According to some new information acquired by Page Six, it seems that Las Vegas’s affinity for the realm of the superstar DJ is beginning to dwindle. Intrigue, the new nightclub opening at Wynn Las Vegas on April 28, will reportedly be “the opposite of a big DJ-driven club,” said Sean Christie, chief operating officer of Wynn Las Vegas.
Since Electric Daisy Carnival moved to Las Vegas in 2011, the city has seen a significant uptick in dance music events across the city and in virtually every major hotel. But five years later, said club owner Victor Drai, the problem now lies with performers who have extended residency contracts in the city, rather than the more infrequent, established festivals. “People are sick of the DJs in Vegas. It’s ridiculous to have the same five or six guys, pay them a fortune and lose money. It will reach a point where DJs are totally irrelevant.”
Christie’s new venue, he said, will encourage attendees to put down their social media devices and engage in actual, human conversation. These efforts, he hopes, will take some of the focus away from the DJ as the main spectacle. By redirecting his club’s appeal away from the DJs, he believes that the city’s revenue will be able to slowly climb back to where it once was. 
Jesse Waits, the champion behind Alon Las Vegas’s EDM events, will follow suit. “People who just want to see DJs don’t dress up, they don’t have style, they don’t even want to be in a nightclub — they want to see a concert. They’re not cool. Nightclubs are cool-people clubs.”
Despite this group of naysayers, however, a recent report from Inverse paints a greatly different picture of the city’s situation.
Because of the EDM boom that has taken place within Vegas during the last few years, it says, millennials are flocking to the city in far greater numbers. By establishing Vegas-branded stations and advertisements on platforms like Pandora, certain groups have been able to draw in a noticeably larger attendance. Research from Pandora alone, the report says, revealed more than 115,000 subsequent trips to the city, bringing in $110 million in overall revenue.
Electric Daisy Carnival, clearly, will not be reeling in its ticket sales any time soon; each year, the massive, three-day festival draws in well over 100,000 guests. So, while these millennial invaders may not be heading straight to the slot machines, their financial impact on the city, Inverse says, cannot go ignored.
To us, it appears that these two reports are dealing with two, very different aspects of the nightclub/dance music scene in Vegas. The first seems to suggest that the integrity and image of the city’s classic nightlife is being compromised by young, dance-crazed enthusiasts who are polluting the space with their nontraditional methods of hitting the town. The second, however, frames these same attendees as a worthwhile source of capital for various sectors of the scene. While, understandably, more conventional nightclub goers may be turned off by the more casual behavior of the younger generations, it’s difficult to suggest that their presence isn’t benefiting the overall revenue earned from their ticket and drink purchases.
