...Let's keep right after it. Our next fireside chat here is with the management team from MGM Resorts. I think a group that needs very little introduction, but to my left somebody who does need a modest introduction because he's new, and he's moved from your side of the room to this side is Howard Wang. So Howard, welcome. Howard's in charge of investor relations now for MGM, been with the company for how long?
Seven months.
Seven months, and the big transfer from LA to Vegas.
Yeah.
To my right, obviously, no introduction needed, Chief Executive Officer Bill Hornbuckle. Bill, welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you
... traveling all the way from Vegas, and to Bill's right, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance, Sarah Rogers. Sarah, always a pleasure. Thanks.
Thank you.
On the far side,
James Kayler
Making sure the balance sheet balances. Yes.
Yeah. Yes.
Exactly. Bill, a lot of places we could start, but where I'd love to lead off is, you know, especially with having you know, you and being our first gaming company, as well as just, you know, MGM's gone through a lot of changes, a lot of transformation over the last kind of five to ten years. But, you know, when we think about your hands in lots of different businesses now globally, so a very large and interesting development pipeline: New York, Japan, you know, obviously, great success in Macau, possibilities around the Middle East and Dubai. Then, you know, we pivot here, huge flagships, I mean, the definitive brand on the Las Vegas Strip.
Sorry, Caesars, we'll say the same thing to you in a few hours. You know, but obviously, you know, defining the Las Vegas Strip on that side, and then, you know, this huge regional presence, and what you're doing online, you know, what's the connecting tissue? Or help us through the strategic vision, you know, at the C-suite of MGM. What's connecting all these businesses as we think about all the different, you know, things you have going on at the moment?
I think the vision, if you think about, you know, how we think about business for the next three or four or five years, and how we've thought about it over the last couple of years, is diversification of the business. You know, we have been told, and we hear the story, Vegas-centric, and by the way, we still are centric to Las Vegas, but as we continue to diversify, as we think about our digital business in the short and the midterm, as we think about Japan in the long term and our Asia platform, no matter what happens in Las Vegas, it will, to a certain degree, de-leverage that op, that meaningful part of the portfolio. So for us, it's about continued growth. It's about diversification.
Vegas is principal to who and what we are, and so even if you think about that portfolio, and I think it's served us well through a very difficult summer for most. I mean, we started Bellagio, and we end up at Excalibur, and the diversification we've seen there has been great in the context of luxury continues to pay off. Obviously, Las Vegas and the community and us, when it comes to Excalibur, Luxor, have a little different story to tell this summer, and we'll talk about that, I'm sure, going forward here. But for us, it's really about diversification of the business. We have seen, and I think you've all seen, what's now happened. We've had the catalyst, and we've had that changing point. I know you'll hear more from the BetMGM folks later today.
With that, that business, there's been a $400 million turnaround, basically in a year.
Right.
And so that's hit its catalyst. Our regional business has continued to do well. You know, we're leading market in five of the eight markets that we're—seven markets that we're in. So we continued to perform well there, and they have interestingly, I reflect back to 2008, 2009, and 2010, and even this year, they perform well in more difficult times, and they're continuing to perform well, particularly in a place like Atlantic City, which through some, you know, has through some enhancements, both in the MGM brand showing up for the old Water Club. We redid that tower, and what we've did on the casino floor there in the context of VIP business and expansion of that, both in, Asian play, we have a noodle shop, we have an expanded VIP area. That business has remained strong and then some.
And so, the bigger play, though, is diversification and making sure at our scale, we have the opportunity. We are now getting into this, as we've hit 50 million in our rewards platform, to be able to be an omni-channel in a meaningful way. And that is all part and parcel. We've seen that pay dividends already in Michigan and places like Michigan. We see it paying dividends in New Jersey and ultimately, obviously, in Las Vegas.
