Las Vegas is the home of the most mega-theaters in the world. Mega-theaters are theaters that cost anywhere from $40 million on up. The Venetian hotel has now added its own mega-theater for its Broadway adaptation of Phantom of the Opera. The new theater cost over $40 million and has seats for 1,815 people. The theater is made to look like a 19th-century opera house in Paris. When the show opens, the audience sees a ruined opera house, with the chandelier strewn on the stage and a huge canvas draping the wall. When the tale flashes back to earlier times, the canvas flies off the wall and the chandelier pieces reassemble and rise up into one piece to the top of the theater. This special chandelier cost $6 million: not a cheap prop.

Las Vegas is home to a number of other mega-theaters. Caesar's Palace built the Coliseum Theater for Celine Dion's show at a cost of $95 million; it seats 4,148 people. The Bellagio sunk nearly $100 million into the O Theater for O by Cirque du Soleil. It has seats for 1,800. Steve Wynn's Aqua Theater at the Wynn is also close to $100 million and has 2,087 seats. However, the most costly theater is MGM Grand's Ka Theater at $165 million which houses the Cirque du Soleil's Ka Show and seats 1,951.

Las Vegas has theaters like no other place in the world and there are good reasons: money and the room. New York and London don't have the room or the budget to build theaters as grand as the ones in Las Vegas.

John Laub is the President of the CEO-CFO Group

1. "Phantom is here, in a $40M haunt: Broadway phenomenon is the latest to be worth of a Vegas spectacle." Steve Friess. USA Today. June 19, 2006