Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2004 | 11:24 a.m.
There was a time when you could walk into any casino and watch the likes of Benny Binion, Morris Shenker, Sam Boyd and maybe a dozen other colorful gaming pioneers personally greet their customers.
It was an exciting time.
In those days casino hosts treated you like family and weren't shy about discussing their own family members, whose last names were Gambino, Aiuppa or Civella.
For the most part, however, those days are over. They left us when the casino industry turned to Wall Street and began building megaresorts on the Strip in the 1980s.
Today bigger is better. Companies such as MGM MIRAGE, Mandalay Resort Group, Harrah's Entertainment, Caesars Entertainment, Station Casinos -- and now the Boyd Gaming Corp. -- control maybe 95 percent of the market in Las Vegas.
This week's merger between Boyd Gaming and Coast Casinos is the latest example of the boring corporate mentality prevailing within the industry. Much of the personality that made Las Vegas famous is gone.
That's not to say, thankfully, that colorful individual casino owners are extinct. We still have Steve Wynn, Sheldon Adelson and George Maloof vying for our attention.
But to survive in today's competitive business environment, most companies have to grow larger and make new investments. They have to look beyond the Strip to the riverboats along the Mississippi and Indian reservations in California and overseas to Macau and Great Britain.
The late Sam Boyd never had to deal with this when he ran Boyd Gaming. Neither did another gaming pioneer, Jackie Gaughan, the ageless father of Coast Casinos CEO Michael Gaughan.
Gaming has become no different than the rest of corporate America; bottom line profits and shareholder earnings are taking precedence over personal customer service. Have you been to the bank lately?
"We're losing the human touch," says UNLV professor Bill Thompson, an expert on gaming. "We're losing something that distinguishes us from everybody else in the gaming industry."
I'm with Thompson. I like the old Las Vegas.
Terry Lanni, chairman and CEO of the mammoth MGM MIRAGE, a publicly traded company that was created as a result of a merger four years ago, likes the new Las Vegas.
To him, the coming together of Boyd Gaming and Coast Casinos is an indication that the industry is maturing.
"People are looking for more efficiency now in this global economy," he says. "We're competing against the world."
Fortunately, however, many within the gaming industry aren't ready to bestow dinosaur status upon those who make their business an extension of their personalities -- people like Wynn, Adelson and Maloof.
A recent American Gaming Association survey of casino executives found that 62 percent believe smaller properties, such as Maloof's trendy Palms, still have a bright future in Las Vegas.
I like the sound of that.
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