He opened the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, which later burned down, and became Bally’s.

he also opened a hotel in Reno, but that’s not Vegas so I’m ignoring it.

It’s not MGM anymore either, though.

By the end of the ’70s the two casinos accounted for most of MGM’s income, and to help manage the Casinos MGM decided to split itself into two companies.
Oddly enough the film studio was the one that was spun off while the newly
renamed ‘MGM Grand Hotels Incorporated’ was the ‘original’ MGM.
But they may as well have both been under the same company as Kerkorian owned 47% of each companies stock.

In 1986 Bally Manufacturing bought MGM hotels and the two hotels  (what’s now bally’s and the one in Reno) were renamed under Bally’s brand.
Apparently, he got to keep the name rights for MGM Grand and offered to give all
the shareholders in the old company stake in the new company.
The new company is now called ‘MGM resorts International.’ but at the time was called, and get this, ‘Grand Name Company.” I’m starting to see a pattern. The new company was owned by a company of his called ‘Tracinda Corporation.”

The guy finally got his head together the next year and renamed the company (Grand name) to ‘MGM grand Incorporated.’
The first thing he did with this new company was, get this. start an airline.
‘MGM grand air.’ reportedly a Luxury airline between Los Angeles and New York.
the airline began service in September of 1987.

It also offered to buy Pan AM in November of 1987.

They rejected for being too strict.

Before all of that in August of ’87, they bid $152 million for ‘Dunes Hotel’ in Vegas, which was bankrupt. But it was out bidded by Masao Nangaku.

So instead the company decided to purchase the Desert Inn and  Sands casinos

in 1988 from the ‘Summa Corporation.’ the two were apparently worth $167 million

Right after buying the Sands they sold it to Sheldon Anderson’s company

‘Interface Group’ for $110 Million in 1989. they had the Sands for one year. 

Okay so now we’re getting into their expansion. This is ought to be good.
The birth of a titan. I love watching small businesses get crushed.
Later in 1989, probably fresh off of selling the Sands to Alex, they announced
plans for an absolute massive Hollywood themed. not casino, but instead it was
referred to as a ‘complex.’ It would have 4,000 hotel rooms and a theme park.
Maybe the name ‘complex’ was fitting after all.
Initially, the location of the Desert Inn was considered for the site.

The desert inn must’ve been massive. Am I the only one who thinks of those tiny little hotels, like Sleep inn which are 60% parking lot?
They’re in like every city? Just me?

Oh yeah, Hollywood land.

Apparently, that idea was terrible as within weeks they decided to replace the ‘Marina Hotel and Casino’ and the ‘Tropicana Country Club’ to build their theme park.
They bought the two properties for 123 million.
They decided to call the c o m p l e x the MGM Grand Las Vegas and MGM grand adventures. MGM Grand Las Vegas is still there, by the way, they didn’t sell it after a year.
They started construction in late 1991 and were finished by really late 1993.

It cost them a billion dollars and they closed the park in 2002 because nobody
cared about it. in 1992 they moved their headquarters from Beverly Hills to Vegas.

in 1992 groundbreaking for an Egyptian-themed resort called the Luxor commenced.
Best I can tell the Luxor was Built by MGM, but if this is wrong please feel free to tell me, I tried to find out who built it, it only listed the architect.
The Luxor was a rather unique casino resort, Being shaped like a pyramid. with a hollow interior and rooms with tinted windows, as well as corner rooms for an extra cost.
MGM, being legends opened it a 4AM on October 15th, 1993, and 10,000 people showed up for the grand opening. From what I can gather it used to have a small boat ride called the ‘Nile River’ that took guests around the gambling hall, and used to have a themed story revolving around the obelisk in the center of the building.

Sometime between late 1991 and really late 1993 they got the option to buy an 18-acre site across the street from their forever hotel.
Gary Primm, of ‘Prinadonna Resorts’ talked to the president of MGM ‘Bob Maxey’ in
1994, telling him that he should build a casino-hotel that looks like New York.
Now people won’t have to fly to New York, they can just go to Vegas.

MGM and Gary made a joint-venture and began construction in 1995.

And in really early 1997, at the cost of $460 million (okay where are these guys pulling half a billion dollars out of every other year?) they completed the New York replac- themed casino resort: ‘New York-New York Hotel and Casino.’

