Was Katy Perry's Vegas Residency Really a 'Complete Failure?' The Real Story Is More Complicated

Look, we all love dunking on Katy Perry. It’s practically the national pastime at this point. between the disastrous reviews for her latest album, her cringe tour dancing, and her girlboss space jaunt, making fun of Perry these days is like shooting fish in a barrel. She was once an undisputed megastar but the hits dried up and her attempts to get back on top became increasingly flop-sweaty. Perry just feels so ill-equipped for the current era of stardom because she’s such a 2010 figure and 2025 is practically a different century.

But with the supposed flop era of Perry comes the press’s eagerness to turn literally every detail even vaguely adjacent to her life into an excuse to be pretty shoddy and frequently sexist. Every minute detail is exaggerated to the point of parody so that Perry’s moments of admitted stupidity can be applied to things that otherwise have nothing to do with her. The latest addition to the punching bag is her Las Vegas residency from 2021 to 2023.

News Nation, a cable news network that mostly seems to be a dumping ground for UFO stories and cancelled losers who are unemployable elsewhere, ran a weird story going all in on Perry. A source told them that Perry was no longer welcome in Vegas because her residency deal at Resorts World was a ‘complete failure.’ They added, ‘Katy was getting paid between $750,000 and $900,000 a show because of the bidding war and the entire run she underperformed and Resorts World lost money.’ Okay, seems like a standard business investment that didn’t pay off as desired. It happens a lot, especially as production costs rise and post-lockdown entertainment spheres struggle to get back to normal. But then News Nation added this: ‘And like the Jennifer Lopez saga, in which a failing tour caused Vegas resorts to pull out of a residency deal last year, Perry has the same “stank” of failure on her right now. While Perry does have a show planned for Vegas in this tour, it’s considered a one-off. Not a coveted residency, which my source says won’t happen again.’

O… kay? So it’s now gone from a bad business deal to yet another reason to dunk on Perry. Her tour happened two years after her residency ended. She didn’t do anything 143-related during that time. Why connect the two? The idea that anyone in a career dip wouldn’t be welcome in Vegas is just ahistoric, first of all. But this also seems like a way for a company that made a bad financial decision to lay the blame at the talent and not their own hubris.

Play, Perry’s residency, grossed $46.4 million, becoming the 8th highest-grossing female residency in the history of Las Vegas and 18th overall. That’s nothing to sneeze at. She got great reviews and was at least popular enough to warrant more than one extension to her residency, which is hardly the sign of an unbearable flop. She played to consistently sold-out crowds and held up her part of the deal. She put on a big Katy Perry show, one of the most acclaimed of her career. So, why is Resorts World mad?

Resorts World opened on the Vegas strip in 2021, which was a minor miracle given that its construction was delayed several times over the previous decade. At one point, it faced a massive lawsuit from Steve Wynn’s resorts because they said the building looked too similar to their own hotels on the strip. When it finally opened, it was described as the most expensive resort property ever developed in Las Vegas, with a price tag of $4.3 billion. This hotel is huge: a 117,000 square foot casino, over 3,500 rooms across three Hilton hotels, and a 5,000-seat theatre designed to hold the biggest artists on the planet.

As that News Nation story’s source notes, Resorts World got into a massive bidding war against Caesars Palace to obtain the rights to host Perry’s residency. They wanted her to be their flagship show, the big reason for people to stay at their troubled hotel. But an acclaimed residency can only do so much. Resorts World has been mired in controversies and bad reviews since it opened. Tripadvisor reviews range from distinctly average to damning. Many visitors describe it as overpriced and plagued with unexpected extra costs. This is a resort(s) that has struggled to find an identity in a city driven by flashy concepts and big branding. They’ve offered other big residencies - Janet Jackson is currently there - but also a lot of things that haven’t performed well or were outright messes. In April, the MrBeast Experience, advertised as an “immersive” and “unforgettable” experience for fans of YouTube’s most dead-eyed dictator, was such an overpriced disaster that the Beast himself apologised for it.

Plus, they’ve been caught up in multiple scandals. In April of this year, they were fined $10.5 million for their alleged involvement in illegal bookmakers. That’s a massive fine by Vegas gaming standards. If you can’t make money as a CASINO in Vegas, that seems like a way bigger issue than Perry.

Now, let’s get mathematical. According to Billboard, Perry’s Play was the 21st highest-grossing residency in the history of Las Vegas, ahead of the Backstreet Boys and Shania Twain. The concerts grossed $46.4 million over 80 shows, for an average of $580,000 a show. News Nation’s source said, ‘Katy was getting paid between $750,000 and $900,000 a show because of the bidding war.’

By comparison, Lady Gaga’s Vegas residency reportedly grossed $110 million over 72 performances, and she was getting about $1 million a show, way more than Perry. That averages out to about $1,527,777 per show, meaning that, on paper, even after Gaga’s fee, it was in the black. Yes, there are extra fees and the like — these are not cheap shows to mount — but it shows the questionable numbers of Resorts World. They made a per-show offer so eye-wateringly high to Perry that it was frankly astonishing that they ever thought she’d make it back. They were banking on Perry making more than Lady Gaga, who is arguably more culturally relevant at this moment in time (and also has a more Vegas-friendly jazz and piano show that attracts audiences of all ages.)

That’s just dumb, Resorts World. You overpaid and that’s just your own fault. Perry put on the shows, sold the tickets, got good reviews, but you failed at the maths (and at running a decent resort and not breaking basic laws about gaming, apparently.)

Look, there are plenty of reasons to rag on Perry - working with accused rapist Dr. Luke, the terrible album, palling around with Jeff Bezos, voting for Rick Caruso, ‘Woman’s World’, ‘putting the ‘ass’ back into astronaut’ - but this ain’t one of them. Let’s mock our celebrities responsibly. Katy, just take all your Vegas money and go hang out with Orlando Bloom for a bit.