So let's just hit on the elephant in the room. We're going to get it out of the way. Let's talk a little bit about Las Vegas. You know, you kind of mentioned, and this is a theme that, by the way, goes beyond Las Vegas, right? We talk about this bifurcated consumer environment. We've seen high-end, low-end, what you're seeing at the luxury price points, what you're seeing at some of the more value-oriented properties. But just let's just start at the very highest level. You know, summer, and this was all updated through kind of, you know, second quarter earnings calls, was weak, right? I mean, we saw that kind of big step down in June. Sounds like it continued in July, but didn't get, you know, that much worse. But what are you seeing right now?
How would you characterize the broad environment? And then let's break it down.
Sure. Look, I think our third quarter is going to represent what the second quarter did when it's all said and done in many forms. Specific to Las Vegas, I just mentioned it, but our luxury, the Bellagios, the Arias, the Cosmopolitans, continue to perform at a very high level. Now, if you compare them to 2023 and 2024, which was just stratospheric, it's off. But, you know, the idea, the notion that, well, I read a headline the other day, "Las Vegas is dead." No, Las Vegas isn't dead. We ran 98% this weekend, full stop. I mean, so, I mean, we are not dead. We are far from dead. The idea of that, though, where it has hurt, and not only the community, but us, is at the lower end. And so value-oriented, folks who go to Excalibur, Luxor...
Remembering, a couple things have happened to us, one specific to the company. We've had a massive remodel at MGM. We've had 800 rooms out of order. We've sped that up so that we'll be done with it by the middle of October, and so for the fourth quarter, we'll have all of our inventory back. We think that's a meaningful thing to do. We've seen in the market of Spirit go bankrupt. We've seen them pull back almost 400,000 seats. That's had an impact on the summer. And I think overall dynamic and policy, if you think about visitation, people who are traveling and people who aren't, and you think about Southern California, drive traffic in from Southern California has been meaningfully off, and I think it's the low-value market.
I don't think I know, in terms of Excalibur and Luxor, of note, that's been impacted. But the idea that Las Vegas is dead. I would say we are putting a push on because we let the narrative get away from us in the context of value. And so we are out putting a push on Las Vegas is a huge and remains a huge value for consumers at all levels. We have a group in Canada today, through the convention authority, that's literally promoting that storyline. We launch Oui Las Vegas, a campaign starting next week. It's a national campaign around Las Vegas, fabulous Las Vegas, that harkens back to all of the things that at once was in terms of value creation. We are all participating in a citywide program to promote Las Vegas in terms of value and production.
We have taken a very hard look at pricing, and it's not about room rates, it's not even about resort fees or parking fees, and by the way, that's not historically going to change. We value that business. We think we are a good value there, but we have done things like you buy $12 Starbucks coffee. So if we go through a $26 bottle of water at Aria is the one that keeps resonating with me. So we're going to go back through our pricing on those things that people touch every day and matters. So tonight, you can check into New York-New York or Excalibur for $85, including resort fee. You can get a $5 beer, you can bet on a $5 table.
So we've looked at the marketplace, and we're going to make a difference where we think the narrative, it's most important and where it helps. But I think the fundamentals of Las Vegas are strong. We're coming into convention season, we're coming into event season, I think, which really drives visitation. We've got Crawford against Canelo Álvarez, middle of September in Allegiant Stadium. That's 65,000 people. We have Paul McCartney, the second weekend in October. I think he'll do fine. I think he'll sell out. And so we have nine Raiders games this year versus eight, and it goes on and on and on. Continuing the fall program with the convention foundation back in play, I think will change the whole storyline.
But can I quick-
Yeah.
You mentioned Southern California, which obviously the biggest feeder market. The visitation number, right, in July, I think definitely caught people's eye, was down 12%, if I remember correctly. What are you seeing, like international is getting a lot of like play in the press, right? Just international visitation into the U.S., generally, Canada behind on that list. So like from international travel and then from an airlift perspective, what are you seeing in Vegas?
International airlift is actually on par, interestingly.
Yeah.
