For nearly a calendar year, the “Big Three” Las Vegas casino operators – Wynn Resorts, MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment – have had to navigate the city’s increasingly difficult business environment. Wynn has emerged for multiple quarters as the most successful of the three in turning a profit in Sin City.
As was the case in Q2, Wynn posted Las Vegas gains in Q3 while MGM and Caesars lamented soft conditions and chastised themselves for poor pricing.
Wynn’s Las Vegas casino revenue grew 11% year-over-year to $161.5 million for the quarter, and the company is now 15% ahead of where it was at this point last year. Its Las Vegas casino metrics were up across the board in Q3, including table game win (+11%), slot win (+10%) and poker rake (+11%). All three of those metrics are up at least 4% year-to-date.
By contrast, MGM’s Las Vegas casino revenue was down 5% in Q3, and while its slot win was up slightly (+3%), it was offset by a 6% slide in table game win. The company’s Las Vegas casino revenue is flat year-to-date. Caesars fared worse, posting an 11.5% YoY decline in Las Vegas casino revenue in Q3. This quarter’s results dragged the sector to -4% year-to-date for Caesars.
To this point in 2025, MGM’s stock is down 2.5% and Caesars has fallen 40%, whereas Wynn is up 55%. All three companies operate the same games in the same market, so why is Wynn winning while the others languish?
High-value clientele buoying Wynn in Las Vegas
Brand and clientele are perhaps the first reason why Wynn is outshining its Las Vegas casino competition. The company caters almost exclusively to the high-end luxury market, whereas Caesars and MGM offer a mix of higher- and lower-end properties.
One of the biggest trends for Las Vegas in 2025 has been declining visitation and volatile gaming revenue. Tourism has been down all year but revenue has vacillated up and down.
Macroeconomic pressures like sticky inflation and interest rates, high tariff costs and an ongoing government shutdown have impacted low- to mid-tier consumers, but the highest rollers are still showing up, which plays into Wynn’s strengths.
“Mass gaming and [average daily rates] are, of course, levered to visitation, because they’re both either demand-driven or correlate to the number of people that are coming through the doors every day,” Wynn CEO Craig Billings said on an earnings call last week. “High-end gaming, very different, right? That’s about the equity markets. It’s about host-to-customer relationships, one-to-one selling, the specific service in the building, that particular customer and what they’re doing.”
‘Unrelenting when it comes to value for their dollar’
Caesars and MGM must find ways to cater to all customers and provide value to each segment, but Wynn is able to fine-tune its approach to a select group. While there has been a lot of discussion this year about the “value” of Las Vegas, Billings said his company is the best at delivering on lofty expectations and justifying higher costs.
“Wynn Las Vegas is not necessarily built for those visiting Las Vegas on a tight budget,” he told analysts. “Our customer generally isn’t the customer who focuses on cost alone, but they are the type of customer who is really unrelenting when it comes to value for their dollar, right? Their expectation of that perceived value could not be higher.”
Slot consultant and retired casino executive Buddy Frank told iGB it’s surprising to see such strong relative casino performance in a particular market by one company over others. This is because “mass volumes and [hold] percentages tend to hold true over time”. However, this equation changes when the players are higher value.
“The exception to [that premise] comes from those casinos who have a strong percentage of what I call high-roller guests, or ‘whales’, and also those who have highly volatile games like baccarat,” Frank said.
While all of the Big Three would fit those definitions, Frank stressed that “a single player or group of players can have a dramatic effect on overall outcomes”. It appears that Wynn is having more success in finding and retaining those needle-movers than its competitors.
Most Las Vegas operators leasing real estate from REITs
From a business perspective, Wynn is also unique among Las Vegas casino operators because it has not followed the sale-leaseback real estate trend.
Most companies – especially MGM and Caesars – have opted to sell and lease back their properties from real estate investment trusts. Top gaming REITs VICI Properties and Gaming and Leisure Properties (GLPI) have long owned most of Las Vegas’ casino assets.
Under these arrangements, escalating annual rent becomes a huge expense that can be a drag on performance. Caesars, for example, leases a total of 24 casinos, 18 from VICI and six from GLPI. In its 10-Q form, the company said a “significant portion” of its liquidity needs are for “debt service and payments associated with our leases”. Its estimated lease payments to both companies in Q4 is $338 million.
MGM has been even more aggressive in selling its domestic real estate, including all nine of its Las Vegas properties. The company has paid $571 million in operating lease costs year-to-date, per its 10-Q, and it reports $25 billion in total operating lease liabilities. It expects to pay $460.7 million in operating leases in Q4.
Wynn still owns all of its Las Vegas casino real estate and therefore pays no lease costs in the market. Additionally, the company owns another 34-acre vacant plot on the Strip that it has not yet committed to developing.
Early moves saving money later for Wynn
Overall, Wynn has been very decisive in recent years about narrowing its focus to its core land-based markets. That decisiveness has streamlined its operations and reduced unnecessary expenses.
In 2023-24, the company exited the online gaming industry altogether by dissolving its WynnBet brand. And this year, it pulled out of the New York casino race before submitting an official bid, limiting its exposure and expenses in a process that Caesars and MGM ultimately exited from months later.
Caesars and MGM have both invested substantial resources and time in their online gaming divisions, though neither is close to matching sports betting and iGaming market leaders FanDuel and DraftKings.
Caesars Digital has seen growth in 2025 but is widely expected to be spun off or sold as it outpaces its retail division. BetMGM is having its best year to date in 2025 and is returning cash to parents MGM and Entain. Still, it has yet to record a profitable year since its formation in 2018.
In the New York casino licence race, Wynn had originally proposed a $12 billion mixed-use development in Manhattan, the biggest potential investment among those initially in the field. But it folded the proposal before jumping through any hoops, whereas Caesars and MGM both went on to file official bids and participate in the various rounds of consideration.
Caesars was eliminated from contention in September when rejected by a local community board, while MGM was considered a frontrunner all year before pulling out in October. In MGM’s case, such a late withdrawal resulted in $93 million in non-cash write-offs and a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $256 million, per financial filings.
While others talk about returning value to Las Vegas, Wynn is pulling ahead by appealing to the highest rollers.