M Resort encounters many challenges in concert market

The giant "M" doesn't stand for music quite yet.

Name-brand concerts were intended to be a major draw for the M Resort, which opened five months ago in Henderson with the largest permanent outdoor stage (1,500 square feet) since Mandalay Bay opened a decade earlier.

But the ultrachic locals casino limped late into the summer music market with its $20 million Villaggio Del Sole Pool and Entertainment Piazza. The 5,000-seat venue will have hosted only one hot ticket this summer: Alan Jackson on Saturday. (Crosby, Stills and Nash will follow, but not until Sept. 26. Tim McGraw plays there on Oct. 23.)

Bad luck broke any early booking momentum the M Resort might have gained when Natalie Cole, who was to have kicked off the touring season on Memorial Day weekend, canceled to undergo an emergency kidney transplant. This left the official christening to a less-stellar '80s tour -- featuring ABC, Missing Persons, Wang Chung and Cutting Crew -- on July 11.

"We struggled, quite frankly, to get the right entertainment that we wanted here," said Anthony Marnell, chairman and chief executive officer of the hotel bearing his initial. "It's tough, as a small property, to compete for some of the bigger acts that we were looking at, because a lot of them could get into the MGM events center or the Mandalay (Bay) Events Center."

The M's nine-mile distance from the Strip no doubt contributed to this struggle. Audiences in densely populated tourist zones are considered a safer bet.

"Until the M develops a track record -- where the agents and managers can say, 'Well, so-and-so went out there and did (a certain) level of business' -- it's a little bit riskier," explained Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of the concert trade magazine Pollstar.

In addition, music superstars and their booking agents have long-standing relationships with Las Vegas venues, many of which can offer attractive volume deals.

"Whether it's Harrah's, MGM, Boyd or Station Casinos," Bongiovanni said, "they're buying for a lot of locations. So they may be making offers for dates in Vegas and venues they own in other markets -- whereas the M is just trying to fill its one show."

When such deals are inked, they usually include exclusivity clauses that forbid performers from playing elsewhere in the same market around the same time.

"I wouldn't want to book Tim McGraw for a date on the Strip if I knew he's going to be playing at the M Resort around the same time," Bongiovanni explained.

The M will probably succeed, Bongiovanni said, but only once it can prove several sellout concerts in a row. (Casinos, which offer unsold tickets for free to players-club members and other VIPs, do not release sales figures to the media or public. However, booking agents have easy access to them.)

While Marnell acknowledged that he couldn't have picked a worse possible economy in which to play David to the Vegas concert Goliaths, he described ticket sales for the M Resort's upcoming concerts as "not bad," adding that one company alone bought 800 Alan Jackson tickets for a catered party under the resort's convention center.

"I think a lot of people weren't quite sure about the property," Marnell said. "It was tough to sell it in the beginning because they didn't know what it was."

Indeed, the M Resort is so new that its "street view" on Google Maps still shows only dirt.

Marnell continued: "But now that people see it and the artists and their representatives have been here, it's getting more known and it's obviously attracting better talent."

Contact reporter Corey Levitan at clevitan@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0456.