Canada is off 40% for Las Vegas, and obviously, you know, commentary about the 51st state isn't helping. I just got to say that. Having said that, you know, their peak season is February and October, you know, in terms of, you know, when they come-
Yeah
... particularly around the notion of hockey. And so we've got time, I think, to rebound and hopefully repair. That ad campaign I mentioned, it will be in Canada. Again, we have a delegation up there today talking to Canada, making sure that they feel loved, that they feel welcome, that we want them, and that we need them. There's only so much we can do and so much we can control, but put it in perspective, international Las Vegas business is about 11% of the mix. Canada is about 3, Mexico is about three or four. Mexico is about 3. Mexico is fine, and then some, and I think the Canelo fight will actually raise the annual number. Some of the other business is off, but only in a minor percentage.
So it's an impact, particularly the Canada discussion, but in the relative scheme, it's not something that the drive traffic this summer, Southern California has been, and not having Spirit in play at the scale that they once were, is also a big play. It just the market hasn't rebounded that quick enough.
And just remind us for some of the high-end properties, you know, international, when we think about gaming, tended to be a bit more, you know, Asia-specific or, you know, Asia-oriented, obviously. Without going totally down the Macau rabbit hole just yet, just what, what's that at the higher end price points, do you see the same patterns? Are they exacerbated, or are they muted because-
Maybe the-
... look, the demand is to backfill Bellagio, no matter what.
They are muted. In terms of high-end gaming, whether it's Asian or otherwise, most of the noise we hear, specifically around international travel, is just not an event. Everything from we go get them in an airplane to, you know... So that's not a serious event, and we've continued to see that continue to grow as it has from 2023, 2024, and beyond. When you think about China in general, you know, all the way back to 2019 and 2018, we're not back to where we were, and frankly, we won't be. One of the broader challenges for international travel is, this is not an immediate, you know, Canada thing.
Mm.
You can go back, and it's not this administration thing. You can go back to 2016. We had a $50 billion international surplus. Today, we have a $50 billion deficit in international travel, we, the U.S., and obviously, Vegas plays a big part in that. So there is a broader concern and something broader going on, that we as a country need to get our act together and focus on welcoming people for in. If you think about the opportunity before us, you got the Olympics twice, you got Ryder Cup right now, you got World Cup coming up. There's a massive amount of things that are going to happen to showcase America that are coming up, that we, the collective government and the destinations, need to do a much better job with.
Is the group calendar and the return of this, and you know, we all make a science out of September and holiday shift relative to October, but is the group calendar enough to help put a line underneath this bill in terms of like-
Yes
... you know, can that drive enough compression, enough movement? And do you start to see that in what you're able to look out and see kind of as we turn the corner into Q4 and into 2026, as you know, can convention, group, event can that start to heal some of the, you know, the-
Yeah
... the drill, the transients often as we're seeing?
Hell, the word is absolutely yes. To the extent, how far we go, it's... Look, we, we do know, we know our group business is strong in the fourth quarter. We know it's, it's strong as it's ever been in 2026... and 2027, we see what we're booking today versus what we've booked historically, and it's better and bigger. I know corporate America will show up 'cause the boss makes them show up. What I don't know necessarily is, on, take CES as an example, what's going to happen?
Mm.
It's too early to tell empirically what that data is gonna provide and what ultimately shows up. I will say one thing, for us, the Marriott relationship, you know, we switched gears on something with our original deal with them. We opened it up to conventions, and so I'll go back to the CES example. What happens there now is if I've got a Marriott Bonvoy, 200 million of them, and I wanna go to Las Vegas on a convention like CES, we now accept and take their points, and we trade for that. I think that'll make a difference for us in citywides and things that are tied to Las Vegas, but not specifically tied to a property. I think for us, that's a distinct advantage.
And Tony was on stage earlier actually mentioning that, you've done some work and that the group overlaps were smaller than-
Right, yeah.
Maybe you had thought through what you're able to do, you know, and sounds like that.
