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In October 2024, Alan Feldman was inducted into the American Gaming Association Hall of Fame.
During his four-decade career in gaming, Feldman made the transition from gaming executive to universally recognized expert in responsible gaming. He credits his devotion to the issue of Responsible Gaming to his family tradition of social consciousness, stating it was in his DNA.
His journey to the top honor in the gaming industry began when he was growing up in Los Angeles with an ambition to work in the performing arts as a lighting designer. He had a diverse early love of theater and ice hockey.
Feldman attended UCLA as a theater major and from 12 years old was a fan of the Los Angeles Kings. He also worked as an amateur hockey referee through high school and college.
He had zero aspirations to join the gaming industry. In fact, after family vacations in Las Vegas, Feldman decided that he did not even like the place. “I didn’t really like Las Vegas if I’m going to be honest. When my parents would take me to Vegas, we would stay in some of the low-rise motels on the periphery of the Strip. Other than the pool, there was nothing to do. I found it incredibly dull,” Feldman said.
Internationally respected
Alan Feldman is an internationally respected figure in responsible gaming. After a long and distinguished career with MGM Resorts and Mirage Resorts, Feldman was appointed as a Distinguished Fellow of the International Gaming Institute at UNLV, where he leads the Institute’s responsible gaming programs. In 2023, he was named Chair Emeritus of the International Center for Responsible Gaming, where he has been on the board for more than 20 years.
During his 30-year career, Feldman served in various executive communications and public affairs positions for Mirage Resorts and MGM Resorts International, where he oversaw the planning and implementation of these company’s corporate and marketing communications efforts as well as their government relations, crisis communications, and responsible gaming programs.
Throughout his career, Feldman has become involved in a wide array of industry issues with a particular focus in areas concerning responsible gaming. He serves as Chair of the Nevada Advisory Committee on Problem Gambling and on the board of advisors for the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling.
In 2002, the Casino Management Association honored him as the Gaming Professional of the Year, in 2009, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Gaming Communications from the American Gaming Association (AGA); and in 2021, he was awarded the Peter Mead Award from the Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers. In 2024, the American Gaming Association named him as a member of its prestigious Hall of Fame.
Accidental PR and novice hockey
Feldman said his career path in public relations was accidental.
“It had to do with the fact that I realized early on in my college career that I was not going to be a great lighting designer doing 10 or 15 Broadway shows a year and a couple of operas. I didn’t have that skill. I got really, really lucky that I was introduced to PR within the context of the performing arts.
“I knew nothing about PR, and I didn’t really understand that it existed as a practice. I was asked to help promote a huge Arts Festival in L.A. and I got to meet some PR professionals who started to mentor me. I’m incredibly grateful to these practitioners for thinking I might be good at this and encouraging me to pursue it as a career,” Feldman recalled.
While working as an account executive for a PR agency, Feldman heard of the National Novice Hockey League and joined the small management team for two years as marketing director, where he worked as the league’s top referee and helped to open new markets.
Unheard-of mega resort
He later returned to PR with Hill and Knowlton, where he was assigned to help open the Mirage.
“The folks developing the Mirage reached out to the agency I worked for seeking help opening this new hotel. Ron Hartwig, the general manager came out of his office, saw me, and said ‘Feldman, we’re going to Vegas’ like he was all excited. It just filled me with a sense of dread; but I thought ‘alright’.
“We met with Steve Wynn and Elaine Wynn and others within the Mirage Resorts family; and they described a city that I knew nothing of. They were describing what we know is Las Vegas today. You couldn’t see it then, but you sure as heck could see where they were headed. I mean, it was clear, they had plans that were amazing,” Feldman said.
Feldman worked on communications to open the Mirage; the first all-new Strip resort built in 15 years for a then-staggering cost of $630 million. The Mirage opened November 22, 1989, to worldwide attention as the first mega resort, unheard-of entertainment with Siegfried and Roy, first class restaurants, and the world-famous Volcano.
“In meetings with Siegfried and Roy, they saw entertainment at another level. They were very clear in their desire to evolve Las Vegas entertainment.
“They announced that they were doing it with a team of people that I knew as a fan of theater. They were choreographers and lighting designers and directors who worked at the National Theatre in London, the Metropolitan Opera, Broadway and the West End. Just a stunning array of extraordinary artists, not a one of whom had ever been in Las Vegas.
