More than 100 people have been inducted into the American Gaming Association’s Gaming Hall of Fame. In an industry with tens of thousands of current employees and hundreds of thousands over its history, that is a very small number of people to be recognized for their contribution. The inductees are the big names in gaming, those who founded companies, led tribes, headed regulatory agencies, and earned national and international reputations. All are impressive. Many others might deserve some recognition, but failed to make any list. I would like to suggest one, Gary Royer. Royer was well known in his time in regulatory and accounting circles, but not so well known in boardrooms or to the media.
Gary Royer died in May. His obituary appeared in the Reno Gazette Journal on September 10 and a memorial in Gary’s honor was held on September 19 at the Little Waldorf Saloon. In another location, the Little Wal was the common hangout for UNR students when Gary was in college in the late 1960s. At the memorial was a mixture of people from his past: his school friends, business associates, and others who had known Gary over the course of his 80-year life.
One man had only met Gary two years ago. His wife was in an assisted-living facility with Gary. He spoke of Gary’s smile and positive attitude. Other people spoke from other periods in Gary’s life included his high school best friend, the best friend of Gary’s wife, and a woman who had played on softball team Gary coached. They all told of his smile, sense of humor, generosity, and intelligence.
Intelligence is a vague characteristic, hard to pin down, more elusive than a smile, joke, or willingness to help. People mentioned it, but not in detail. However, in the business world and in gaming, Gary Royer was not known for his smile or humor. He was known for his exceptional intelligence, his ability to study a problem, categorize its parts, and analyze it. And he remembered everything; he was frequently employed as an expert witness and his memory was always critical to the cases.
Royer and I worked together on a few projects; I was more of an intern than a partner in them. Two were particularly significant in my career. The first was with the Tulalip Tribes of Washington. Tulalip was in the process of negotiating the first Indian gaming compact in the state of Washington when the tribe hired Gary and me. The compact was groundbreaking and very important to both Tulalip and Washington, as it was the first of its kind in the state.
As strange as it seems, in 1992, gaming regulation was not well understood. Most operators and even regulators considered it a fixed set of rules and specific requirements. Nevada and New Jersey were the models. New jurisdictions and Indian tribes picked one of the two, then cut and pasted. Not so with Tulalip and Washington. They had Royer to guide them through the issues. He had been a gaming agent in Nevada. He cut his teeth on systems of internal controls when the concept was being introduced into Nevada casinos. His experience meant that he understood internal controls at a fundamental level. Royer understood all gaming regulation and law at the same basic level.
In another joint project, Colorado sent its newly minted gaming agents to Nevada to train with Gary Royer. Colorado had just legalized limited-stakes casino gambling and wanted its agents to understand their role in regulation. We used the Comstock Hotel as a site, including its surveillance room and equipment. Gary was as good a trainer as he had been as a negotiator, because he had a deep grasp of the fundamental principles. Gary was a CPA, guided by the principles of his profession and of scientific investigation. He always followed those guiding principles and he methodically proved everything.
The project that really caught my attention was a lawsuit. Some of Bally’s bondholders sued the company. It was another generation of Bally’s and no relation to the 2026 Bally’s. Bally Manufacturing was a pinball-game manufacturer founded in 1932; in 1963, it morphed into a slot manufacturing company. By 1980, it was the largest slot manufacturer in the gaming industry. As a consequence of its success, Bally’s, as many companies did in the 1980s, diversified, buying casinos, health clubs, and other non-slot machine assets. To fund its plans, Bally’s used other people’s money. In the mid-’90s, some of those lenders thought the managers of Bally’s casino in Las Vegas were misusing their money and sued the corporation, naming the key executives in the suit. Gary was hired by the bondholders
Gary researched every aspect of the Las Vegas casino. He compared Bally’s casino’s income, expenses, and product mix with its competitors. It was in those details that he found the devil. Gary loved organization, binders, and labels. By the time the case went to court he had 90 binders of materials. They demonstrated that the company was indeed mismanaged and overcompensating its key officers.
The case went to court and Gary was an expert witness. The defense, of course, hoped to prove that Gary made mistakes and did not really understand the operations of Bally’s. But the lawyers were up against a giant. Gary knew everything that was in those 90 binders. He remembered every detail and he demonstrated to the court that he really did understand the case and Bally’s. operation. The bondholders won the case.
One more small illustration of the mind of Gary Royer. The University of Nevada Las Vegas bought his library. With a donation from IGT, UNLV paid $1 million for Royer’s collection of gaming-related material, henceforth to be called the Royer Collection. It included the gaming magazines of the time in complete sets, along with a complete set of laws, regulations, and the memos related to those laws and regulations for Nevada and a gazillion other things. It was all carefully organized and labeled and whenever possible put into binders. Gary Royer had a genius for organizing and a memory that held as much as his collections held.
Gary Royer spent his working career in the hinterlands of gaming, northern Nevada. He did not invent or found anything, but he did contribute to the gaming industry. And he had a great smile, sense of humor, and warm heart.