Our biggest concern was, look, we know everybody in the group business, quote, unquote, "We know everybody." No, we don't know everybody. We had 13 offices. They have 1,300 people in the field, and so there's a segment, particularly that benefits the mid-market, like MGM and whatnot, that we did not have the access to that they do, and so it's a meaningful differential. To put that many people to work on behalf of the company, they're doing over 20,000 room nights a week with us, and so that's gonna continue to grow as we open up this convention market as well, and so we're very excited by that.
Let's shift gears to Macau for a quick minute. I mean, this has been a, actually, underneath it all, a huge success story. Very MGM-specific to start with, in terms of what you've done on the share gains and improvement side, and now it seems broadening out to the entire market. So I actually want to start on that in reverse. You know, we've seen this kind of improvement over the summer. It, you know, we kind of sit here and look at a lot of macro variables, and we're kind of saying, "Look, Macau seemed to have led the improvement that we're seeing in other places right now." Meaning like, yeah, I see some enthusiasm in the stock market in China, but not, you know, necessarily all of China macro. If you had some of our hotel companies, they're not-
Right
blowing the doors off in China, and yet Macau is booming. So square the circle for us.
Sure.
What are your people on the ground telling you about why Macau is having a great, it's such a phenomenal summer?
I'll talk to macro and then micro to our company. You know, we're talking in Macau, maybe 25 million visitors, and if you really start to think about that, it's 7, 8 million people who come three times a year. So the actual penetration into what you need to come into Macau in comparative to a billion four is, like, slim and nothing. And so you just gotta always keep that in mind, the perspective of what we need to feed that marketplace. It really hasn't changed. What's happened is the junketeers have obviously now gone. VIP customers are still coming and en masse.
We have seen from Southeast Asia and some of the other places that we have offices in, that we market to, a big lift, and we have, I think, a distinct advantage there, where others potentially haven't been, has relied more on junkets historically and have therefore not been established. So we know the customers. We know where they live, you know, the infamous, "We know where you live." And so we're in a great position to do that. You know, we also have nine hotels in China. So it's not a huge thing, but we do understand the general sentiment and the economy and what's going on in the hospitality business there 'cause we follow that closely. Macau is an exception. And I think part of it's, they have allowed people to come.
You know, if you go back a year or two years ago, they were telling the individual people, "I'm sorry, you've been four times, you can't go a fifth time." Any and all of that has stopped for now. I think they're letting the market run. I mean, it's just over $30 billion. I think it's got some more room to grow. It won't be $45 billion anytime soon. So I think that's a reality that we all understand. And then I think our personal ability at MGM to go after share, we got very aggressive on the casino floor, what that product needed and wanted to be, and we changed a bunch of things. How we fed people literally on the floor, how the floor is designed, what's the padding in the carpet, believe it or not, is a real discussion there.
The lighting, the coloration, the how you position the games, and we went deeply into that in the context of asking customers what they wanted to see, what they wanted to do, what they wanted to participate in, and I think we've been rewarded for it. Now, others are following suit, and that's not a surprise. Fortunately, I don't think we've seen, although it's always aggressive there, we haven't seen marketing dollars, you know, continue to creep out of control. So I think the programming is in play. I think the government watches that all now closely anyway, so I think there's a check and balance there on that. And so, you know, we're gonna hit a 28% margin, give or take, and I'm excited by where that has gone and where it's going.
Then for us, we've been able to add more village and more suite product, which, you know, again, the market has gone, particularly in our case, to premium, and so we were under-suited, and generally speaking, we're under room given our scale, and we have outperformed. We're about $130. You know, picking up 100 more tables didn't hurt, and if you look back at the old model, we've really added 200 tables, 100 new ones, and we had 100 that were tied in junkets and not as productive as, from a margin perspective, as I thought they could be. And so now we've unleashed all of that, and so it's paying dividends.
