Disgraced Casino Owner Steve Wynn Faces Business Backlash

He might have thought that stepping down as GOP Finance Chair a few days before the State of the Union was as good a way of avoiding too much attention as any other, but whilst the media’s fickle focus has drifted away it would seem so has some of the business success casino owner Steve Wynn has based his reputation on, and things are only set to get worse as customers desert him for internet alternatives like BetVictor and the Nevada regulators start investigating him.

Rather cynically perhaps many of us believed that after his resignation from the reigns of GOP finances there would be relatively little fallout for casino owner Steve Wynn. Resignations are ten-a-penny in the Donald Trump era and having paid off at least one woman in the past who’d made similar (or frankly much worse accusations) against him there was at least some expectation that he would pretty much get away with it. However in the era of #MeToo and Time’s Up things aren’t like that anymore.

When the Wall Street Journal published the accusations on Friday stock in the company of casino owner Steve Wynn, rather unimaginatively named after himself in case he forgets, stood at around 199 points…..by the following Tuesday they’d dropped to 160, representing a loss of $3.5 billion of value in just four days. That’s as much as casino owner Steve Wynn has in his personal coffers, and the company’s board are now being asked a lot of questions, some of them about US gambling laws.

Casino Owner Steve Wynn Subject Of Multiple Investigations

The losses in stock value caused, and the allegations themselves, open up the board to legal liability since they were charged were overseeing the CEO and casino owner Steve Wynn, and there are now several investigations by various law firms into possible breaches of fiduciary duty by directors and officers of the company. Naturally their defense will be they acted in good faith, but with so many coming forward to highlight a pattern of behavior over a prolonged period that reasoning may not fly.

Certainly it probably won’t work with the Chinese authorities in Macau who launched an investigation by their Gaming Inspection & Coordination Bureau, instantly wiping yet more value from Wynn Macau stock. With important bidding for expansion due later this year and licence renewals rolling around in 2020 this doesn’t bode well, the Chinese not liking the associated embarrassment any more than the RNC does, and traders in the US gambling news of this investigation is just hot air, think again.

BetVictor Has All The Odds For US Sports Betting

The Chinese regulators are by no means alone now in investigating casino owner Steve Wynn in light of the allegations of sexual misconduct made against him. The Massachusetts Gaming Commission has begun their own inquiries and have reminded everyone that a license is a “revocable privilege” an obvious threat to the $2.4 billion Wynn Boston Harbor project, and musing if Mr Wynn was “unsuitable” to run a casino in their state. However far worse is that now Nevada is doing the same.

For the Las Vegas based company having the Nevada Gaming Control Board investigate them is probably as bad as it gets, and the NGCB promising a full probe of casino owner Steve Wynn and the allegations made against him does indeed call into question if the Wynn brand will now be irreparably damaged by the Wynn name. Certainly more and more customers are staying away from his properties preferring to bet on sports in the US or play casino games on sites like BetVictor instead. You can’t blame them.

Find out more about the Steve Wynn case!