Wynn Resorts Acquires Crown London, Rebrands as Wynn Mayfair
Wynn has completed its already announced purchase of Crown London from Blackstone and has renamed the infamous gambling hall in London’s West End the Wynn Mayfair.
Wynn Resorts has purchased the Crown London Casino. © David Ramirez, Unsplash
Key Facts:
- Wynn had formerly announced the deal for Crown London in January
- Crown Resorts had owned the fabled gambling club since 2011
- Crown originally paid $55 million for Aspinall’s
- But neither Crown nor Wynn released terms on this sale
The famed dinner club that became an even more famous casino, unlikely situated in two-row houses in London’s West End, has once again traded hands. Aspinall’s was originally the upper-crust dinner club, The White Elephant Club, from the 1960s through to the early 90s.
In 1992, the owner, John Aspinall, decided to turn the Club into a members-only casino. Aspinall, a determined social climber, had spent decades hosting private gaming parties at rented homes and later gambling clubs in the 1950s and 1960s throughout the Mayfair district of London.
He opened the rather infamous Clermont Club, a members-only casino, there in 1962. Its founding members consisted of two cabinet ministers, twenty Earls, five Dukes, and Five Marquesses, indicating that John had indeed made good for himself.
But while he spent most nights with the crème de la crème of the British Autocracy, he also was rubbing shoulders with some of Westend London’s most notorious gangsters like Billy Hill and John McKew.
They would later be reputed in several books and documentaries to have worked with Aspinall to fleece his blue blood customers with marked cards on Chemin De Fer at the Clermont.
Aspinall would retire from gambling with the sale of the Clermont in 1972, but in 1992, with a need for money to support his philanthropy centered around private zoos around England, Aspinall would return to running the green felt tables.
Using a rolodex built up over 40 years of running both private gambling games and dinner clubs, he would soon turn Aspinall’s Mayfair into the place to see and be seen in all of London.
Upon his passing in 2000, his son, Damian, and his close friend, James Packer, son of Kerry Packer, would run the Club until Crown Resorts acquired a controlling interest in 2011.
The Crown would make a go of the Club and its extremely high-end clientele, including an almost who’s who of the Arab Gulf States until their buyout by Blackstone in 2023. Blackstone and Crown have decided to concentrate on their core holdings in Australia.
Wynn Mayfair: A New Era
Enter Wynn Resorts. The global casino powerhouse saw a rare opportunity: a historic London club with a priceless member database located just steps from Buckingham Palace.
Many of Aspinall’s loyal players hail from the Arab world, and Wynn is mere months away from opening its $5.3 billion UAE casino resort on Al Marjan Island, a short hop from Dubai. The timing couldn’t be better.
This acquisition isn’t about revenue from 20 gambling tables, no matter how storied. Instead, it’s all about positioning. They intend to market to some of the wealthiest and most discreet gamblers on the planet while showcasing Wynn’s elite service model in a city and club their target audience already frequents.
Though the deal’s price wasn’t disclosed, it’s clear both sides walked away satisfied. Crown and Blackstone likely wanted to leave the UK market, which seems determined to clamp down on credit lines and enforce invasive affordability checks. Conversely, Wynn sees a ticket to a very hard-to-reach clientele.
And, of course, they didn’t just buy a building (well, in this case, two). They purchased an iconic brand, an incredible backstory, and, most importantly, a database of players that could fill every VIP suite from Dubai to Abu Dhabi.
And in the high-end luxury casino business where cachet matters a lot more than chips, there probably isn’t a better place to make a bet like that than in the heart of London’s Mayfair, at a club that has probably seen more millionaire jetsetters and oil tycoons than anywhere outside of Las Vegas.
