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Bill Friedman:
A Leading Innovator in
Many Areas of Nevada's
Gambling Industry
BILL FRIEDMAN’S PROFESSIONAL CAREER
After discharge from the Selective Service System, Bill spent the next 10 years making his living as the leading after-lunch and after-dinner speaker for Las Vegas convention groups. About once a week, he related intriguing inside stories about the Nevada casino industry to groups of 50 to 5,000 people.
At the same time he taught the pioneer course Casino Management for the University of Nevada Las Vegas’s College of Hotel Administration. Today UNLV offers a master degree in casino management.
Bill first wrote the book Casino Games (1973 and 1996) and followed this a year later with Casino Management (1974 and 1982) which for twenty-five years was the “bible” for succeeding in the casino business. Bill’s speaking, teaching, and writing endeavors provided a satisfactory income and allowed him five days a week to continue his research full time.
Bill Friedman then became the only person who has ever managed two Las Vegas Strip casinos simultaneously even though many companies have owned multiple casinos. He was president and general manager of the Castaways Hotel and Casino (now the site of the Mirage Hotel and Casino) and the Silver Slipper Casino in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip for the Howard Hughes empire which was the world’s largest privately-owned company. He quickly transformed them from long-term losers into top profit makers. After thirteen years his highly-successful operations were sold and closed because of Hughes’ death, since Nevada law requires that all assets be sold when the deceased has multiple heirs.
Bill Friedman is president of the Friedman Management Group. The firm specializes in solving management, design, marketing, operations, and internal controls problems for the hospitality industry on a worldwide basis. He has consulted for thirty-eight years to casinos throughout the United States, Caribbean, England, Russia, Asia, South Africa, Australia, Canada, and South America. As a long-term advisor to the S.B.M. (Societe des Bains de Mer), directed by the principality of Monaco, Bill advised Monte Carlo’s most prestigious hotels, exclusive high limit casinos, and slot operations: www.friedmandesign.com
Bill’s book Designing Casinos to Dominate the Competition (2000) was published by the University of Nevada, Reno’s Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming.
Bill’s consulting and writing pursuits gave him more than half of each of the last 20 years to devote full time to his historical odyssey exploring the unique casino pioneers’ intriguing lives, struggles, and achievements. Now it is time for him to tell their astonishing stories.