You alluded to this, but just to make sure we put a fine point on it, there is some concern, I mean, in part because of MGM's success story on market share, that means there's a loser when those numbers have to come up to 100%. You know, that promotions could tick up. It doesn't sound like anything, you know, you've seen to date, that your property people are calling out there, but is that a concern as, you know, again, the fight, you know, gets fought to try and, you know-
We had this very-
win a little bit of that share back?
We had this very conversation a year ago.
Sure.
Okay, and so a year later, we still haven't like gone crazy. We, the market, we, MGM, our margin, matter of fact, I was suggesting we'd be in the mid-teens, given all the programming we had to bring in to satisfy the government requirements. We're beating that, and we haven't, you know. So I, I would challenge that. Doesn't mean tomorrow.
Uh-huh.
Sometimes it doesn't, silly, but I would challenge that.
... Let's switch to digital a little bit. You know, we've talked again. This is another one where I think a year, if that, if Macau was consistent, this is like one eighty.
Right.
Right? So, you know, I'd love maybe your just high-level decomposition here first. Again, I think I sat here with you, I think a week after this conference in September, and it was kind of like, we've got a leash for what you know, what can happen here, or why we think we've got the right steps. We fast-forward, almost every KPI in the business accelerated, and it looks like we're looking at a multi-hundred million dollar, you know, change in trajectory in, you know, less than a year. So looking back on it now, like with you know, kind of with hindsight, what's been the biggest, you know, kind of point or two-
I see Adam back there, and I know you're going to hear from him later. A lot of credit to the team for doing really a couple of principled things. We were very aggressive in marketing at a top level, and Adam will get into some of this detail, I suspect, and so doing what mattered from a marketing perspective saved us a great deal of economics and accreted to the bottom line. Improving the product year after year after year, we're now really in our second full year as we hit football again, and Adam, I suspect we'll get into this in greater detail, actually, just simply improving the product and making it more competitive has made a massive difference, and then the fascinating thing to me, if you think about New Jersey as the example, New Jersey with iGaming started in 2012.
We still see double-digit growth, and so the breadth of these markets, same in Michigan, same in New Jersey, the growth rate that we have seen year- over- year, because, you know, we've only added one or two states for sports betting even, and we're pushing 30% growth rates in most of these markets. And so it's a credit to the team and what the focus has been, a credit to our partner, Entain, and, you know, opening their ears and eyes and saying, "Okay, we need to help this business do more." And just overall, the marketplace has continued to do well, and, you know, we've benefited from that. We've stopped losing share, we're taking back some share.
And so, and over time, between single wallet and single account, you know, the idea of omni-channel, 15% of folks who now touch either our product or a BetMGM's product share, meaning they come, they touch both products. And so those numbers continue to go higher, and we're excited by that. And so it's been literally almost a $400 million turnaround from when we sat here a year ago to today, and that's, and probably more importantly, we've all talked about making $500 million at some point as the next threshold. There's a vision and a view into that, which we all believe is very real at this point.
Bill, you mentioned obviously your partner, Entain. I think the JV structure has always been a topic of discussion.
You couldn't help yourself, could you?
Well, I mean, I think with the inflection in the business, does that change the thinking around that? Does it create any sort of urgency, or is it just, you know, operate the business, number one?
Operate the business. I mean, operate the business, number one. We want, we want to continue to see that clear path to that $500 million. There's a lot that's in play right now to confuse the business or to sidetrack the business, and some other deviation is not smart, and so we're going to continue on the track we've got and take a view once we get to the next year.
Was that a closeted shot at prediction markets?
I didn't say that you did. I mean, I'll say something about prediction markets. MGM Resorts' view is it invites the federal government into a space it's never been, and it's not a place we'd like to see this marketplace go. Full stop. We're going to watch. We'd be foolish not to. I will reference, and again, I think Adam can put more color on this down the road, the prediction markets are in U.K., they've been there for twenty years. They're a piece and a part, they're under 10% market share, and they get beat up a lot. I mean, if you go play on these prediction markets, you don't even have to be that sharp to figure out what to do.
