Jim Allen wasn’t looking for work in the casino industry

He’d been happy working in restaurants in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and thought that was going to be his career.

“I was working at two other restaurants in the Jersey Shore area and Bally’s, very quietly, went to the more successful restaurants and recruited people,” Allen says. “They hired the executive chef at the place I was working in. and he gave me a recommendation: `You should hire this young guy also.’”

Thus began a career that has taken Allen to the heights of the gaming industry. Currently the Chairman of Hard Rock International and CEO of Seminole Gaming, Allen will join Deborah Nutton and Alan Feldman as the newest inductees into the American Gaming Association’s Gaming Hall of Fame, during a ceremony scheduled during the week of G2E.

After going to work for Bally’s Allen immediately became fascinated with the gaming industry.

“Just the sheer size and the volume of it, and, frankly, the ability to learn so many additional concepts in the food and beverage area was something that 100% excited me,” he says.

Allen took “upward mobility” courses offered by Bally’s and started to progress through the ranks of the company. He was “like a sponge,” absorbing details, listening to his peers, always learning.

He then worked for companies including Hilton’s and the Trump Organization in Atlantic City before moving to Colorado to work for Chris Hemmeter-owned casinos in the 1990s.

Colorado, Allen says, was a much different style of operation than the New Jersey casinos he knew by heart. They were smaller, more intimate, and he learned a different style of management.

“I had a real desire to learn the gaming departments,” says Allen, who also took courses at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to further his education. “I knew that if I went to Colorado, a much smaller operation in sheer volume than we were doing in Atlantic City, it would give me exposure to all of those departments.”

In 2001, Allen went to Florida to work for Seminole Gaming. It was there that his life changed inexorably, and he truly began to make his mark as an executive.

“I looked at the opportunity in Florida in 2001, and I knew I had the opportunity to be the true number one,” Allen says. “That was something I desired to do. I had been working in the industry since 1974, in restaurants and hotels and casinos, and I felt there was an opportunity to bring it all together.”

In the early 2000s, Allen’s life would change again. There was an opportunity to buy Hard Rock International from The Rank Group.  The Seminole Tribe had a licensing agreement with Hard Rock, and Allen started to push to buy the company.

“Frankly, I just don’t think anyone understood what the deal was,” Allen says. “I knew our potential in the Tampa and South Florida markets.

“I felt that rather than pay Rank, who was the previous owner, we could just pay ourselves. In a very, very polite way, we were receiving nothing from Hard Rock. There were no brand standards. They were just going to get a percentage of revenue for doing nothing.”

Allen went to the Seminole Tribe and pushed for the purchase of Hard Rock. He was so certain it was going to be worthwhile that if the tribe didn’t agree, he was going to buy it himself.

Finally, the Seminole Tribe assented, and Hard Rock was purchased in December 2006.

It not only changed the fortunes of Allen, but all the members of the Seminole Tribe. Allen’s gut instinct about the value of the brand turned out to be true.

“We use the term eight to eighty. Someone can be eight years old and love the brand, and some can be eighty and love it,” Allen says. “I definitely saw how that resonated. That was one of the major reasons (he pursued the purchase).

“And very politely, the company was struggling on the operational side. And to me, it was a challenge, number one, to fix it, but more importantly to expand the hotel and the casino and integrated resort.”

Before he bought Hard Rock for the Seminole Tribe, Allen identified 100 cities where he thought the brand would do well. Today, there are over 150 cafes and hotels bearing the Hard Rock name throughout the world.

But while that expansion is a feather in his cap, the gaming industry is still Allen’s passion.

“It’s just in my DNA,” Allen says. “I found a lot of success and a lot of self-satisfaction giving people opportunities and growing businesses and brands.”

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