{"id":2762,"date":"2026-05-07T13:39:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T13:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/?p=2762"},"modified":"2026-05-11T13:39:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:39:37","slug":"spirited-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/bettingjobs-earningsandmore-partnership\/spirited-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Spirited away"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"header-anchor-post\">Gas guzzled<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Running out of runway:<\/strong> The first US airline casualty of the Iran war hit at the worst possible moment for Las Vegas. Spirit Airlines, the bright-yellow ultra-low-cost carrier that for years drove leisure fares into the basement, ceased operations just after midnight on Saturday (May 2).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The news comes at a time where Las Vegas appears to have posted a tentative recovery versus the previous summer\u2019s doldrums.<\/li>\n<li>MGM Resorts and Caesars spent their recent respective earnings calls trying to convince investors that a tentative recovery is real.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The pair posted Q1 Las Vegas numbers that were better than feared, on the back of a stacked group and convention calendar, and they were backed up by March\u2019s positive numbers.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Strip GGR of $780m represented a 14.4% YoY leap while RevPAR was even better, up 16% YoY.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The big tent:<\/strong> On his company\u2019s Q1 call, MGM Resorts CEO Bill Hornbuckle argued that his company\u2019s Q1 earnings was evidence that the city was adapting to new leisure market demands.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cToday\u2019s consumers are decisively gravitating towards live events and experiential travel in Las Vegas,\u201d he said, pointing to the preponderance of sports attractions.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe ability to attract professional sports franchises and tentpole events exemplifies Las Vegas structural resilience,\u201d he added.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Highs and lows:<\/strong> Over at rival Caesars Entertainment, meanwhile, CEO Tom Reeg said Vegas is \u201cobviously in a much healthier spot than it was in the middle of last year, starting in the summer.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>But he noted the company was still seeing a bifurcation of \u201cexceedingly strong\u201d weekends and weeks when the market has significant group events and \u201cweeks that are soft.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Analysts remain cautious. Truist noted the \u201chigher highs, lower lows,\u201d dynamic, while Citizens called Q1 the trough for MGM\u2019s Strip properties and CBRE said Vegas was \u201cgetting less worse.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Spirit leveled<\/strong>: But this commentary came before the Spirit shut down. The carrier had already shrunk dramatically at Vegas\u2019 Harry Reid International Airport, with Q1 passengers down 72% YoY, dropping it to the eighth-busiest carrier, so the immediate seat-loss is manageable.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All 16 Vegas markets Spirit served are flown by at least one other airline, and Allegiant, Frontier and the legacy carriers are adding capacity and capping rescue fares.<\/li>\n<li>But the bigger concern is what happens to the price floor, with Spirit being seen as the operator that kept prices in check across the market.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Running out of road: <\/strong>Another worry is the impact of high gas prices at the pumps. Reeg was keen to stress that Caesars doesn\u2019t see any direct correlation between higher gas prices and Las Vegas visitation.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cI would say correlation between gas prices and spend in our portfolio is not particularly high,\u201d he told the analysts.<\/li>\n<li>But he admitted the situation could change depending on the length of time that fuel costs stayed at elevated levels.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cObviously, as you can certainly get to a level or extended a period of time where that may change,\u201d he said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A similar hedging came from Hornbuckle. While extolling the company\u2019s status as a purveyor of luxury brand experiences, he said that despite \u201cmany headwinds whether they be air or gas\u201d MGM was \u201cyet to see a slowdown.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>But he also warned \u201cthat doesn\u2019t mean over summer that can\u2019t happen because booking cycles still remain short.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>It\u2019s a mad, mad, mad, mad world: <\/strong>For now, Vegas isn\u2019t the epicenter of the fuel shock. But of the major US gaming markets, none is more exposed to airline capacity, drive-in fuel costs and discretionary leisure spending all at once.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As Hornbuckle told the analysts: \u201cIt\u2019s a crazy world out there right now.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>How the ongoing conflict affects the sector is hard right now to discern.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/earningsandmore.substack.com\/p\/spirited-away\">Click to read the FULL article HERE!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gas guzzled Running out of runway: The first US airline casualty of the Iran war hit at the worst possible moment for Las Vegas. Spirit Airlines, the bright-yellow ultra-low-cost carrier that for years drove leisure fares into the basement, ceased operations just after midnight on Saturday (May 2). The news comes at a time where&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bettingjobs-earningsandmore-partnership"],"acf":[],"post_author_name":"","post_authors_type":"","post_authors_from_team_members":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2765,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762\/revisions\/2765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/2764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettingjobs.com\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}