So it's, you know, it's out, it's real. We have to contend with it, understand it. We've got to be ready for it if it becomes even realer, but officially, it is not something we endorse.
Let's talk on international digital, though. This is, you know, another piece and just, you know, you mentioned U.K., you're in that market with the BetMGM brand. Some of these markets, you know, so I think what are the priorities for the markets? U.K., Netherlands, Brazil, I think are all on that list.
As a growth priority, it's Brazil. We've seen enough now to realize and still believe it's a $7 billion-$8 billion market. It's crowded, but we think we can share, steal between 5-10% share, which you put a normal margin to that, and remembering our partner is Globo, so we have a distinct advantage in terms of advertising and marketing dollars that bring to the business. To put a normal margin on that, and over time, we see it as a $200 million-$300 million piece of that alone. LeoVegas business, look, there's been a lot of regulatory between U.K., Sweden, and some other things. Like in Sweden, you had to get relicensed and start over. But all that foundationally is on solid footing and going in the right direction.
We put our own sports betting product in Tipico in play, so it's in Finland, it's in the Netherlands, and it's heading to Brazil. We feel really good about that product and ultimately what it can do. We still have a piece called Push Gaming, which is in the content business, which we're pushing out content not only to BetMGM, but to ourselves and to other vendors, and we like being in that side of the business and having a purview and a view in terms of games and what they can be, and particularly there, we've leveraged into our scale with jackpots that the markets haven't seen before.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we have a pretty big balance sheet as compared to most of the competition, and we're leveraging in to go win a $2 million jackpot, and particularly in places like the U.K., it's paying a dividend.
Let's switch over to capital allocation and CapEx.
Mm-hmm.
So, yeah, I think you had a little something you wanted to share on, you know, on Japan, which I know is a big personal ambition of yours, Bill.
Yes, it is. We are literally in the ground. We have poured our fifty-second pile as of this morning, so yay! Five years from now, this will come to life. We are projecting opening in the third or fourth quarter of 2030. What you're looking at is about 2,800 rooms. That will become one of the world's, if not the world's, largest casino, 750 tables, over 6,000 slot machines. There's over 70 food and beverage outlets. There's a theater for 3,500. There's a convention facility, MICE facility for just under 1 million sq. ft. of space. You can't see it, but there's a small outdoor theater, and there's an outdoor pavilion that has bars and restaurants and whatnot along the garden area there.
Across the way here, there's a museum that leads to a ferry terminal. We have seen now the infrastructure in play because of the World's Fair, World Expo. They brought over a million people to this site, and so I've seen it work, and so I feel excited by the rail and the network that's put in play for this site. But, you know, it's a landfill site. So for us, we're playing in the mud better part of a year, and then we're going to begin to build this thing. If you think about Singapore as a proxy in our future, you know, Singapore, we're gonna have half the facility, meaning one, they have two. We have five times the population, twice the visitation already in Japan before we open this thing.
Singapore are gonna do $2.5 billion in cash flow this year, the Sands alone, over $3 billion in the market. You put all that dynamic at play, and you, you take a pachinko market that's almost $20 billion inside Kansai region, and you put it to work here. I think this is a, you know, for us, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I'm very excited by, and I, I. You know, we've taken our projections up over $2 billion, and you know, nothing's a layup in life, and certainly getting this far has not been a layup. We've been at this 16 years, to be clear. True.
That's crazy.
It'll be, it is crazy. It'll be 20 years before we open from the first day I met my first Diet member, but we couldn't be more excited about what this will do for the company.
All right. Give us, like, some fun engineering fact. Fifty-two pilings out of how many?
Um-
Like, what are we getting into here?
