Return of ‘real accountability’ by going private, says Golden Entertainment exec

Golden Entertainment is betting that stepping away from public markets will pay off with something valuable in today’s gaming environment: time.

Days after the operator finalized a $1.16 billion triple-net master lease deal involving real estate investment trust Vici Properties Inc., company Executive Vice President and COO Blake Sartini II said the transaction marks a strategic reset designed to eliminate the constraints of quarterly earnings cycles and refocus leadership on long-term execution.

The simplest explanation, he said, is that returning Golden Entertainment to its roots as a privately-operated entity was the best way to serve its customers, many of whom reside in Southern Nevada.

“Family ownership, to us, really means real faces with real accountability,” Sartini II told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Now that we can get back to being a private family-owned company, we can put ourselves out there and let the customers know who that experience is being offered through.”

Sartini II said the decision was shaped, in part, by broader conditions in the gaming sector over the past year and a half, which he described as a period of sustained pressure on stock valuations that ultimately created an opening for the transaction.

“When you looked at the gaming sector as a whole over the last 15 to 18 months, it had been beaten up,” he said. “It had been traded down to where the valuations were so low that, ultimately, this opportunity would not have been able to happen had our stock not been depressed (so much). The overall devaluation of the industry or the sector itself helped us be able to put this deal together into an opportunity that made a lot of sense for us, and for the company going forward.”

Under the transaction terms, Vici acquired the underlying real estate for seven Nevada properties operated by Golden Entertainment. The properties are leased back under a 30-year triple-net master lease with an initial annual rent payment of $87 million, with 2 percent annual escalators beginning in year three.

The move underscores Golden’s dual-market strategy, with Strip exposure on one side and a larger, more stable base of Nevada locals and regional operations on the other. Golden’s operations include the Strat, two Arizona Charlie’s in Las Vegas, the Aquarius and Edgewater casinos in Laughlin, the Pahrump Nugget Hotel and Casino, Gold Town Casino, Lakeside Casino &RV Park and PT’s chain of local gaming taverns.

While acknowledging continued volatility on the Strip, Sartini II pointed to stronger performance in local markets as a key pillar of the company’s outlook.

“The locals and regional markets in Nevada for us have been very stable, if not growing,” he said, citing population growth in Southern Nevada and continued investment in the company’s tavern business.

Operationally, Sartini II said the change will have little immediate impact on day-to-day management but will allow the company to shift toward longer-term planning rather than short-term reporting cycles.

“It’s business as usual,” he said. “But now we can operate on a 12-month plan instead of a three-month report card. That allows for better decision-making across the portfolio.”

Employees, he added, have largely responded positively to the shift, particularly long-tenured team members in Golden’s tavern and casino operations who predate the company’s public listing.

“The return to being private has been welcomed,” he said. “A lot of our team members have been with us since the beginning. This feels familiar to them.”

Golden’s leadership has framed the transaction as a return to its Nevada roots, while also positioning the company for more flexible capital allocation and portfolio management in a shifting gaming landscape.

“We intentionally reset in Southern Nevada,” Golden Entertainment Chairman and CEO Blake L. Sartini told Nevada gaming regulators in April. “I’m a big proponent of being able to drive and visit, touch our properties on a daily basis.”

Contact David Danzis at [email protected] or 702-383-0378. Follow @AC2Vegas_Danzis on X.