“What they were trying to do was transition from the old school Vegas rhinestones and tiaras into a theatrical experience. It was great fun to be a part of that,” Feldman recalled.
Making each other stronger
Feldman describes his attraction to the team at the Mirage, an attraction that eventually made his decision to join the team.
“Just to be in meetings with the executive team, the head of the hotel operations, convention sales, casino marketing, food and beverage, and entertainment. I mean everyone together, talking about how they were going to make each other stronger.
“They were collaborating and supporting each other strategically to make this place extraordinary,” Feldman recalled.
Mega resort design and HR
“And then there was the design, the whole manner in which it was put together. This was all done at once with the intent of creating a seamless whole, this idea of an integrated resort.
“Then last, and by no means least, there was the attitude from an HR perspective, which was focused on the role employees played in creating memories for guests. Employees were celebrated and supported, which was significant in terms of labor-management relations at that time. It was much more than lip service. It was a culture.
“Now the Mirage didn’t invent entertainment or conventions. They didn’t invent wonderful restaurants or retail. They just evolved it to the next level, and they put them all together in a unified whole that was very dynamic,” Feldman declared.
From Mirage to MGM
Following the opening, Elaine Wynn asked Feldman to remain with the company.
While working for the Wynn’s Mirage Resorts, Feldman helped create the global media interest for some of the most iconic mega resorts in the gaming industry: Treasure Island, Bellagio, and Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Mississippi.
I asked Feldman to talk about those groundbreaking resorts.
“Treasure Island was significant in that it was the very first hotel ever designed to make more money from non-gaming than from gaming. It wasn’t designed for high rollers. There was no high-end action. The risk profile was lower and the revenue from the casino was much more constant and stable; but you still have 3,000 rooms generating enormous revenues in the hotel and then the food and beverage. It had the first permanent Cirque de Soleil show, which was also quite significant.
“When Bellagio was built, the stakes became higher. You begin to see celebrity chefs. Quite a few folks came and created spectacular new restaurants. The retail at Bellagio was noticeably different. If you were in Vegas long enough, you knew that the single high-end stores for the longest time were Saks and Neiman.
“Bellagio comes along and puts Gucci, Chanel, Prada, Hermes and Armani all together in one spot; and it wasn’t easy. In fact, on opening night, the chairman of Chanel said to a colleague standing by me, ‘I don’t even know if this is going to work.’ I mean, he took a flyer because our head of retail was a highly respected executive in the fashion industry. It went from ‘I don’t know if this is going to work’ to becoming Chanel’s single highest revenue producing store in the world,” Feldman said.
Altering perceptions of Las Vegas
“That helped change people’s views of Las Vegas. Now, there’s more to do here. You can come and have great food. You can go to a gorgeous spa. You can see public art or an art gallery with an extraordinary collection. It was an experience. It was a destination. Oh yeah, by the way, you could also gamble.
“Very significantly, at Bellagio gambling was not the drawing card. That wasn’t the feature we were leading with. For some people, that’s the reason they would come; but for many, they were paying significantly higher room rates than Las Vegas had ever seen, paying more for meals than Las Vegas had seen. The entertainment is still, to this day, absolutely breathtaking,” Feldman stated.
After Mirage Resorts was sold to MGM Grand Corporation in 2000 for $6.4 billion, Feldman remained with the new company, MGM Mirage. This led to a new spate of hotel openings.
“We opened Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Mississippi twice, the first time and then after Katrina when it was closed for a year,” Feldman stated.
Feldman helped open Borgata in Atlantic City, a joint venture with Boyd Gaming, the MGM Grand Detroit, MGM Springfield in Massachusetts, and MGM National Harbor in the Washington DC area.
Feldman also worked internationally with two MGM resorts in Macau. “The last 10 or so years I was heavily involved in development. I was traveling a lot and showing the flag, if you will, in places like Toronto and Japan and Rio in San Pablo,” Feldman remembered.
GameSense
During his 30-year tenure at MGM Resorts, Feldman was instrumental in launching GameSense, a pioneering initiative that promotes healthy gambling behaviors across all MGM properties.
“I knew we were doing a lot for responsible gaming at MGM Resorts. We were obviously complying with any regulatory requirements; however, I knew we were doing more than that, but it wasn’t formalized. There really wasn’t a program or an identifiable brand to go with it. And I thought, we’re a big enough company, we should have our own program,” Feldman recalled.
After some time developing the concept with his advertising department, Feldman was introduced to a program called GameSense that the State of Massachusetts was about to implement.
