Looking Back — Whatever happened to the “Vegas-style Supercasinos” UK Project?
It has been nearly two decades now since I wrote on “Business Perspectives — Gaming UK: How prepared is Manchester (UK) for Vegas-style supercasinos?”
In that article I argued that “Casinos provide a remedy for desperately declining cities, and the case of Atlantic City, New Jersey provides one critical illustration of this. It was the only ‘State’ other than Nevada to have legalized casino gambling in the late 1970s when the state looked to the casino hotel industry to invest capital, create jobs, pay taxes, and attract tourists and thus revitalise the economy as well as create a sound financial environment for urban redevelopment.”
I also opined that “it has also notably been linked with making cities vibrant places to visit and as an opportunity to become world class cities. Cities in Austria and Australia (including Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, and Sydney) have also towed a similar line and watched as their respective cities have been regenerated — thus making the supercasinos a contender for unparalleled economic engine — given the proper timing and market location.”
However this new wave of the entrepreneurial state, in its attempts to “reimage the city” through such measures as casinos, seems to have lessened the degree of public participation in the planning process.
The study was based on “a survey of fifty second year international business students from two London-based Universities between September 2006 and February 2007,” highlighting “the social and economic dimensions of supercasinos — especially as the government toys with the idea of licenses for these with Manchester at the forefront — in the context of consumer welfare and concludes that unless the economic benefits of supercasinos can be demonstrated to substantially eclipse the social costs of such ventures — the replication of Vegas style supercasinos would remain a tall order.”
What did I conclude in 2007?
“Although Las Vegas mega casino complexes (arguably the largest and most dynamic of any casino industry in the world) have changed the face and image of City from gambling to casino entertainment in the 1990s, this trend toward bigness, entertainment, and diversity has been mimicked in other US cities such as Reno and Atlantic City with much less success — whither Manchester Supercasinos?”
Two decades on, what’s the story?
A BBC News report in 2014 read “Casino: all bets are off”
In 2022, the Manchester Evening News had the following headline “Doomed Manchester ‘gambling palace’ super casino would have rivalled those in Las Vegas — Manchester Evening News”
