Golden Gaming Ready to Hard Rock
Morgans Hotel Group, the new owners of the Hard Rock Hotel, has announced that it has entered a casino management partnership with Golden Gaming who will operate the gaming side of the hard rockin’ property. While exact terms have yet to be defined, Golden Gaming will operate all gaming and related activities for a period of up to two years and will additionally have the opportunity to make an equity investment of up to $100 million. It’s certainly an interesting choice as an operator for Morgans Hotel Group because the company operates only three conventional ‘casinos’, only one with table gaming and none in Nevada. Of course, GG has had much more success on the coin-operated side of the fence with more than 30 taverns operating under the Golden Tavern Group branch of the company which includes multiple outlets of PT’s Pub, PT’s Place, PT’s Gold and Sierra Gold.

The agreement becomes even more interesting when you take in mind Morgans’ vision to make the Hard Rock a more upscale, read expensive, property. With little experience in table games and virtually no experience in the tricky business of Vegas comps and luring high rollers through the doors, Golden Gaming will have to learn some lessons on the fly. We don’t mean to sound negative because there is certainly hope for success, especially with Blake Sartini at the helm of Golden Gaming. The GG honcho has plenty of gaming experience from his days as chief operating officer with Station Casinos. He departed in 2001 but remains one of the company’s largest shareholders.

Skip