Las Vegas needs bold, visionary leadership to remain on top

The chief at the employee-owned Eureka Casino Resorts, with properties in Mesquite, Nevada and Seabrook, New Hampshire, is enthralled by Sin City's rebellious business leaders.

In an exclusive interview with Gaming America, Carrier told us he believes the future success of Las Vegas depends on “renegade entrepreneurs” who are willing to take bets on wildly ambitious – and cool – ideas that don’t always pencil out on paper.

“Institutions don’t behave that way when they’re preserving wealth, by growing wealth by incremental amounts. Or, more dangerously, when they’ve just bought it to flip it," he said.

“And so Las Vegas has got to keep its edge. Las Vegas has got to keep its edge on innovation, on, frankly, style and I think we’re very blessed that restauranters do that for us. Nightclubs do that for us a lot, owned by renegade entrepreneurs a lot of the time.”

Bravery, he said, will be what separates Las Vegas from other destinations.

He analogized: “I think how brave F1 was. I mean, painful. But giving birth, ask any mom. I can’t tell you first hand but from what I’ve witnessed it’s pretty painful. So we gave birth to one of the most profound events in the world in 2023. It was painful. [But] it was pretty cool and the baby looks promising. It looks promising.

"We’ll get better at it. I don’t think anybody probably left the rodeo [National Finals Rodeo] on year 1 and said, 'We nailed it. That’s it. Change nothing.' I think you continue to invest and tie up these brave ideas.

“That’s what I see Las Vegas has to – not say ‘relevant’ – you have to be the leader of what is cool.”

 The full interview will be published in the January/February edition of Gaming America magazine.

Carrier also appeared as a guest interviewee on the Huddle, which you can watch here.