Once on a winner, Packer left with joker

After spending years scouting for land on the famed Las Vegas Strip, James Packer thought he’d found a winner.

Steve Wynn and wife Andrea Hissom in Los Angeles in 2015. Picture: Jason LaVeris

After spending years scouting for land on the famed Las Vegas Strip, James Packer thought he’d found a winner.

The 14ha plot he bought in 2014 was situated directly across the road from Steve Wynn’s flagship casino.

And the deal handed the billionaire the chance to build a boutique casino with a premium, high-end feel compared with Wynn’s colossus, sprawling resort: the world’s seventh-largest hotel with a total of 4750 rooms.

“You can’t be in the gaming industry and not have a special reverence for Las Vegas — that’s where it all began,” Packer said at the time.

Crown put plans in place to open the $US4 billion Alon casino by 2018. It would have 1100 rooms, along with a nightclub, ballroom, pool and villas.

It was a risky bet for the casino scion after being badly burnt by his previous US investments, where Crown was forced to write off $2bn after a set of poorly timed deals.

To calm nerves, he hired some of the smartest operators on the Strip, including Andrew Pascal, who masterminded Wynn’s Vegas operations, and one of the top club operators in the US, Jesse Waits, who quit Wynn to join the Crown party.

Pascal, the nephew of Steve Wynn’s ex-wife, Elaine Wynn, spent years working with Crown’s strategy and development boss, Todd Nisbet. Other Alon recruits Rob Oseland and Jennifer Dunne had also worked for Wynn.

There was little hiding Packer’s admiration of what Wynn had achieved, but by the end of 2016 the tycoon’s plans lay in tatters due to problems acquiring funding.

Crown swiftly shut down its international ambitions, backing out of Vegas and selling off its long-held stake in Macau.

Such a prime piece of real estate was quickly sized up by Packer’s would-be rivals on the Vegas Strip.

By the end of 2017, a buyer for Alon — Packer’s attempt to mix it with the industry’s biggest players — finally emerged: Wynn Resorts, which said it would buy the site for future development.

Packer had picked a hugely ­desirable plot for his entry into Vegas and lined up some of the ­industry’s best names to see through his ­vision.

But it would be Wynn who ultimately ended up with the prized location.

Eighteen months on, Wynn’s abrupt exit from a takeover of Crown marks another twist in Packer’s rollercoaster ride on the Vegas Strip.

The blockbuster news was featured in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the daily newspaper purchased by American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson in 2015 for $US140 million.

The Las Vegas Sun, meanwhile, reported that the deal was called off by Wynn in a tersely worded statement.

“Wynn Resorts abruptly ended buyout talks with Australia’s largest casino operator Tuesday after word of a potential buyout was leaked,” the Sun reported.

“Crown’s value has fallen 20 per cent since mid-2018 as profits have fallen short of expectations. It’s attributed the slump to slowing economic growth in China, where big gamblers who travelled to Australia are now less likely to be in the mood to gamble.”

Along the Strip and at the Wynn casino hotel itself, gamblers seemed more concerned about their own wins and losses than about an Australian multi-billionaire’s travails.

The 45-floor hotel is across the road from Donald Trump’s flagship Las Vegas hotel, and Wynn greeted his close friend Trump on the tarmac when the President visited on Saturday.