Bill Hornbuckle
Chief Executive Officer & Director at MGM Resorts International
Thank you, Cathy, and thank you all for joining us today. Over the past few months, we've had the honor and the privilege of welcoming back guests back to our properties at a remarkable pace, both in Las Vegas and our regional markets. It's been rewarding to see our guests taking in all the world-class gaming and entertainment experiences that only MGM Resorts can provide, and it's been equally gratifying to witness the tremendous effort of our employees delivering these experiences.
We have an amazing team of people here at MGM Resorts, the best in the business. And so I'd like to take this time to thank them today for their hard work and dedication to our company and our guests, especially over the last 18 months. I can't say enough how critically important they have been, will continue to be to our success as we carry out our vision to be the world's premier gaming and entertainment company. In fact, investing in our people and our planet is the foundation upon which we've built our strategic plan for the company's long-term vision. Our strategic plan consists of the following four priorities: investing in our people and our planet, providing unique experiences for our guests by leveraging data-driven customer insights and digital capabilities, delivering operational excellence at every level, and allocating our capital responsibly to drive the highest returns for our shareholders. In driving our vision, we have long discussed our goals of simplifying our corporate structure and monetizing our real estate premium valuations to become asset light. We've been busy on this front.
And over the past 90 days, we've meaningfully advanced this strategy. In May, we announced an agreement to sell and lease back MGM Springfield, underlying real estate to MGM Growth Properties. We followed that news in July with an agreement to purchase Infinity World's 50% interest in CityCenter and then to subsequently sell and lease back the underlying real estate to Blackstone at an unprecedented cap rate for gaming asset. And we're very excited to become the full owners of Aria and Vdara operations soon. I'd also like to take this time to thank Bill Grounds from Infinity World, who has on the heels of this transaction stepped down from MGM's Board after serving us since 2013. He's been a great partner for many years, and we wish him the very best in the future.
And finally, as you know, we have spent significant time and effort working on the best solutions for our stated goal of deconsolidating MGP. And this morning, we were pleased to announce a comprehensive transaction with VICI and MGP to monetize the majority of our operating partnership units for approximately $4.4 billion in cash at a multiple that's among the strongest in all gaming real estate transactions to date. This is a great win for MGM and MGP, and we're excited by our new long-term partnership with VICI. Again, I'm incredibly proud of our finance, operating and legal teams, who have been accomplishing an astonishing amount in a short order to get these transactions across the finish line.
Combining these transactions grant us greater financial flexibility by the means of $11.6 billion in domestic liquidity and importantly, they allow us to intensify our focus on maximizing growth in our core business and pursuing opportunities that align to our long-term vision. In terms of such opportunities, we remain committed to our sports betting and iGaming joint venture, BetMGM, which continues to impress. Having expanded its net revenues and its leadership position in the second quarter, BetMGM is the #2 operator in the space nationwide, and in the second quarter, it commended 24% share of its live markets. BetMGM remains a clear leader in iGaming, having reached a 30% market share in the second quarter, and we also continue to see the benefits of customer acquisition cross pollinization between MGM and BetMGM.
In the second quarter, 15% of BetMGM's new players came from MGM and 31% of MGM -- M life sign-ups came from BetMGM. We'll strategically invest in our digital capabilities and customer growth strategies, driving innovation and a deeper customer loyalty throughout technology led customer-centric experiences, products and services. These efforts will be led by Tilak Mandadi, who we recently hired as our Chief Strategy, Innovation and Technology Officer. Tilak is a visionary, a results-driven leader who has spent several decades of experience at both Disney and American Express, where he led similar initiatives.
Tilak will also be leading our relationship with BetMGM joining its Board of Directors. He's another fantastic addition to our senior leadership team and complementary to the deep bench we've now built with recent additions of Jonathan as CFO; and Jyoti Chopra as our Chief People, Inclusion and Sustainability Officer. I have no doubt that will be invaluable to the company's future. We'll also increase our diversification into Asia through the footprint expansion in Macau and the integrated resort opportunity in Japan. As a matter of fact, we officially submitted our RFP as a sole bidder for the Osaka license a couple of weeks ago, which starts the clock on a 3-month review process.
We and our local partners, ORIX, remain excited by the opportunity, which we expect will yield very attractive returns. We look forward to Osaka reviewing our proposal, and hopefully, I'm confident, we'll ultimately be named Osaka's designee operator early this fall. And lastly, we continue to study key regional markets of significance, including commercial gaming license at Empire City in New York. Before I turn it over to Jonathan to delve into our second quarter results, I'd like to say a few words on our current business trends and our future outlook.
