Luxe Life Blog

Exclusive: Top execs discuss The Colosseum, Celine, The Joint and Jackson

Posted March 26, 2009 • 7:58 p.m.

Caesars Palace President Gary Selesner addresses the group as The Colosseum at Caesars celebrates its sixth anniversary.

Photo: Justin Bowen

For the first time, top executives at The Colosseum in Caesars Palace have directly addressed recent Vegas DeLuxe stories about the possible return of Celine Dion to the showroom -- and a possible Vegas location for King of Pop Michael Jackson’s concerts!

Caesars Palace President Gary Selesner told me: “I saw Celine on her tour while we were both in Shanghai. She told me she misses life -- and performing in Vegas as compared to life on a long world tour. She told me she looks forward to someday resuming that lifestyle of living and performing in Las Vegas. The door is always open for her return at Caesars Palace.”

Yesterday, Mr. Selesner hosted a small reception to celebrate the sixth anniversary of The Colosseum theater. Some 93 employees are still there since opening day, and they shared in a special cake to mark the occasion.

Gary said candidly: “This was the site of an old IMAX theater, and everybody said we were mad to turn it into a 4,000-seat showroom. People said it would never ever work. We did it with Celine -- for five years, night after night of sellout performances. It’s continued with Elton, Bette and Cher. In all, 4.2 million people have attended our shows during the six years, and it will continue on for the future just as successfully.”

Sir Elton John ends his three-year contract at The Colosseum in less than a month. By the time the final curtain comes down April 22, he will have performed 242 shows. Comedy king Jerry Seinfeld and international singers will pick up some of the dates on the rotating Cher and Bette Midler schedules.

Gary added: “Celine told me how much she missed Caesars and Las Vegas. She said that although the world tour would be one of her career highlights, she would never forget anything about her five years here. She said she never realized how good she had it living here and driving 30 minutes right into her dressing room and living a normal family life out at Lake Las Vegas. She wants to resume that sometime.”

In fact, Celine’s husband and manager, Rene Angelil, will be back here soon because he wants to defend his $2 million poker championship win from a year ago when he bought into a tournament for $100,000 and wound up the winner! I am told that continuing conversations about Celine’s return will continue at that time.

John Meglen, president of AEG Live/Concerts West (operators of The Colosseum), told the employees and media: “We are working on many stars for the future. We know there are tough times around the world just now, but the marketplace will come back strong. Caesars will have the greatest entertainers continuing for many years ahead.”

AEG Live/Concerts West is the giant entertainment conglomerate producing and staging the Michael Jackson summer concerts at its 02 Arena in London. They also are touring pop princess Britney Spears, who performs here in mid-April.

With tape recorder running in a quiet part of The Colosseum lobby, I asked the co-CEO of the world’s largest entertainment company to explain the process of signing up the stars to contracts for his mega-million-dollar deals.

John Meglen: The process takes about a year to get one of these deals done, and for the artist to kind of organize their schedule, not just for their rehearsals and production schedule, but their entire lives and their entire careers. Because what we’re trying to do with the residency is add a new live model to all artists. It used to be when I grew up and started in this business, I remember artists like John Denver, Eric Clapton, and people like that, they would tour every four years, they made money on records, but now today nobody makes money on records. So, live is where the line of the revenue comes for an artist today.

If they continue to just tour the country year after year, their demand is going to weaken; it’s better to stay away, come back, stay away and come back. So, what we’re trying to do is offer an alternative to touring, and the Celine model was perfect; we did five years here. It had been 10 years since she had toured, and the numbers were staggering; she did the highest-grossing tour that she had ever done in her career.

Robin Leach: John, there’s only a handful of people that you would call megawatt power, though.

JM: Maybe part of that answer is we started with Celine with 200 shows a year, and then we figured out, not because of sales, but physically, 160 ended up being our number. We started alternating four shows a week, five shows a week. Elton’s deal was 50 again, so if you want to say how many artists out there can do 200 shows a year, yeah, that’s a very small list. When you get to artists who can do four shows a week, six weeks a year, 24 shows, it becomes a pretty big list.

RL: We know that Celine wants to come back; she’s said it herself. There’s no disputing that.

JM: The door is always open to Celine. They still own a house here, I think they live here a lot of the time, but you realize that she worked five straight years here. We ended Dec. 15 and her tour started Feb. 14, so if anyone that I know of deserves a break from working right now, it’s her. Would we love to have Celine back? Absolutely!

RL: They’ve said it to you; you’ve said it to them?

JM: Many times. I would love it to happen! I think that Celine and Rene would love to see it happen again, too.

RL: Then there is nothing standing in the way, is there?

JM: Not really.

RL: Maybe just a little baby.

JM: You know she’s an incredible mom. I think she should have another kid.

RL: Let’s turn now to Michael Jackson, who still lives on and off in Vegas. Rehearsals are about to get underway in Los Angeles with Kenny Ortega. It’s obvious the 50 shows in London were a testing of the waters for him and for you. Safe to say that AEG will be the promoter for three years of shows in London and around the world -- and maybe Vegas?