The building, the building is only 38 stories tall. I had this wonderfully graceful, elegant, tall building, and I was told it would sink into the ground in about five years, so don't do that. So those pylons go 80m deep just to support this thing, the weight, because it's a landfill. It's not. It's an island, but not really. It's a landfill. So to get bedrock, we had to go 80m , and there's 3,500 of them.
Thirty-five, so-
Thirty-five hundred.
3,500 will be the-
And so it's. Look, it's crazy ambition, but that's been rewarded, particularly in this neck of the world, that we think this will be too.
Great. And then, you know, what I found is with projects like this, that there's something, there's some variable that it's always hard to pin down, but, you know, it ends up being that big surprise. You know, do you think it's depth of the slot market and that mass market, or do you think it's VIP, you know, in terms of-
I think-
What do you think we're all gonna ultimately underestimate?
I think the depth of the slot market is what we're gonna ultimately underestimate. Now, there's only so much capacity in this thing. It's 6,500 machines. There's only so many people a day you can let into a place like this. And like Singapore, it will have a fee to get in. The interesting thing for us, though, 'cause this will have all the usual toys, villas, high-end baccarat, all the things that would attract high-end customers. We're an hour closer, an hour and a half closer to Beijing and Shanghai than Macau. By the way, remember, we know those customers so, and so I think that's gonna be the secret opportunity here to really take it from where we think it will be to potentially the next step.
Airlift would be direct from there to Osaka with plenty of options?
Right, including a ferry or a helicop-- I think it's a helicopter, maybe not a helicopter, but we got a helicopter pad as well, and that'll be a common thing.
That'll be a busy helicopter pad.
Hopefully.
Okay, James, anything else on Japan?
I mean, I think we maybe pivot to capital, like-
Okay
... as part of that conversation.
Can we touch on a couple?
Go.
Just go do the regional thing quickly.
Yeah, yeah. Go.
We live in New York.
Yeah.
So here we are. You probably have some meeting or another set up around this, you know, so what's going on here? You know, a big important market and something that we, you know, I think the RFP is, you know, it's already in, so where, where do we sit in the process?
We next week hear from city council, officially get our vote. We then, by end of month, need to make our submission, including our tax bid. Remember that taxes are, quote, "biddable," and despite what Senator Addabbo may say, they're telling us by end of year, this license will be awarded. There's a concern that they can't get the legislature back together to vote on it or whatever they need to do next in time, but we've been assured they're gonna get it done because, frankly, the community wants the cash.
And-
We have to write a $500 million check, and so that's the timing of all of it. They've changed a couple of the rules I'm not crazy about, you know, there's a deal out there that says, after we've made our submission, by the way, that if you spend under $1.5 billion, you only get a 10-year license, and if you spend over, I think it's $5 billion, you get a 20-year license. So they've then now moderated it, tied to the amount of money you spend, how, what their license duration is.
Ah.
Huh is right. I'll leave it at that. So anyways, that's the timing and the process. So by end of year, we're gonna know where we stand.
You mentioned the biddable tax rate, which is unique in the market structure. Is it a sliding scale, that and the $500 million, though, in terms of-
Seven million
... both or the $500 million-
No-
-or that's-
No
... that's minimum?
They can both... That's the minimum.
That's the minimum, and then you can balance tho-
Right
... those, but-
Remember, we and Aqueduct are required to come back to the same tax base as a minimum that we currently are paying. So we give the state, I'm gonna make up a number, I'm not far off, though, $360 million, give or take. Plus we have the horsemen we pay a lot of money to.
Mm-hmm.
Plus, the city is gonna get a little vague now going forward, and so we have to meet that as a minimum going forward, as does Aqueduct.
Okay.
The third license does not, but if they don't, there's so much competition. If they don't bid a high enough fee, they're not gonna get it anyways, so... But it's one more quirk.
...and then one more region around the world, and then, but I'd love to talk about the Middle East for a second. I think in general, you've got a management, non-gaming structure set up in Dubai, but where do we sit and kind of what's your, what's your thinking about, you know, that part of the region, you know, that part of the world right now?
