Keith Smith, CEO of Boyd Gaming, addressed the Global Gaming Expo with words both visionary and sobering: the boom won’t be back.
“If you look out over the next 10 years, you could probably count on one hand the number of new buildings we’ll see on the Strip,” Smith stated at the G2E’s State of the Industry roundtable.
Having exhausted the area’s potential, gaming companies find the current recession to be a signal to turn toward other markets.
Smith’s experience with the Borgata in Atlantic City gives him both hope and caution for gambling’s Second City. “It has a bright future,” he said, “but it needs some public support. We need the public sector to come to the table and clean up parts of Atlantic City.”
Smith asserts that the decades-long boom in Las Vegas owes to cooperation between the gaming industry and local governments. Local infrastructure development and maintenance are key, Smith said, portraying Atlantic City as comparatively backwards. “There’s a tremendous number of people we found when we built the Borgata that still do not visit Atlantic City (because) it doesn’t have the product they want. They’re not comfortable with the city,” Smith said.
