William J. Hornbuckle
Chief Executive Officer and President at MGM Resorts International
Thanks, Jonathan, and good afternoon, everybody. I'd like to start by doubling down on Jonathan's comments on congratulating all of our employees. Their continued attention to detail in guest service, has been amazing, and it continues to show through in our NPS scores and also just take a second to identify and thank our management teams into a challenging wage inflation environment. I think you've seen through our margins, they've all done a great job managing their way through the first part of 2024. And I will remind everybody that most of those increases now lapse as we go into the second half of this year.
Turning to the quarter, we had excellent results against a strong '23 comparison. We see continued strength, as Jonathan mentioned, in Las Vegas, driven by transient group demand. The Marriott integration is going exceptionally well and Mandalay Bay is fully leveraging on its updated space. MGM China continues to hold its market share and margins against a very competitive and evolving market. And our regions continue to hold top line and operating efficiency and it's great seeing Detroit finally returned to its earlier prowess in that marketplace post-strike post cyber last year. In Las Vegas, we believe Las Vegas growth continued its top line and maintain margins in the mid-30s. Group pace, as mentioned, is up in '24 and '25, anchored again by the refreshed space at Mandalay benefits from the Marriott program will only continue to increase, particularly on the group side, unique to MGM.
We have a favorable supply dynamic with the closing of the Mirage and Tropicana taking approximately 1.5 million room nights off of the circuit. Again, we'll see lower years two through five labor contract increases. And organic same-store growth driven by a further database optimization is just stepping in, particularly now with the integration of the Cosmopolitan, which we finally got on yesterday. So we're very excited by that. Noting in the third quarter, I think all of you know this, but remembering back, we had the cyber-attack last year in the third quarter, and that should prove to be successful for us. However, in the fourth quarter, and I think many of you see this through our room rates, Formula One is showing some softness.
We are hoping and believing that this race will continue to pace up. But I think you can see that and so we're a little focused on trying to make that the best event that it can be, but that presents a potential headwind in the fourth quarter. Overall, though, given where we are to think about records into the second quarter of Las Vegas at this point is pretty compelling and pretty exciting for all of us. To the regions, business remains stable with margins holding at 30% plus against an established and a consistent promotional environment and we continue to have best-in-class properties with leading market share providing a real steady free cash flow generation.
Macau, the story continues, where outstanding performance and the drivers of strength in that market, starting, I believe, with our leadership team. We have Kenny and Hubert on the phone. Pansy has clearly leaned in on many things that impact the property in our market and ultimately our market share. And so we're thankful for that. And there are many tactics that they deploy. I think the thing that's most compelling is they truly understand our customer, our customer base and their wants and needs. And without any real capital enhancements from where we left this market in 2019, we're obviously outperforming. MGM Macau is now the top producer on the Peninsula side, something we're proud of and a position we'd like to keep and so we're going to continue to invest into that property. And ultimately and overall, remembering the market has only returned to 80% recovery.
Well, MGM is well above that. We still see opportunities not only for growth in the market, but ultimately for us to steal additional share. Before I turn this over to Gary Fritz, who you've not yet met to talk more about MGM Interactive, I'd like to comment on Entain's recent announcements and BetMGM's domestic business. First, I'm excited by the relationship that we've created with Stella David as the Interim CEO and now the Chair. I'm equally excited by the progress that's been made by the team and BetMGM's product enhancements with a key focus by the Entain Group.
And now the recent addition of Gavin Isaacs as CEO is comforting, someone MGM and I have not known for a long time, have a great relationship and I think he'll do wonders for that business and ultimately the market. I'd also like to make a general comment on BetMGM's Monday release and some promising green shoots reported by competitors in the space. We have stated that 2024 would be an investment year, recognizing that we've lost shares in sports and that it was impacting our leading market position in iGaming, we righteously decided to invest heavy into our sports product and continue to invest in customer acquisitions for iGaming so long as we saw both market growth and overall market share growth.
For the record, BetMGM was also profitable in the second quarter of '24, driven by our iGaming business, which annually contributes about $400 million to the overall business. The second piece is improving our sports product. We've made substantial steps with Angstrom, and we'll deploy a whole variety of new products into the football season. As well as single account, single wallet in Nevada, establishing customers to carry a wallet with funds back to their home state. We think it's a big deal for the business and for our omnichannel efforts. And so we'll obviously invest into the fall with these new product offerings, trying to win back customers on sports.
In the big picture, we love what BetMGM has done for our brand. We love the long-term prospects and we enjoy having a partner during this development stage that is equally focused on the business. We are patient and have a strong belief in the growth of this business now and long into the future.
I want to turn it over to Gary. Gary is going to talk a little bit about BetMGM, but really focus on MGM's other interactive activities in the rest of the world. Gary?
