UNLV conference to explore impact of the Mirage, 25 years after its opening

When Steve Wynn opened The Mirage in 1989, skepticism abounded.

How could a $630 million hotel possibly generate enough revenue daily to sustain operations while paying the debt service on construction costs?

Most of the naysayers of the day said it couldn’t be done. The first resort ever built with Wall Street junk bonds was to be the first new property in Las Vegas in 25 years.

But Wynn defied the odds — and the critics — by hitting a grand slam that forever changed the Las Vegas landscape and the gaming industry in general.

Wynn took his Midas touch to Treasure Island, Bellagio, Wynn Las Vegas and Encore on the Strip and to two more resorts in Macau, with a third one seen as his most ambitious project to date, opening there later this year.

So where better to hold the largest conference dedicated to the study of gambling than The Mirage just two years after its 25th anniversary? And who better to keynote the opening of the event than Steve Wynn?

Wynn will make a rare public appearance Tuesday at The Mirage for the kickoff of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ 16th International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking.

The five-day event, Monday through Friday, will bring about 600 people to Las Vegas from 30 countries on every inhabited continent.

The conference is primarily a research-based event where academics will present papers on a vast array of topics centered on the gambling industry. The conference, which occurs once every three years, was the brainchild of Bill Eadington, an economics professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, who believed in the importance of studying gambling as an educational pursuit and economic development driver.

Eadington died in 2013 a few months before the 15th conference. But the legacy of the event has been carried on by Bo Bernhard, the executive director of UNLV’s International Gaming Institute.

“In 1969, Bill Eadington boldly announced that he was going to pursue the study of gambling,” said Bernhard, a fifth-generation Nevadan who became the Gaming Institute’s inaugural research director in 2002 and was named executive director in 2011.

“He stuck to it and invented the academic study of the gambling industry,” he said.

Eadington believed that it was important for industry academics to meet every few years to discuss, debate and collaborate on issues of importance to the gaming industry.

His second effort, in 1974, drew about two or three dozen people to the Sahara hotel-casino. Since then, the event has been staged in various locations around the world, from Montreal and London to Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas.

Bernhard got involved with the conference five years ago when Eadington called him and asked a favor. Nevada was still recovering from the effects of the Great Recession and funding for the conference was growing scarce.

“‘I need to ask a favor,’ he said to me, and I said, ‘The answer’s yes, whatever it is.’ ‘No, you better sit down and think about this first.’ And he asked if it was possible for me to take over the conference,” Bernhard said.

“Being asked to take this on was the honor of a career and a lifetime,” Bernhard said.

Bernhard and Eadington agreed to pool resources to keep the conference alive.

“It’s truly one of the best collaborations in existence between UNLV and Nevada-Reno,” Bernhard said.

A few months after the collaboration began, Eadington’s friends got the bad news of his cancer diagnosis.

Up until Eadington’s death in February 2013, Eadington’s and Bernhard’s teams organized the 15th conference at Caesars Palace. That event ended up incorporating several posthumous tributes to the founder.

For this year’s conference, the anniversary of the opening of The Mirage was too irresistible to pass up, and Wynn’s agreement to speak at the keynote is expected to be one of the highlights of the gathering.

The modern megaresort — in most countries, they’re known as “integrated resorts” — has become Nevada’s largest and most lucrative export, Bernhard said.

So, the first full day of the conference will have generous helpings of megaresort content.

After Wynn’s address, Bernhard will moderate a panel on the Mirage opening, reuniting part of the opening-day team to explore the beauty and chaos of the vast undertaking, including panelists Alan Feldman, now of MGM Resorts International, Dawn Hume, now of Social Gal Events, and consultants Arte Nathan and Dennis Amerine.

A lunch-time keynote panel will bring together industry experts from every continent to talk about today’s resort experience.

And, later in the afternoon, three presenters from UNLV will discuss the resort of the future.

Other industry topics are scheduled every day through Friday afternoon.

Among the highlights: discussions about the impact of genetics in problem gambling including new research from the Harvard Medical School. Several reviews on gambling regulation will be presented as well as analyses on gambling and crime. A mock trial on daily fantasy sports also is scheduled.

The conference is open to the public with a five-day admission to all events costing $795.

“The conference is an interesting experience, especially getting so many people from so many parts of the world,” Bernhard said. “It’s like having 600 people over for dinner for five straight nights.”

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Find him on Twitter: @RickVelotta