Fight may have KO'd casino action

      Las Vegas gaming executives spent Monday tallying the financial fallout from Mike Tyson's toothy attack on heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield and an ensuing stampede of casino patrons at the MGM Grand.
      Casino and hotel operators were banking on the historically powerful pull of a Tyson fight to reverse the fortunes of a dismal June, a historically slow month for the city's gaming industry that was further damaged by a glut of new rooms and casinos.
      But it appeared that thousands of normally free-spending casino customers kept their wallets tucked away following Tyson's Saturday disqualification for biting Holyfield on both ears during their bout at the MGM Grand Garden.
      "I think the fight was such a bust it took a lot of steam out of a lot of people," said Dean Harrold, president and chief operating officer of the Las Vegas Hilton. "They didn't feel like doing anything. They wanted out of town, and they felt like they were misled, like suckers."
      Casino operators are traditionally protective of numbers that reflect on their day-to-day operations, but sources said Monday that financial results were beginning to emerge.
      For example, baccarat play returned to typical big-fight levels at the MGM following a human stampede sparked by rumors of gunshots in the hotel's check-in area. Las Vegas police said no shots were fired, but at least two heart attacks and several broken bones resulted from the bedlam.
      Sections of the MGM casino were closed for two hours, with the high-roller pit reopening the earliest after a 45-minute closure, sources said.
      "You shut down, you lose all the momentum casinos typically draw from big fights," said David Wolfe, a gaming industry analyst for the Wall Street investment firm of Oppenheimer & Co. "The perimeter business, the slots took a while to build up the volume, ... but by early Saturday morning, two, three hours later, you wouldn't have known anything happened."
      An estimated 40 percent of the gaming revenue from a big-fight weekend is generated in the hours immediately before and after a fight, Wolfe said.
      Meanwhile, MGM casino executives contacted other Strip casinos late Saturday to ask that they not cash MGM chips that customers attempted to redeem, sources said. As much as $100,000 worth of chips and casino markers were taken from MGM gaming tables during the post-fight bedlam when several gaming tables were knocked to the casino floor, sources said.
      MGM spokesman Jack Leone refused Monday to comment on reports of the stolen chips or any other aspect of the resort's gaming operations.
      "We don't talk about what we do in the casino," Leone said.
      Foot traffic along Las Vegas Boulevard appeared to be off from typical big-fight levels, observers said, although an estimated 230,000 people visited Las Vegas for the weekend, about 30,000 more than on an average June weekend.
      The biggest loser: slot play.
      "I haven't heard from anyone that this was a dynamic, economically stimulating weekend," said Jason Ader, a gaming industry analyst for the Wall Street investment firm of Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc.
      "I believe people just didn't hang around once the stuff started," Ader said. "The MGM even told me (that) after they closed the casino a lot of their players left after the disturbances."
      An Ader assistant reported that 100 private airplanes were scattered about a section of McCarran International Airport hours before the fight. Just 10 remained the following morning. The aerial exodus, Ader said, was an indication that high-end players wanted little to do with the craziness of the post-fight Las Vegas scene.
      Meanwhile, The Mirage, Caesars Palace, Rio, Bally's and the Las Vegas Hilton appeared to fare well with invited high-end gamblers who wager $100,000 a hand on baccarat, sources said. The players were hosted to fight tickets, rooms and air fare, and most were whisked back to the casinos before the melee began.
      "We couldn't ask for more out of our domestic marketing and slot marketing staff," the Las Vegas Hilton's Harrold said of the the high rollers' performance. "The only scary thing was unlike most heavyweight championship fights of this magnitude, the crowds associated with it weren't quite as strong."
      The overall impact of Holyfield-Tyson II could take months to comprehend, sources said.
      Bob Arum, the top competitor to Tyson fight promoter Don King, said the next major heavyweight championship bout could be plagued by skeptical ticket buyers and angry pay-per-view customers who spent as much as $59.95 each to watch the Saturday fight at home.
      "The casinos have to think twice whether it's worth it all to do these events and get the bad publicity and have dissatisfied customers," Arum said.
      For the Rev. Tom Grey, an outspoken critic of legalized gambling, the Tyson-Holyfield night debacle was just the latest in a growing list of troubles to plague the industry.
      He pointed to the late May rape and slaying of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson at Primm Valley hotel, and a recent news account of five gamblers who committed suicide in rural Illinois because of excessive gambling debts.
      "It's the product, and there's an inherent liability in the product," Grey said of casino gambling. "I would say it's a carnival atmosphere, a spectacle that draws people.
      "We all like a real carnival, but it leaves town every Monday. If it stayed, we'd drive it out of town."