After that, they built a bunch of casinos all around the world including far-flung
destinations like Darwin, Australia, South Africa, and Detroit. But I don’t care about that.
I’m here for Vegas, baby, let’s hear some Vegas history.

Ever since the new York replica was built people thought that either MGM or Gary would buy the other’s stake in the project. MGM pulled more money from the void (AKA Detroit) and just Bought Gary’s company outright for $276 million and also paid $336 million in assumed debt. This was all done by March of 1999.
Out of this MGM got, not only 100% control over New York 2 but also three casinos and two golf courses at the California-Nevada state line.

Not a year later in February of 2000 (after they realized their computers worked), MGM offered to buy ‘Mirage Resorts’ for $17 a share. Apparently, mirage wasn’t feeling so good after they had disappointing results from the ‘Beau Rivage’ and ‘Bellagio’ resorts.

Company theorists (game theory’s third channel) expected a battle, a fight to the death with the guy who founded Mirage, ‘Steve Wynn.’ who seemed unwilling to give up his company. Mirage rejected the offer but apparently, Steve checked his mind and the next day met with Kerkorian (the man of a million companies) and named the price of $21 a share. He agreed to it and, using his countless companies pulled out $4.4 billion, as well as $2 billion in assumed debt. This was all done by May 2000, handing MGM control of the Mirage, Treasure Island, Bellagio, Boardwalk and Golden Nugget casinos, all in Las Vegas

They also got the Nugget in Laughlin, but that’s not Vegas 

Okay, I’m going to continue but I wanted to mention that there are too many nuggets is Nevada. I know of three off the top of my head, the Carson Nugget, the Sparks Nugget, and the  Golden Nugget. and with some hard work, I could find one in Laughlin, North Las Vegas, Crystal Bay, Pahrump, Searchlight, a second North Las Vegas one, and one in West Wendover. that’s 10 nuggets. There are as many nuggets as MGM casinos on the strip. 

Okay back to MGM.

The company changed its name again to ‘MGM Mirage’ in April 2000. They also got half of an Atlantic City casino that was finished in 2003, but that’s still not Vegas, so moving on.

In 2001 and 02, following the merger with Mirage, the company did a bunch of stuff in other places including Vegas, Atlantic City, Chicago, and Macau. But we only care about Vegas.
In Vegas, on the 55-acre site of the boardwalk casino, they earmarked it for a  technologically advanced ‘mega resort’ targeting Gen X.

MGM quietly talked to ‘Mandalay Resort Group’ in early 2004. If they went through with the merger then MGM would have owned more than half of the hotel rooms in Vegas.
People saw it as a ‘vote’ for Vegas as the biggest gambling market on the planet. MGM wanted Mandalay because it would not only give them Excalibur and Circus-circus, but also the  Mandalay Bay Convention Center, which would let them compete with the Sands Expo Center.
they sold sands and now sands were fighting back.
They also wanted to develop the to casinos, which were prime development sites of the strip.
They finally started talking at normal volume and announced they would pull $5.65 billion out of the void to buy Mandalay.
I mean, Mandalay rejected 7 and a half billion dollars. Mostly because it apparently would have let MGM back out of Antitrust regulators demanded the sale of any property
but knowing MGM they were going to get it. Mostly by pulling more money out of the void.  Casino theory back at it again though that another bidder like Harrah’s or Boys might try to take Mandalay from MGM. But they never did. So Mat was wrong once again

Eventually, Mandalay agreed to sell for $7.9 billion. Luckily nobody came to take any of their new stuff, aka no antitrust people came to demand the sale of any property. After the merger, MGM became the largest gaming company on the entire planet.

For two months, until Harrah’s bought Caesars Entertainment.
they did that because MGM had bought Mandalay. All I see is a power move.

in 2004 MGM finalized it’s plans for the GEN X Megaresort. Called Project CityCenter, it was to cost $8 billion of MGM’s magic money and was to include Hotels, Condos, A casino, and a shopping mall. They closed the boardwalk in really early 2006 and began construction of CityCenter in June.

MGM finally changed their name to MGM Resorts International on June 15th, 2010. Apparently to emphasize it’s global reach and non-gaming direction.

And that’s all for the History of MGM Resorts in Las Vegas. CityCenter is now open, so that’s good.