Golden Entertainment is betting that a step away from public markets will pay off with something valuable in today’s gaming environment: time.
Days after the Las Vegas-based operator completed a $1.16 billion triple-net master lease involving real estate investment trust Vici Properties Inc., the company’s 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 held entity was the best way to serve its customers, many of whom live in Southern Nevada.
“Family ownership, for us, really means real faces with real accountability,” Sartini II told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Now that we can return to being a private family-owned business, we can position ourselves and let customers know who that experience is being offered through.”
Sartini II said the decision was partly shaped 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 battered,” he said. “It had traded down to where valuations were so low that this opportunity ultimately could not have happened if our stock had not been depressed (so much). The overall devaluation of the industry or the sector itself helped us to 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 terms of the transaction, Vici acquired the underlying property 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, Aquarius and Edgewater casinos in Laughlin, the Pahrump Nugget and PT’s chain of local gambling dens.
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 local population 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 restaurant business.
On The Strip, Sartini II said softer tourism trends, including international travel declines and broader consumer spending pressures, continue to weigh on demand. But he argued that Golden’s mix of assets provides more insulation than operators concentrated solely on the Strip.
“There are challenges on the Strip, and they’re pretty well documented,” he said. “So I think a diversified portfolio helps us weather some of the storms that the Strip can handle.”
Operationally, Sartini II said the change will have little immediate impact on day-to-day management but will allow the company to shift toward long-term planning rather than short-term reporting cycles.
“It’s business as usual,” he said. “But now we can work with a 12-month plan instead of a three-month report card. It enables better decision-making across the portfolio.”
Employees, he added, have largely responded positively to the change, particularly longtime team members in Golden’s restaurant and casino operations that predate the company’s IPO.
“The return to being private has been welcomed,” he said. “Many 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 positioning the company for more flexible capital allocation and portfolio management in a changing gaming landscape.
“We are intentionally restoring 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 ddanzis@ theplayerlounge.com or 702-383-0378. Follow @AC2Vegas_Danzis on X.