JM: I’ll put it exactly like it is: Would we like to see the Michael Jackson relationship continue to where we can take it to the rest of the world? Absolutely! But our commitments to each other, both AEG’s commitment to Michael and his commitment to us is, we’re going to take one step at a time. And the first step was London. You know it’s been quite a few years since Michael had been on stage. He’s still a relatively young guy, he’s only 50 years old, that’s young today. He’s healthy. He looks great, and he’s got a firm handshake: Michael’s there. All these deals are mutual. We would love for him to continue and do more because we can sell far more than the 50 shows.

RL: Is there an arena in Vegas that exists at the moment that would be a match for Michael as 02 was a match for him in London?

JM: I would love to see him do it here at The Colosseum. It’s a different model. Michael’s shows in London are spread out over quite a bit of time - several months. It’s kind of hard when you do residency to go less than four shows a week. It starts getting really tight on the financial numbers, or we would have to raise ticket prices to a price we wouldn’t want to raise them to. So, I think the first step with Michael is to let him get his legs moving under him, let him get out there and moonwalk a little and do the hits and all that kind of stuff. He’s a performer first and foremost, one of the greatest performers of all time, so I want him to one day think of this here as an option, too. So if you want to know who else is on the list, Michael Jackson would be right at the top of the list.

RL: Here at Caesars?

JM: I would think this would be a great place for him. But I’m currently not having any conversations with him about performing here.

RL: The Joint, which opens with a big bang on the April 17 weekend, you couldn’t ask for a better rock palace -- you have everybody! Paul McCartney. The Killers! Do you think you will turn The Joint into a rock residency like you have with pop music here at The Colosseum?

JM: Absolutely. That is our intention.

RL: So there will be major stars that will stay there two or three weeks at a time, rotating like Bette and Cher? Do you have anyone signed for that?

JM: Yes, we have one artist up who we will be announcing at the end of this month. It’s real rock ’n’ roll. I think it fits very, very well. I want to get some more contracts done. Our goal was to get one residency done for 2009. We have done that. I would like in 2010 to see two additional residencies. The length of them can vary. I think we’re more in the 30 to 60, 25 to 75 range of shows a year. Are there artists out there … would I love U2 to do it? Damn right, I would!

RL: Have you made any overtures?

JM: No, but that’s my point, it can be an alternative to touring. Now, remember when these artists don’t tour, they have some pretty hardcore fans out there in every marketplace, and those people would love to come to Las Vegas. So, why not, come and do this for a period of time when you are not touring? And isn’t that great for Las Vegas?

RL: Has the resistance from rockers to Vegas being the land of has-beens ended?

JM: I maybe hear that one out of 20 conversations. I think what we’re doing here is hip. I think the program that we’re launching with The Joint is hip. I think that Cirque du Soleil is hip. Are you going to tell me that Love over at The Mirage is end of the road? No, I think Vegas has the most creative, innovative shows out there.

RL: One other question: the economy! Is it hurting show business in Vegas just a little bit? Are ticket sales soft and numbers down across the country?

JM: The big names are doing great, though, and The Colosseum is about triple A entertainment. The Hard Rock, I want that to be about triple A rock ’n’ roll. So, the triple A, our Britney Spears show sold out instantaneously, Celine’s show, massive, Tina Turner’s show, both here and in Europe, complete sellouts. Pink’s tour in Europe, it’s massive.

RL: Ticket sales better in Europe than America? The high-end stuff is still working very well; the must-sees are there. The little stuff is the hard stuff today. It’s like the hotel business.

JM: It is. Well, look at the shows here, all the little shows, they’ve all closed and gone away. But I think that, is it a little scary right now making commitments to people or making offers to people to do a three-year residency or a two-year residency? Yeah, to make those decisions right now, but we believe in the long run. The economy will swing back. I don’t think this town is going away, do you?

I’m a believer in this town, I’m a believer in the adult destination resort, whether that be here or whether Atlantic City becomes more of that. I learned something in Singapore with Harrah’s -- what an educational process for me. I really understood this concept of the integrated resort. A lot of people who are developing that either come from a gaming background or they come from a hotel background or retail background. I want people to look at us and to say we can be the entertainment partners.

Entertainment is so much of the driver of getting people in there. I want us to be available to work with these different developers and say let us be your entertainment partners. That was his approach with Echelon here in Vegas, and we were there from step one of the design, not just venues. What I hate more than anything is when somebody calls me and says, “We have a 2,000-seater -- can you book it for us?” I tell them you shouldn’t have built this, you should have built this or that. Get us in the planning stages.

RL: So you’re hanging in on Echelon until that resumes, but what’s the status of your planned entertainment arena at the back of Bally’s. Is that on hold?

JM: It’s not off. It’s just like everything else right now, that’s something that financing definitely affects. I wouldn’t say limbo; I would just say that it’s sitting on a backburner on low. It’s still something as a company we believe in and we want to do. And as we talked about it the last time, we pointed out we’ve never said we will build an arena -- and then not build it. So I believe that one day, you’re going to see AEG build the new arena in this town, and we’re the company to do it.

RL: Would that arena just off the Strip look like the 02 entertainment complex in London?

JM: That’s an incredible building. In Shanghai, that’s going to be a gorgeous arena, too. L.A. and L.A. Live complex, the 02 complex, 02 World in Berlin, the new Shanghai; these are the diamonds of AEG. They are the pinnacles of what we do. Las Vegas is perfect for our company to do that.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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