Steve Wynn is out of the company bearing his name.
He resigned as Chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts (as well as Wynn Macau, something potentially a much bigger deal for his company) under a wave of sexual assault allegations, detailed in the Wall Street Journal, that spanned decades.
The easy take is "good riddance". The long answer is a little bit more nuanced.
Like him or not, and many don't, the fact is that a LOT of modern Vegas, both good and bad, is the result of things Wynn did in the 80's and 90's when he changed the face of the city by building the Mirage and Bellagio respectively.
Prior to that the prevailing idea in the city was that casinos were going to be grind joints, with people throwing quarters into slot machines, buses pulling in, dumping off people with money and taking them away without money.
Steve Wynn changed that by re-introducing the concept of the luxury resort, ushering in the modern age.
The reality of late however has not been one of Steve Wynn the innovator, but Steve Wynn the copier. From resort fees, to paid parking to cutting back on gambling odds and envisioning non-gambling outdoor spaces and even to beefing up his high-end retail offerings Wynn has been on the tailing end of innovations brought about by Caesar's Entertainment Group and MGM.
Of all the casinos on the Strip his had the biggest decline in gaming last year as he decided to basically punt most gamblers to other locations and increase charges for everyone except his highest margin players. He also nixed his golf course in favor of the still unrealized Paradise Park and made a big gamble that paid off in Macau.
Fast forward to today and all of that seems to be in a little bit of trouble. The Macau deal is due to be renegotiated and it's increasingly clear that China will not be willing to ink something as favorable to Wynn. This puts in danger the big cash cow that has floated his stock in the past. With Wynn out of the picture, and his influence with Republican lawmakers, it's unclear what type of deal the company can reasonably hope to receive.
While Steve made his company a Macau interest, the declines at Wynn and Encore should be most disturbing, because they're trailing all of the other companies on the Strip. For a while the stock price was propped up to to investor's belief in the power of The Steve, that seems gone now.
And it should be gone.
Because what we have in Steve Wynn are allegations of a man who abused his power and influence over workers for decades. This is not an isolated incident that occurred years ago from which he repented and never turned back. If the allegations are true then Steve Wynn never progressed as a man past the "Boys will be boys" sixties and that's a problem.
We all have things in our past that we've done wrong. In most cases we learn from them, get punished for them, and move on a wiser, usually better person. The problem in Wynn's case is apparently that there was an entire infrastructure built up around him to provide cover for indiscretions, and sweep them under the rug.
You saw the same thing with Harvey Wienstein, and from a host of other powerful figures who are finding themselves in the same mess. If you're a bad guy and continue to be a bad guy society has lost the inclination to 'let boys be boys' and are (rightly) demanding some comeuppance.
As a society we need to ensure this continues, but guard against flogging good people who did a bad thing once many years ago, and have repented and changed. Also, we need to be mature enough to realize that disliking a person AND respecting the contributions that they've made to their industry, society, humanity are not mutually exclusive things.
Most very successful people have jerk streaks a mile-wide. It's how they became successful in the first place. The ones that need to get knocked down a peg are the ones who develop God complexes. If the allegations are true then Wynn did just that.
His legacy may still stand, but his reputation is in tatters.
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