We reported a great second quarter at our domestic properties, driven by pent-up consumer demand and high domestic casino spend as well as our ability to yield our business and maintain our cost discipline efforts. In fact, we delivered all-time record margins in both Las Vegas and regional segments as well as all-time record EBITDA quarters at our regional properties. Further, 11 of our 17 domestic properties had all-time record quarters and slot gross win. And that momentum continued into July with another record month that exceeded June. I can't tell you enough under these circumstances how pleased and proud I am of our entire team.
We have righted the ship, and we're going full steam ahead. In Las Vegas, our weekend volumes are back to normal, driven by leisure and domestic casino customers with ADRs now surpassing 2019 levels. The weekday while improving continued to lag the weekends in the second quarter due to lower level of group business. That being said, June kicked off a series of citywide events coming to town such as World Of Concrete and Surfaces, and we anticipate a return of groups here in the third and fourth quarter. Feedback from meeting participants have been very positive. Our lead volumes in the year for the year, production is now close to normal levels, which we expect will help midweek occupancy uplift in the back half of the year.
We continue to believe that full convention business recovery will be post '21 event, solidifying itself in the second half of 2022, and we remain pleased with how our '22 and '23 group calendar is shaping up as well as contract commitments for the future. In July, we relaunched entertainment with a great line of events that was met with overwhelming demand and now with Allegiant Stadium hosting large-scale entertainment, we can now drive more meaningful compression, especially at the mid- to south end of the strip. Consider the entertainment programming a few weekends ago, we had Garth Brooks at Allegiant Stadium, we had a McGregor fight at T-Mobile and Bruno Mars at Park MGM, selling over 98,000 tickets within our properties distance situated to capture significant amount of this foot traffic.
While our conviction in the long-term viability of our business remains stronger than ever, the recent rising number of COVID cases and the subsequent actions taken by the CDC and local regulators and our reinstituted mask mandates here in Las Vegas of note is a reminder that the pandemic is not completely behind us. In Las Vegas, we continue to facilitate vaccinations among our employee base and have partnered with the Governor's Office to host multiple vaccination clinics including one at T-Mobile Arena, another on the strip at The Park, and we're using the full weight of our business and resources as part of this effort, including significant incentive offers to both guests and employees, who get vaccinated or bring friends and family to get vaccinated.
We've also invested in ongoing educational employee campaigns as well as providing easy access to all three vaccines on pop-up clinics at all of our properties. In July, we implemented a mandatory COVID testing program for all of our Las Vegas employees, who have not proven proof of vaccination. We've taken the virus very seriously, and as always, the health and safety of our guests and employees is our top priority. At this time, it's too early to speak to any meaningful impact to our business, but we are monitoring the situation closely. And we'll continue to proactively work safely to accommodate guests and our properties. July, as I mentioned before, was the best month this year and by far in terms of operating performance, we ultimately feel great about our long-term positioning in Las Vegas.
The last few months have inevitably proven that the city remains resilient to a top destination for both business and specifically for tourism. Our regional properties that I mentioned earlier, delivered their best quarter-to-date yet in terms of EBITDA. We are encouraged by the stability of demand we saw at our properties as restrictions further eased into July, and I'm also pleased that our focus on cost and productivity across labor, player reinvestment and other streamline initiatives remain a key priority for our regional teams. And finally, on Macau, in the second quarter, we delivered sequential improvements over the first, amid a choppy GGR environment that remains well below pre-pandemic levels. Despite this, MGM China, given our strength in premium mass, continued to outperform our former position in the marketplace.
We believe the rate of Macau's recovery will continue to hinge on broader sentiment as we pace the vaccinations rollout throughout the regions, which will ultimately lead to sustainable easing of travel restrictions. With the Guangdong outbreak quickly contained, July was off to a better start when we saw visitation and business volumes striking a pickup again. And while the region had felt some additional speed bumps in recent days, with the government's expeditions efforts to contain the outbreak and border restrictions easing over time, we expect gradual growth demand for travel to Macau throughout the end of the second half of the year. We remain committed to elevating our footprint in Macau and will soon be increasing our upscale suite inventory.
We have finalized the construction and fitting in the South Tower suites and MGM Cotai and are pleased with the final product, which we believe will be well received by our premier mass clients. We are now in soft opening in order to make final adjustments to our product and to achieve a level of service that meets our high-quality of standards. We expect to officially open it later this month, and further, we completed the gaming space refresh in MGM Macau and are now looking at remodeling our villas.
At both properties, we're enhancing our F&B options focused on the gaming floors, and over time, we have the ability to build out another hotel tower at MGM Cotai, along with meaningful entertainment assets to diversify our offerings. I am confident in Macau's longer-term growth prospects and firmly believe our investment in premium product positions us well for a broader recovery. With that, I'll turn this over to Jonathan to discuss our second quarter in more detail.
