Is it true that Hugh Hefner opened up the new Playboy club to save Playboys rappidly dropping stock?

Question

I didnt even know its stock was doing so bad, but why open up a club? Is there somewhere on the internet where I can read about this?

Answer 1

This Reuters article answers your question:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061009/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_life_playboy_1

In short, yes, due to declining advertising revenue and other factors that take away from the Playboy business, Hefner was seeking another revenue generator that keeps the Playboy brand top-of-mind.

Here's the relevant part of story if the link doesn't work:

Old fashioned bunnies at new Playboy Club By Alexandria Sage
Mon Oct 9, 3:02 AM ET

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Flaunting bunnies, booze and blackjack, the first Playboy Club in nearly two decades opened in Las Vegas on Saturday night with high hopes that its time-tested combination of sex and celebrity will attract a new generation of high rollers.

With a distinctly vintage feel, Playboy bunnies wearing the distinctive ears and cottontail delivered drinks and dealt cards to a mostly male crowd at the Palms Casino Resort.

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner surrounded himself with a bevy of blonds -- and one brunette -- in a red corner booth while pulsating music filled the smoky room.

"There's a new generation ready to come out and play," Playboy Enterprises founder Hugh Hefner told Reuters before the party, saying the Playboy brand was just as relevant today as it was when he started the men's magazine in 1953.

"Playboy has always stood for something -- a social, sexual and political agenda that has real meaning," the 80-year-old Hefner said.

Almost a half century has passed since Hefner opened his first club in Chicago in 1960 and helped usher in the sexual revolution while the Playboy bunny and the Playboy centrefold skyrocketed to American icon status.

Now, the flagship magazine faces depressed advertising and lower newsstand revenues amid competition from magazines like Maxim and Internet porn.

At the same time, however, Playboy has attracted new fans through "The Girls Next Door," the reality television show about Hefner's three live-in girlfriends, and a successful licensing business.

While once controversial, the brand appears almost quaint amid today's X-rated offerings, said Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, who says that Playboy represents a pivotal moment in American culture.

"(Hefner) was starting a revolution to break down fusty, infantile, puritanical mores that probably needed to be broken down," Thompson said. "At the same time he was creating a cultural climate that made many women who were just starting to make progress in the young feminist movement very uncomfortable."

In their heyday, the dozens of clubs reached as far as Japan and Jamaica and featured the hottest entertainers of the time like Sammy Davis Jr. and Sonny & Cher.

But the symbols of flesh and free wheeling began shuttering their doors in the late 1980s amid escalating costs, and a sense among many that the bunny brand had peaked.

Now, Playboy is banking that its retro appeal will lure younger fans into the club.