Blake Sartini Said in a 2012 Interview, “From a very young age, I’ve welcomed all that came with being good at what you do.”
Golden Entertainment Inc. Chairman Blake Sartini says he is in no hurry to make changes at his latest gaming purchase, the Rocky Gap Casino Resort. The Rocky Gap is a small hotel and gaming venue located in western Maryland. Golden Entertainment is based in Las Vegas, so the business culture and local tastes at each vary wildly.
With that in mind, Blake Sartini wants to take his time in evaluating the new casino and resort, to see how the business runs. He’ll make any needed changes once he understands western Maryland. Sartini told The Modesto Bee, “Once we feel comfortable and we understand the market a little bit better, I think you’ll see us begin to target improvements.”
When pressed to name possible changes, Sartini said in a phone interview that he might begin with food and beverage services. Still, he was noncommittal during the interview. The gaming executive has a reputation for success.
For 15 years, he worked for the Station Casinos and the Fertitta Brothers. Then in 2012, he took over the family business. He sold the Sartinis’ Colorado assets and focused on the slots routes of Nevada. The casino in Maryland is just his latest addition to the Sartini’s increasing gaming network.
About Rocky Gap Casino Resort
Rocky Gap Casino is located 130 miles wester of Baltimore. It has a 200 room hotel, 577 gaming machines, 10 gaming tables, and an 18-hole golf courses. An operation like that is small by Las Vegas standards, but it comes with the advantage of little competition. That gives the new ownership time to analyze and adjust.
It’s a strategy which has worked for Blake Sartini. The Sartini Family has built a Nevadas largest netwrk of slots parlors. At present, the Sartinis own 3 brick-and-mortar casinos, 48 taverns with gaming, and 670 route locations–convenience stores, grocery stores, and smaller retail businesses which are allowed to have up to 15 gaming machines. It took 15 years to build that financial empire, but seldeom has the company ventured out of Nevada.
How Golden Entertainment Formed
Golden Entertainment Inc. is a brand new gaming company. It was formed when Sartini Gaming Inc. merged with Rocky Gap’s previous owner, the Lakes Entertainment Inc., of Minnetonka, Minnesota. The Maryland land-based casino industry has received several influxes of cash from Las Vegas in the past calendar year, as Caesars Entertainment’s Horseshoe Baltimore opened to fanfare.
Golden Entertainment owns 4 land casinos, the slots route, and the many taverns. Along with that, Golden Entertainment owns Big Sky Gaming, a slots router located in Montana. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources said this week the merger would not require changes in the gaming facility’s 40-year state park lease, which was signed in 2012.
Growth in the Future
Blake Sartini says he sees all four of the company’s casinos growing. He also believes the slots routes are a growing business which should have a bright future. Slot routes, also known as “distributed gaming”, are not allowed in Maryland at present. Sartini says that Oregon and Illinois currently have them, while Pennsylvania nearly received approval for gaming machines in 2014.
If one makes the correct inferences based on Mr. Sartini’s comments, he seems to believe distributed gambling has a future in the northeast. Such a development would further fracture the region’s brick-and-mortar gaming industry, which is seen as saturated at the moment. Twenty-five years ago, the east coast’s only land-based gaming destination was Atlantic City.
The Northeastern Gaming Region
After a US Supreme Court decision in the late-1980s, tribal casinos became a fixture on the American gaming landscape. Big casinos like Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Casino began to compete for customers. Then states like New York and Pennsylvania began approving licenses for private-owned casinos, which increased competition. Next, Pennsylvania and Delaware approved slot machines in racetracks, creating racinos. New York approved video lottery terminals, which are slot machines in all but name–or not quite, because VLTs use a different game mechanic to skirt gaming laws.
Distributed gaming would bring slot machines to much smaller venues than a racetrack, even. Integrated casinos have thousands of electronic gaming machines. Racinos contain hundreds of EGMs. The slots route system bring slots to businesses like convenience stores and grocery stores, which might have a little more than a dozen gaming machines. It’s the democratization of gaming culture, though the proliferation of gaming machines continue to make it harder for the big land casino–like what’s found in Atlantic City.
Such a system might not work best on the eastern seaboard, though the owner of Golden Entertainment seems to believe it has a bright future in the area. Of course, Blake Sartini says he plans on waiting for a while to study the local region’s unique gaming situation. Taking a wait and see approach means he might have different views in six months to a year.
For the time being, jobs and contracts at the Rocky Gap Casino Resort seem to be safe.
