Vegas or Bust!
Interview: John Arlidge Robert Earl lost £700m when his Planet Hollywood restaurant chain went bust. Twice. Now the high-rolling British entrepreneur is back on the Las Vegas Strip for one fi nal throw of the dice THE MOMENT WAS pure Vegas. At the fi nale of Hans Klok’s top-billing The Beauty of Magic show, a blonde with [...]
Interview: John Arlidge
Robert Earl lost £700m when his Planet Hollywood restaurant chain went bust. Twice. Now the high-rolling British entrepreneur is back on the Las Vegas Strip for one fi nal throw of the dice
THE MOMENT WAS pure Vegas. At the fi nale of Hans Klok’s top-billing The Beauty of Magic show, a blonde with a cantilevered chest and exuberant hair burst out from what looked like an empty casket in the middle of the stage. But this was no ordinary showgirl. This was the ultimate glitzy glamour queen: Pamela Anderson.
"This is my Vegas dream come true," the former Baywatch babe and Playboy bunny told the cheering crowd, before promising some "sultry surprises" when she begins nightly performances this summer.
Klok may have conjured up Anderson from nowhere but the real magician who choreographed her Vegas stage debut was watching from the wings. Anderson is the latest star signing by Robert Earl, the diminutive 55-year-old restaurateur from Hendon, north London. He and Anderson are partners in the most unlikely showbiz comeback since Liberace hit the Strip.
Just over a decade ago, Earl invited Bruce Willis and a few of his chums to open the fi rst branch of his celebrity-backed restaurant chain Planet Hollywood, in Vegas. The `eatertainment’ fi rm expanded fast, becoming the biggest and most valuable in the world, worth an estimated £1.5 billion. But it soon overheated and went bust twice. Earl lost £700m.
Now, the man is back in Vegas for a third and fi nal roll of the dice. His latest billion-pound venture, Planet Hollywood Resorts and Casinos, opens this autumn. "I’m hoping three is my lucky number," he said drily, after introducing his pneumatic new business partner to the Vegas crowds.
For Earl, the stakes could not be higher. He’s sinking £500m of his own money into the venture, in spite of the fact that no foreigner has opened a casino on the Las Vegas Strip without losing their shirt. "Philip Green [the retail billionaire and a friend of Earl] says I’m `effi ng mad’ to open here," Earl admits.
Earl sees himself as the corporate genie who can transform the tarnished Aladdin casino on the Vegas Strip into a gleaming, modern city on the hill for Hollywood stars and high-spending, celebrity- obsessed 20- to 40-somethings. Earl’s new Vegas company, OpBiz, which is backed by New York- based investment fund, Bay Harbour, and Starwood Resorts, the giant US-based hotel operator, bought the Aladdin out of bankruptcy in 2003 for £250m "a steal".
Earl is giving the resort a £1bn Planet Hollywood makeover. It will be redesigned inside and out, with an edgy 100,000sq ft casino and 2,600 new, sleek rooms, taking the total to 5,200. When the renovation is completed in September it will formally open with a £3m party that Bruce Willis promises will be "the biggest in Las Vegas history". And Earl knows that the second fortune he has made in retailing and gambling since Planet Hollywood restaurants went bust is on the line. But he insists he holds the trump card: A-list celebrity endorsement. Put the world’s biggest stars in the newest, hippest casino, he argues, and Planet Hollywood will soon eclipse the Bellagio and Wynn Las Vegas to become the new bling hotspot.
"America is a celebrity-driven society. People aspire to be where the celebrities are," he says. "Here, you will stay in a celebrity suite, maybe you will see a celebrity, maybe you will pay to see a celebrity in a headline act. We will become the high-energy, modern Vegas destination." Earl has signed up "celebrity partners" Anderson, Willis, Sylvester Stallone and added sports stars, notably former seven-times Wimbledon champion "Pistol" Pete Sampras and boxer Sugar Ray Leonard. He promises new A-list Hollywood, music and sports signings every month until September’s grand opening. Singers Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears and actors Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan are rumoured to be his next recruits.
Celebrity partners will have a suite built for them which will be available to paying guests when they are not in town. The suites will be named after them and feature memorabilia from their career. The Willis suite will be decorated with framed jackets the actor wore in his Die Hard movies. Guests will also be able to sleep in the bed Madge lounged across in the fi lm In Bed with Madonna. Those who would rather sleep with Sharon Stone, as it were, can choose the room with her bed from Basic Instinct.
The celebrity partners agree to appear at the casino for a fi xed number of nights a year. Stars will be encouraged to make fi lms at the casino Oscar- winning actor and director Kevin Spacey has just fi nished fi lming his new movie, 21 there and to hold premieres in Vegas, instead of Hollywood.
In return, they get a variety of benefi ts, including, for some, a stake in Planet Hollywood International, the brand’s global holding company that is controlled by Earl and his family. Earl declines to say how much equity celebrity partners get but the stars seem happy. "I can’t go into details," Sugar Ray Leonard says, "but I can tell you that when Robert put the idea to me, I said `yes’ straight away."
In its last year of trading as the Arab- themed Aladdin, Earl says the casino and resort turned in profi ts "south of £50m". From September, he predicts Planet Hollywood will make annual profi ts of almost £100m. He estimates the resort is currently worth £750m. That fi gure should rise to more than £1bn next year.
Vegas veterans welcome the new Brit on the Strip. The dilapidated Aladdin has long been a local embarrassment in a city desperate to shed its cheap image and reinvent itself as an upscale destination. But they caution that success won’t be easy.
Critics warn that most of the celebrities Earl has signed up are past their sell-by dates. One successful local nightclub owner says: "Who wants to go to a club with Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone? They’re so old; they’re like the embarrassing dads who get up and dance at bad weddings."
Another points out that the Planet Hollywood brand has been badly weakened by its double bankruptcies. "Consumers don’t want to buy into a brand that most people thought was dead and buried years ago. When was the last time anyone you know went to Planet Hollywood?"
Business analysts caution that Planet Hollywood is tiny by Vegas standards. MGM Mirage and Harrah’s, which each control several casinos on the Strip and countless more across America and in Macau, China, have deep pockets. Earl will fi nd it hard to ride out any downturn in the market.
Even though he recently suffered a setback when another Baywatch star and Playboy bunny, Carmen Electra, cancelled plans to perform at the new casino, Earl brushes off the concerns. "The new celebrities we will announce soon will give us a broader, younger base. Planet Hollywood never died. There are still 25 Planet Hollywoods. My partners, such as Starwood Hotels, are large companies, and by the time we have fi nished, this casino will be the third largest resort on the Strip. Our formula is solid."
If he’s right, it will be just the beginning. Earl is planning to take Planet Hollywood Resorts and Casinos global. His fi rst 250-bedroom hotel in India on Mumbai’s "golden crescent" is due to open next year. There are plans for a second US hotel and casino in Atlantic City and a third in Macau. He already has a London outpost, the upscale Fifty, in St James.
Flipping a frazzled burger chain into a chic global casino might seem improbable, but Vegas is an improbable place, a town built by mobsters in pursuit of Mammon which has gone on to become America’s number one tourist destination. If one of the most remarkable business comebacks of recent years can happen anywhere, it can happen in Vegas. Place your bets.
