Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Merger, public trading can expand empire of PT’s parent company

Sartini

Christopher DeVargas

Blake Sartini hasn’t stopped growing his Golden Gaming LLC, which operates PT’s and Sierra Gold taverns in Nevada.

Blake Sartini is a Southern Nevada guy, a product of Clark County’s public education system and a businessman whose gaming company’s headquarters are on the 215 Beltway and Jones Avenue.

But Sartini is big in Minnesota, too. And in Maryland.

His company, Golden Gaming, recently merged with Lakes Entertainment of Minneapolis. Pending regulatory approval, Golden Gaming will be renamed Golden Entertainment and moved from a private company to a publicly traded corporation on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

The merged company will operate more than 8,000 video gaming machines in Nevada and Maryland, where Lakes has been prominent. The company added Rocky Gap Casino in western Maryland to its collection of three properties in Pahrump — the Gold Town Casino, Pahrump Nugget and Lakeside Casino & RV Park — and it owns 48 taverns in Nevada as part of its PT’s Entertainment Group division.

The entire operation will be centered in Las Vegas. Expect the local workforce to grow as positions open and employees to move here from Minnesota.

Sartini spoke with The Sunday about his company’s new acquisition, which is expected to be finalized by the end of the year.

In your statement announcing the merger, you said many opportunities would result from the deal. Please elaborate.

We operate three distinct business units within the gaming business.

I think we’re the only publicly traded company that has interests in distributive gaming, where we believe there is continued growth in Nevada. There are about 70,000 distributed gaming devices (video gaming machines) around the United States.

The second is our taverns. We believe there is still significant growth we could pursue here in Nevada and in other states, like Montana and Illinois.

Third, with our three casinos in Pahrump, and now the Rocky Gap asset in Maryland, our management DNA comes from operating casinos. We think those assets fit very well together, and we really are uniquely positioned to grow in all three of those categories.

So, along with adding to your video devices, it is likely we’ll see PT’s Gold-type taverns popping up in other states?

Yes, I think that’s very accurate.

Tell me about the Rocky Gap Casino.

It’s about an hour and a half west of Baltimore, about the same distance from Pittsburgh, in western Maryland. It sits within a national park. It’s unique in that it’s on a beautiful lake, it has a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course adjacent to it, and it has full-scale amenities such as restaurants, banquet space and hotel rooms. It’s a very, very nice, casually-upscale casino that is more of a rural destination for about 10 million people within a three-hour drive of the facility.

It doesn’t compete on a daily basis with the casinos in downtown Baltimore or some of the other gaming hubs in that part of the country, but it’s in a beautiful part of western Maryland and is unique in that it was built inside this park. The setting is fantastic.

As an operator, what is the difference between being publicly traded and being a private company?

There are massive differences. As a public company, you get a report card every three months. The report card is public and essentially gives people a window into the company’s current business model and the trajectory of the business. We’re going to be exposing that on a quarterly basis, versus private, where the business is under the radar.

Also, when you’re private, the growth opportunities are limited because access to capital is limited. Being a public company offers us access to additional capital. It positions us to grow, which is the goal of any public company.

It must be very gratifying to advance your company in this way and pull out of the recession.

It’s no secret, the last four or five years have been the most difficult in my business career. Our team really worked hard through that tough period to stabilize our business. It’s exciting and it’s gratifying to be able to put ourselves in this position after a really devastating recession. We worked through that, and we have persevered. It is a dramatically different time than it was then.

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