!
So, there you go. The real life Monopoly happening right beneath our noses on the Las Vegas Strip. Except unlike Monopoly, there’s more than meets the eye.
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