Inspire at South Korea’s gateway Incheon International Airport has attracted attention largely due to Bain Capital’s takeover of the integrated resort last February from project developer Mohegan Gaming. Bain lent Inspire US$275 million and now controls a property that cost $1.6 billion to build so far; it currently carries more than $700 million in additional debt.
Bain’s financial jujitsu has overshadowed the substantial appeal of Inspire and obscured a fundamental question about Northeast Asia’s largest IR: Why did Mohegan, a leading Native American gaming operator with no Asia experience and no Asian player database, think it could succeed in a foreigner-only casino market halfway around the world facing a highly experienced local incumbent? And why did Bain, a leading global private equity firm, believe Mohegan could – and believe now that Bain can?
“This was the first new casino licence issued in Korea in nearly 20 years, and there are many reasons why no others had followed,” Inspire project architect Steelman Partners CEO Paul Steelman says. “Chief among them is the extraordinary difficulty and expense of building a casino in a market that does not exist organically and must instead be cultivated, often at the mercy of other countries’ visa policies and travel restrictions.”
Rerunning a winning play
With Inspire, Mohegan aimed to recreate its triumph in the Connecticut hinterlands between the Boston and New York metro areas, where its Mohegan Sun challenged established tribal casino Foxwoods, Spectrum Gaming Capital CEO Robert Heller explains.
“Mohegan came in with a casino that was more thoughtfully designed and achieved great success,” Heller says, while emphasising he has no inside knowledge regarding Inspire. “So Mohegan’s story, I imagine, is that they’ve done this before, and they’ve outperformed because they know how to run a resort better.”
Additionally, Heller cites the IR’s Inspire Arena, South Korea’s first 15,000-seat indoor multipurpose stadium, as a major selling point. “The Inspire property has a major entertainment venue, and part of the distinctive characteristic of Mohegan is their entertainment venue that’s in Connecticut. I think they were trying to replicate that success.”
Incumbent Incheon IR Paradise City may have encouraged rather than deterred Mohegan and Bain. “You already had Paradise’s success, proving that the market can work,” says Heller, a former investment banker and IR CFO. “I think that’s what was appealing to both Mohegan and to Bain; whether or not that’s a good strategy is another story.”
Inspire and Bain would not share detailed financial information about the property. However, the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority annual report for fiscal 2025 states that from its opening in November 2023 until Bain’s takeover on 13 February, 2025, Inspire had net revenue of $260 million and operating costs of $315 million, plus interest expense of $276 million.
‘Natural, positive profitability’
Those numbers underlie Mohegan’s failure to satisfy loan covenants and its default on Bain’s loan despite not missing any payments. Under Bain’s ownership, Inspire has “achieved a natural, positive profitability, [and] done so, I think, in a much faster timeline than most new integrated resorts would”, chief operating officer Wade Howk says.
Responding to a request for clarification, Howk defined “natural, positive profitability” as “positive monthly EBITDA”. However, Howk would not elaborate on how many months of positive EBITDA Inspire has posted or reveal any related numbers.
Beyond the claimed financial turnaround, Bain’s takeover “didn’t flip 180 [degrees] on us”, says Howk, who joined Inspire in August 2023. He notes Bain already had representation on Inspire’s board of directors.
“Bain being a financial arm, whereas Mohegan is an operational arm, the financial arm is always going to look at things a little differently, and they usually are going to look at it more number-centric. So we have a lot more KPIs (key performance indicators) to work on, and a lot more ways in which we’re going to slice and dice the data.”
Under Bain, Inspire has gradually made executive changes. In April, Inspire hired Shirley Tam as chief casino marketing officer and Hanna Lee as senior vice president of strategy marketing, focusing on non-gaming operations. Tam’s resume includes stints in Macau, the Philippines and the cruise industry. Lee began her career at Bain and worked in marketing with Korean conglomerate GS Retail and online app Line.
In August, Inspire added Sangwon Lee as chief transformation officer “to boost competitiveness and drive sustainable growth”. After training as an electrical engineer in Korea, Lee earned an MBA at New York’s Columbia University, then worked at consultancy McKinsey, Korean giant LG and its logistics and advisory arm Serveone.
Change at the top
In October, Inspire named Gyubum Ko as CEO. “Known for his ability to steer multinational B2C businesses with strong reputations in Korea, Ko brings a valuable combination of international perspective and deep local market understanding,” Inspire said in announcing the appointment.
Ko has been a top FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) and healthcare executive but, like both Lees hired earlier, has no experience in gaming or hospitality. Ko replaced Chen Si, a seasoned gaming executive who landed on his feet as COO at Genting’s Resort World Sentosa in Singapore.
Inspire is South Korea’s 18th casino, all requiring a foreign passport for admission except Kangwon Land in rugged former coal mining country a nearly three-hour drive southeast of Seoul. For a foreigner-only casino, it’s rarely easy at any stage.
“We were handed a challenging assignment,” Paul Steelman says. “We were asked to take a building that had already been designed by three architects before us – at a staggering projected cost of approximately $3.4 billion – and, amid the current financial realities, reduce it to roughly a $1 billion project while still honoring the permits and entitlements granted by the Korean government. Achieving that balance was no small task.”
No corners appear to have been cut in Inspire’s first phase encompassing 462,000 square metres (5 million square feet). Under its agreement with Korean authorities, Inspire will develop its full 4.36 million-square-metre site in phases by 2046. Next up, Phase 1-B adding 150 guest rooms.
Category killer
“Our property is somewhat of a category killer,” says Howk, who came to Bain from Hard Rock Cincinnati. Categories Inspire kills, according to Howk, include digital art, indoor arena, MICE space and indoor water park.