“The State of Massachusetts announced that they were going to use GameSense as their responsible gaming program. GameSense was developed in British Columbia by the British Columbia Lottery System Corporation.
“I looked it up and it comes on the computer screen, and it is everything I was hoping we would have done had we hired an agency and done it. That was it.
“GameSense doesn’t immediately move the conversation to problem gambling. It talked about how to enjoy the game, how to manage your time in a casino, how to understand how the games are played so that you’re having more fun playing those games. And then yes, if you need help, it provides information on what you should consider doing.
“It didn’t ignore a problem. I mean, but it really puts the focus on what I am now referring to as health, wellness and responsible play.
“GameSense was put into every single one of MGM’s 16 properties across the country. To me, it is unique in the sense that it is the only program that I have seen that really focuses on responsible gaming and supporting healthy play,” Feldman said.
In his DNA
Before retiring, Feldman had a long-term track record working within the industry towards the concept of responsible gaming. I wondered what it was that motivated a tenured gaming executive to become an internationally recognized expert in responsible gaming,
“I grew up in a household that was very politically and socially active and sensitive to issues in the community. My dad, in particular, but both of my parents were very concerned about the negative social impacts of any number of different industries. When I told them I was going to move to Las Vegas, I was not given the ‘Oh honey that’s amazing, congratulations’ speech. Instead, my dad instantly became concerned because he knew many people who had been affected by gambling disorder.
“He was never fully comfortable. In the final years of his life, I tried to explain to him that we had evolved this idea of responsible gaming, and we were beginning to roll it out, and that I thought it was going to have a big impact. But I’d be completely disingenuous not to say that there was something in my DNA that was sensitive to that topic,” Feldman said.
Do something about this problem gaming
Feldman related that early in the Mirage days there was an opportunity to join with a developer to build a casino resort in Vancouver and he was sent to manage the PR aspects.
“That meant going to community meetings. At every single community meeting I went to, for two years, every one of them somehow ended up on problem gambling. What I noticed was, as an industry, we actually had very little information about it. We had no statistics. We had no research. We had no information to share.
“Over dinner one night in Vancouver with Steve Wynn, I told him that I thought there were two issues that we’re going to have to deal with here: one is as an industry we don’t have an association. The second thing is that we’ve got to talk about how we get a better understanding of problem gambling.
“Steve Wynns’s dad was a compulsive gambler. Steve lived in that volatile world where if you win, everything is great. You lose, you have no money, you’ve got to move. That was just part of the family lore.
“Steve totally understood it. In fact, years before this, Steve gave a $10,000 contribution to Dr. Robert Custer who was the father of the notion of problem gaming. He was a counselor and the first guy who ever said this isn’t a behavioral weakness,” Feldman said.
National Center for Responsible Gaming
“So, in the early ‘90s, we formed the American Gaming Association along with a whole bunch of other companies. One of its very first initiatives was to explore this issue of problem gambling and how to address it from the point of view of the industry.
“We put money together and formed the National Center for Responsible Gambling, which today is the International Center for Responsible Gaming. The idea of that was to put money into research and the results were the results. We weren’t guiding it. We weren’t directing it. We weren’t editing it. The research was the research.
“And lo and behold, one of the very first findings was that while gambling is incredibly popular and easy to find, problem gambling actually isn’t. But for those people who are affected by it, it can be absolutely devastating. It doesn’t just take the gambler down, it takes their family, sometimes their businesses, and those families, sometimes friends, sometimes neighbors. It can have incredibly negative consequences,” Feldman recounted.
Social impacts
“The International Gaming Institute is part of UNLV. It was originally established as a joint venture of the Law School and the Hospitality College. It has since grown as its own Institute at the university within the Division of Research. The staff there does research into diverse topics that involve gaming and gambling, including problem gaming and responsible gaming. It investigates the bigger picture of economic impact and social impacts of these activities. Now, we are doing a lot of work in data and data ethics. We’re beginning to see more and more work in esports and egames. We also have within the institute a regulatory center that provides high-level education and training for regulators all over the world.
Current initiatives
I asked Feldman about the current initiatives for the International Gaming Institute. “The Executive Development Program is probably the flagship program. It’s a global program where roughly 60 people a year who are rising stars within their companies gather for 10 days and go through an intense program. There are actually quite a few CEOs who are graduates of EDP.
