Las Vegas heavyweight MGM sends agents into Toronto’s casino debate

Reports of Toronto’s ongoing should-we-or-shouldn’t-we casino debate have made their way to Nevada. Gaming giant MGM Resorts International, the company behind Vegas’s Bellagio, Luxor, Mandalay Bay and The Mirage, wants Toronto to agree to the Ontario government’s casino idea. So much so that MGM hired local firm Sussex Strategy Group to lobby city hall on its behalf (Sussex has already had a chat with anti-casino councillor Mike Layton, who wants to bar Ontario Place as a possible site). MGM is floating the idea of a $2 billion-to-$6 billion investment in the city that would go beyond the usual slot machines and craps tables and include hotels, convention space and spas. It’s still too early for specific details of the mega-complex, but we’d bet against understatement: after all, these are the folks who decided to build a 110-foot replica of the Great Sphinx of Giza in front of one of their hotels. [Globe and Mail]