{"id":4743,"date":"2010-10-06T09:15:26","date_gmt":"2010-10-06T17:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=4743"},"modified":"2020-12-28T08:15:30","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T16:15:30","slug":"ask-anthony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/ask-anthony\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask Anthony?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Former Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong> veep and Santo Gaming<\/strong> founder Anthony F. Santo<\/strong> is six days into his stewarship of Tamares Group<\/strong>‘s downtown Las Vegas<\/strong> casinos. But he’s not putting all his eggs in Tamares’ basket. His company was handed the reins to Grand Sierra Resort & Casino<\/strong>, the former Reno Hilton<\/strong> (left<\/em>). It was picked up in the fire sale that followed Harrah’s takeover of Park Place Entertainment<\/strong>, for $150 million. Its new owners went belly-up, leaving the property in the custody of the J.P. Morgan<\/strong> firm. Now, JPM covers<\/em> the casino sector but doesn’t relish joining the ranks of houses like Deutsche Bank<\/strong> that were press-ganged into actual casino ownership because they made some really bad loans (*cough<\/em>*Cosmopolitan<\/strong>*cough<\/em>*).<\/p>\n

What’s resulted has been a curious structure whereby turnaround firm Catalyst<\/strong> was jobbed in to make the decisions an owner would, while Navegante Group<\/strong> retained oversight of gambling operations. Now Santo — who’s running three casinos in Vegas currently and is an old hand in the Reno<\/strong> market — will supplant Catalyst and oversee the casino overseer. (Navegante CEO Larry Woolf<\/strong> tried to make a go of it at the Tamares casinos but was thwarted by ownership. He and Santo will have some interesting conversations, I’m sure.) But … Santo also has a gaming license, which means his company can participate in the casino’s revenue stream, unlike JPM. Does this mean a smaller piece of the action for Navegante?<\/p>\n

That’s one of any number of questions we could put to Mr. Santo. He’s a big fan of reader Jeff_in_OKC<\/strong>‘s on-the-scene report from the Western<\/strong>. Since S&G<\/em> readers have an above-average level of enthusiasm for downtown Vegas, I’ve proposed to Santo that he sit for a sequel to our “Go Ask Alex” feature, in which a casino CEO takes customers’ questions. He wasn’t averse to the idea. So, what would you like to know from Santo?<\/p>\n

Speaking of fire sales<\/strong>, what’s one way to counteract the baneful effects of the Vdara Death Ray<\/strong> (on your bottom-line, that is)? Hold a three-day fare special, offering a 20% discount that’s good through the end of March. Come April, the migratory patterns of the wild douchebag should bring packs of them back to Vegas, so enjoy this bargain while it lasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Harrah’s Entertainment veep and Santo Gaming founder Anthony F. Santo is six days into his stewarship of Tamares Group‘s downtown Las Vegas casinos. But he’s not putting all his eggs in Tamares’ basket. His company was handed the reins … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[56,66,28,7,53,11,79,47,9,19,143,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4743"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28992,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743\/revisions\/28992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}