“Then we have a program called YES, Young Executive Scholars, a program that brings in at-risk students, high school seniors from the local Las Vegas community. It’s a summer program, but it’s really to get them ready to apply for and go to college. I’m thrilled to say that it has a 100% enrollment rate and thus far a 100% graduation rate from college.
“Every three years we have the Annual Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking. This is a global conference of researchers who are taking a look at any aspect of research related to gambling and risk. Sometimes the risk that they’re looking at has nothing to do with gambling. It’s about the notion of how humans and risk interact; but that, of course, has great implications in gambling because that’s fundamentally what gambling is,” Feldman stated.
Smarter people
I asked Feldman what he thought made him successful in the gaming industry. “The incredibly good fortune to be surrounded by people smarter and more talented than me at every turn,” Feldman said.
DNA
Alan Feldman’s induction into the Gaming Hall of Fame recognizes his 30-year career in communications for Wynn and MGM, along with his career as a responsible gaming expert. He credits the American Gaming Association and the International Center for Responsible Gaming for keeping the issue front and center. And, as Feldman will tell you, his attraction to the issue of responsible gaming started with his own DNA.
Entries in the Faces of Gaming series:
- Antonio Perez – An optimistic realist
- Kara Napolitano – Human rights advocate and trafficking expert
- Next Gaming CEO and skill-based slots evangelist Mike Darley
- Dennis Conrad – Executive, founder, creator, speaker, author, columnist, and innovator
- Adam Wiesberg – A journey from sign salesman to dealer to El Cortez GM
- Gary Ellis – Las Vegas entrepreneur
- Alan Feldman – From Mirage and MGM to responsible gaming expert (now reading)
- John Acres – the Thomas Edison of gaming
- Alex Alvarado — Vice President, Casino Operations at MGM National Harbor and Casino Aficionado
- Lauren Bates — A successful VP at Konami and Chair of Global Gaming Women, all before her 40th birthday
- TJ Tejeda and EZ Baccarat – Reimagining a centuries-old game
- Chris Andrews — Don’t cry for the bookmaker
- Wes Ehrecke — From gasohol and pork chops to president of the Iowa Gaming Association
- Steve Browne – Casino philosopher, master gaming instructor and father of a rocket scientist
- Noah Acres – Shaking up the industry one player record at a time
- Kate Chambers – ICE queen, casino exhibition maven and keeper of fairy dust
- Joe Asher — From the newsstand and racetrack to sports-betting icon
- Paul Speirs-Hernandez — Randomness, chance, reward, and luck
- Ainsworth’s Deron Hunsberger — From finance and sales to president
- Roger Gros — Chronicler of the gaming industry for four decades and counting
- Debi Nutton — Everi board member, gaming trailblazer
- Cache Creek’s Kari Stout-Smith — Dancing backwards in high heels
- Andrew Economon — Making downtown Las Vegas cool again
- Richard Marcus — From the wrong side of the casino tables to the right
- Willy Allison — From New Zealand bloke to world game-protection leader
- Tom Jingoli — From gaming enforcement agent to COO of Konami Gaming
- Tino Magnatta — Interviewing the interviewer, 3,000 and counting since COVID
- Deana and Brady Scott — Still talking shop with the owners of Raving Consulting
- Kevin Parker — “Putting everything into everything I do”
- Laura Penney — Putting in the Work as CEO of Coeur d’Alene Casino
- Andre Carrier — Paying it forward
- Jean Scott — The original casino influencer, still frugal gambling after all these years
- Anika Howard — From Harrah’s First Interactive Employee to CEO of Wondr Nation
- Anthony Curtis — Gambling Guru, Las Vegas Expert, Customer Advocate with Street Cred
- Mark Wayman — An executive recruiter with a brand and something to say
- Melonie Johnson — From rural Louisiana to resort-casino leadership
- Brian Christopher — From actor, Uber driver, and cater waiter to slot celebrity
- Allan Solomon — From accountant and tax lawyer to pioneering casino owner
- Kenny Epstein — A Niche from Nostalgia
Tom Osiecki is a casino consultant who writes an occasional column for CDC Gaming called Faces of Gaming, about interesting and engaging people in the gaming industry.
Tom Osiecki is a marketing and management consultant for Raving Consulting and can be reached for consulting engagements at 775-329-7864.
If you know of a fascinating personality in the gaming industry you would like to see profiled, please send Tom Osiecki an email at tosiecki@cdcgaming.com