“Everyone wants to see all the technology stuff that we have,” Howk says. The wizardry begins on Aurora Street, Inspire’s 150-metre-long, 26-metre-tall immersive digital entertainment corridor. Envision award-winning Aurora as an indoor, compact version of downtown Las Vegas’ Fremont Street Experience.
Aurora plays distinct programs on high-definition LED displays every 30 minutes throughout the day. Shows range from seasonal themes to underwater fantasy to realistic African savanna with languid lions in the grass and birds of prey soaring overhead.
Inspire’s digital art doesn’t stop at Aurora. The entrance lobby leading to Aurora is a digital cube depicting London’s 19th century Crystal Palace, its lighting and shadows changing throughout the day. Ticketed attraction Le Space, Korea’s largest interactive media art exhibition, transports visitors through the cosmos in 18 stages spread across 6,600 square metres.
Howk expects Inspire to attract 6 million visitors in 2026. “At the end of the day, I have got to monetize them,” he says. Another Inspire executive estimates 70% of guests don’t gamble, raising the degree of difficulty to convert traffic into revenue. Howk says the resort aspires to a 50-50 balance of gaming and non-gaming revenue.
Heavy hit-makers
“We’ve got the arena, which no one else has in this market, and we’re bringing in the No. 1 acts,” Howk says. In addition to the biggest names in K-Pop – “except BTS,” Howk laments – Inspire Arena has hosted mixed martial arts, awards shows, esports and the global table tennis tour. International performers on the Inspire stage include Cantopop royalty Jacky Cheung, legendary film score composer Hans Zimmer, Ireland’s Westlife and alt rock trailblazers Linkin Park.
Inspire leverages concerts and other arena events to attract overseas gaming customers, executives say. The octagonal arena has 24 luxury boxes and flexible seating configurations. No seat is more than 72 metres from the arena’s center point.
For MICE, Inspire offers South Korea’s largest ballroom with capacity for 3,000. Rooms in the adjacent Ocean Tower cater to convention delegates, with Sun Tower above the casino for gamblers and Forest Tower near entertainment and shopping for families. The three towers currently total 1,125 keys. Flight path restrictions limit building heights to 12 stories. Despite Inspire’s airport location, there’s no noticeable jet noise.
Making a big splash
Splash Bay headlines Inspire’s family entertainment attractions. The nation’s most expansive indoor water park has slides and rides, a lazy river, pool and kids’ area on multiple levels. Snack bars provide refreshments, with meals available for delivery from the resort’s Oasis Gourmet Villas food court, specializing in Korean favorites. Cabanas offer more F&B choices.
Aside from “category killers,” Inspire ticks more boxes for a world-class integrated resort. Its shopping mall has 60 outlets, with many local brands in place of the usual global retailing suspects. Beyond the food court, a dozen dining options include Korean, Northern Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese and Western.
Opened in February 2024, Inspire’s foreigner-only casino has mass and premium gaming areas with 159 tables, 395 slot machines and 195 electronic gaming terminals in a stadium with up to five games in progress across a 24-metre LED screen. Tables are predominantly baccarat and blackjack with bets starting from 10,000 Korean won ($6.80).
China provides the biggest chunk of Inspire’s gaming customers, Howk says. That was true even before Korea eased visa restrictions for Chinese travelers in September. Inspire tempts high-end players with suites and pool villas as well as “competitive” commissions.
Japan junketeer
Inspire’s other major international target market is Japan. Junket promoter Inspire VIP Casino Club recruits new players from Japan.
According to the promoter’s website, an initial deposit of $7,200 receives a two-night stay at Inspire and transfers from Incheon or Seoul’s Gimpo Airport. Tripling the deposit to $21,600 adds free economy class airfare to the package. A $72,000 deposit upgrades the reward to business class flights and a suite.
In 2025, Inspire opened a marketing office in Osaka, joining its first Japan outpost in Tokyo. Howk concedes that Paradise City, a 10-minute taxi ride away on the other side of the airport, gets the bulk of Japanese play. A joint venture of Paradise, the Korean operator that opened the nation’s first foreigner-only casino in 1967, and Japan’s entertainment and gaming conglomerate Sega Sammy, Paradise City opened in 2017. Its licence transferred from Paradise’s previous Incheon casino at the airport’s Grand Hyatt hotel.
Cluster friends
Paradise City has benefitted from Inspire’s presence, Howk says, noting its higher gaming volumes since Incheon became a two-IR destination. “We’re driving more traffic to the market, so it’s been a positive. We work very well with them, and we have good relationships.” For example, visiting artists are not restricted from appearing at both resorts. Former Paradise City president and CEO Park Pyung Yong is an Inspire non-executive director.
“It’s beneficial to have multiple casinos, because especially high-end customers, when they don’t feel lucky at one place, they go to the other place,” Howk says. “When they don’t win, they come back, and so you end up just sharing that customer base back and forth.”
In May Bain conducted a sales exercise, part of completing its takeover, without finding a buyer. Still, Bain is likely to sell Inspire sooner rather than later, Heller says. “These are financial investors. They’re not building gaming companies. They are [acquiring] these companies to fix them and do better, and then flip them to somebody else.”
Pressure will grow to complete a sale, Heller believes, since lending by private equity firms is usually tied to a specific fund carrying an expiration date.
So far, though, no For Sale signs along Aurora Street.
Muhammad Cohen is a former US diplomat and current iGB Asia editor at large. He has covered the casino business in Asia since 2006, most recently for Forbes, and wrote Hong Kong On Air, a novel set during the 1997 handover about TV news, love, betrayal, high finance and cheap lingerie.
Inspire South Korea has ‘got to monetize’ local market while cultivating overseas players, COO Wade Howk tells iGB