This project, you're looking at the project here. It's on a 25-acre island. That's a massive beach club. There's an Aria, a Bellagio, and an MGM. It's about 1,800 keys, I think, all said and done. And our partner, which is ultimately Wasl, which is owned by the ruler, to be clear, has enabled us to build a 250,000 sq. ft. podium right in the middle, at a floor, on the intent that hopefully someday it becomes a casino. I thought by now Abu Dhabi would have ruled on what they were doing. There was a lot of dialogue around that. You know, there's a gaming commission set up. Obviously, we all understand what Wynn is doing to the north.
We will hear, you know, this opens in spring of twenty, excuse me, in fall of 2028. So it's well under. I think there's five or six floors out. I don't know if there's another picture here, but I think there is. There's five or six stories up already, and it's progressing. We'll. I don't know when we'll hear, but I do believe this. The airport currently is to the south. It's moving, excuse me, to the north. It's moving to the south, along the Dubai-Abu Dhabi border. It's going to be the world's largest airport. They've budgeted for it. It's like $100 billion. It's insane. And, you know, if this gets a casino, and I believe it will over time, we think it's a massive opportunity as well, given the logistics and location.
So just to be clear, what specifically are we waiting for? There's a possible-
The ruler, think of the ruler as a governor and a legislature all in one. Each ruler has his right to say yes or no.
Okay.
So we're waiting for the ruler to say, "Go ahead, go forward." Because the regs are in play and the environment's in play with the gaming commission, we understand the, you know, how it would work. We don't have permission yet from the ruler of Dubai to go forward.
But there's nothing in those rules that would preclude this building from possibly qualifying as a-
No
... as a casino-
No
-as a...
No, we've taken that into consideration.
Okay.
James?
Well, we only have a couple of minutes left, but I mean, maybe just to circle back on capital allocation and the balance sheet. I mean, obviously, ton of balls in the air, Japan's a massive investment, New York potential. So the last few years, you've sort of really invested in stock. What does capital allocation look like going forward from here? I think leverage is, you know, if you do it lease-adjusted, it's sort of like four-ish times. Sort of what's the comfort level should we expect? Is that kind of, are you trying to solve to stay in there? So what does that, you know, how do we think about all those things?
Go ahead first.
So we do have a financial policy in place that says, you know, four and a half times is sort of our limit. That being said, I think if Bill and the board had some wonderful idea for growth, they'd be willing to be at least a short-term flexibility on that. We've obviously bought back over 40% of our shares outstanding, and we have messaged that with the, you know, excess cash coming down and with the future obligations for Japan, that we will ultimately slow. But again, you know, if the share price gets to a point where there's, you know, it's so attractive, that's something we would continue to consider.
Sarah, can you just remind us of equity commitments or needs across these different project buckets? 'Cause I think we're now at that place where Japan's some meaningful commitments are going out the door. I think it's equity first, but where are we at for committed debt financing for the project?
That's right. So we have the financing in place for Japan. As of the last Q, it's JPY 380 billion, and spot at that time had us at about $2.6 billion in outstanding dollars remaining. This year will be around $300 million and, you know, the future years at around $500 million-$600 million, and then the debt will kick in. For New York, it's a $500 million license fee, and then $1.7 billion in build spend, and that, you know, is something that could be financed by, you know, MGM or another firm.
Then any other needs on the cap structure side, on the, you know, on the debt side, or that's, that's pretty much those are the two big-
I mean, Bet MGM business, the digital business is in good shape.
Right.
We're all in for same everything. I hope and believe the BetMGM business will be showing off dividends pretty soon here. I mean, we're sitting on some real cash there, and so I think that's a real opportunity for all of us. And the other business, we are where we are. There is marketing, but it's not significant in the context of spend.
Fantastic. I think that's what we've got time for. So Bill, Sarah, Howard, thank you for joining us.
Thank you.
We appreciate it.
Thanks.
Thank you all.
Great.