MGM Resorts: Kirk Kerkorian's Hilton Regret, Mandalay Bay and an $18B Bid

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MGM Resorts traces back to a regret. In 1970 Kirk Kerkorian, who had just bought the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio and an airline, was forced by debt to sell much of his first big casino to Hilton at a discount, and it became the Las Vegas Hilton, the city's most profitable hotel. Kerkorian used the studio's name to open the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas in 1973 and another in Reno in 1978; by 1979 they out-earned the studio, and in 1980 the casinos were split off. In 1986 he sold the buildings to Bally Manufacturing but kept the MGM Grand name in a new entity, Grand Name Co., later MGM Grand Inc., which tried MGM Grand Air, bid for Pan Am and flipped the Desert Inn and the Sands. The new MGM Grand Las Vegas opened in 1993 at a cost of $1 billion with a theme park that closed by 2002, and New York-New York followed in 1997 with Gary Primm.

MGM bought Steve Wynn's Mirage Resorts in 2000 for $6.4 billion at $21 a share, adding the Bellagio, Mirage and Treasure Island, and Mandalay Resort Group for $7.9 billion in a deal closed in 2005, giving it over half the rooms on the Strip. Its Macau partnership with Pansy Ho led New Jersey regulators to force its 50 percent Borgata stake into a trust. The $8 billion CityCenter, backed by Dubai World's $2.4 billion stake and $2.7 billion in funding, met the 2008 crash, costing over $1 billion in write-offs and cutting Kerkorian's Tracinda from over 53 to 39 percent. Renamed MGM Resorts International in 2010, it spun its real estate into MGM Growth Properties in 2015 and 2016, leased back properties sold to firms like Blackstone, and launched BetMGM.

• MGM refused to pay hackers after a fall 2023 cyberattack disabled slot machines and room keys, and settled class actions for $45 million in June 2025.
• In April 2025 Nevada regulators fined MGM $8.5 million after former executive Scott Sibella let illegal bookmakers gamble at the MGM Grand and the Cosmopolitan.
• A 2023 Marriott deal plugged MGM properties into the Bonvoy loyalty program.
• MGM broke ground on MGM Osaka in 2025, aiming to open Japan's first integrated resort by 2030.
• In June 2026 Barry Diller's People Inc., which owned about 26 percent, offered to buy the rest, valuing MGM at over $18 billion.