Vol. 4, No. 8, August 2008
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Floor General
Snowden takes field lessons to the board room
The senior vice president and general manager for Showboat in Atlantic City learned gaming through osmosis. As a Las Vegas youth, he was engulfed by it. Snowden’s mother Terry was a poker dealer for Showboat, the Four Queens, the Frontier and the Horseshoe. Snowden’s two uncles were dealers. His grandfather, a professional poker player named The Duke, earned enough money to raise a family.
Gambling was, nonetheless, a distant memory when he left home for Harvard.
“Growing up in a casino family, I never saw myself being in this business,” Snowden said. “Then when I went away to school, I missed it. There was something about the day-to-day excitement the industry brought you.
“Some of the best lessons I took in came from my mom. She talked about how the suits came around, and that they never talked with the employees. They stared and they never smiled. She never remembered them shaking hands with people. I resolved to be the exact opposite, to be very approachable, to interact with everybody I came across. I wanted to become the type of leader I would respect, because Mom showed she did not have very many like that.”
He learned even more about not becoming a problem gambler. Raised by a single mom with strict values, he gained a first-hand glimpse of temptation and restraint.
“Growing up in Vegas gives you a warped perception of what the world is really like,” Snowden said. “Everything usually happens about five years earlier than it would somewhere else.
“As a 14-year-old, you see a slot machine every time you go to a 7-11. I’d also be trying to sneak in and gamble at places that most people would not do until they were in their late teens or early 20s.
“What helped was that I had a great support structure because of my mom. She made sure I had a roof over my head and food to eat every day. All she wanted was good grades and that I would stay out of trouble.”
Snowden, it turned out, was a natural leader. He quarterbacked a Harvard team that won an Ivy League championship. Realizing the NFL would not draft an option quarterback, he settled into gaming. Snowden worked in Las Vegas from 1998-2000 and has been with the Harrah’s corporation his entire career, also working in San Diego and St. Louis before heading to Atlantic City. He opened Harrah’s Rincon, which supplied the crossover credentials needed to run a property. Snowden later secured an MBA in St. Louis, helped run Harrah’s St. Louis and revolutionized Showboat in Atlantic City via the House of Blues and a major expansion.
Snowden became adept at opening and rallying properties. Las Vegas, in retrospect, provided his first turnaround opportunity.
“It was a challenging time for the Harrah’s property in Las Vegas,” he said. “They had just completed a hotel expansion, right in the face of new properties. You had Bellagio, the Venetian, Paris and Mandalay Bay all coming into the market in that time frame.
“Our asset base did not compare with them. What we did have was the strength of the Harrah’s name. Nobody else did the total rewards program at that time. We were the first to have a loyalty card program. We would get together with other properties in the country and let customers know that their reward cards would be honored everywhere. We gave them free rooms, which enabled them to have more money to spend.
“Now you turn around and everybody has a program like that. We were ahead of that trend. We enjoyed a significant turnaround, double-digit slot increases. I was proud to be a part of that.”
Las Vegas became for Snowden what “New York, New York”—the song, not the casino—meant to Frank Sinatra. If you operate a property here, you can do it anywhere.
“Las Vegas is and always will be the gambling capital of the world,” Snowden said. “It taught me a lot about what it is like to work in a destination market; it’s the only gaming destination in the country. Anything that happens in the gaming industry most likely will happen in Las Vegas first.
“As for what I experienced, that market was once about the cheapest buffet. Now it’s about the whole gaming experience, from A to Z, from gaming to the hotel, the shopping, the celebrity chefs, the golf, etc. A lot of people who come to Las Vegas don’t even gamble anymore. You need to service those people.”
Dynamic and smart, the 32-year-old Snowden has gaming experience beyond his years. Given his background, that’s no surprise.
Did You Know?
• Snowden captained a state championship high school football team at Clark High in 1994, before attending Harvard. He was also second in his academic class.
• He graduated Harvard cum laude in 1998, majoring in political science. Academic excellence and a supplemental thesis are usually required to attain that distinction.
• In 1999, Cosmopolitan magazine named him the most eligible bachelor in Nevada.
• Snowden’s mother Terry remarried, lives in Minnesota and is still in the casino industry. So gaming remains in his family to this day.
• While many kids dream of athletic stardom, Snowden has already achieved it to a high degree. His ambitions? To coach high school football and teach history. “The adrenaline rush of the casino industry is unbelievable,” he said, “but some day I will get to do those things.”
• Snowden is in good company when the subject comes to Harvard. Seven U.S. presidents, including George W. Bush, studied there. Family ties have often weighed heavily into the workings of the institution. Both John Adams and John Quincy Adams went to Harvard. John Adams was listed as 14th in a graduating class of 24, because students were ranked according to their heritage. The most diverse pair was the Roosevelts. Teddy turned the academic world on its ear with his thesis around the turn of the-century, advocating equality for women. FDR had more social ambitions and was actually a C student. Maybe he could have used some of those fireside chats! FDR, Rutherford B. Hayes and John F. Kennedy round out the Harvard profile. More U.S. presidents went there than any other university in the country.
• Harvard quarterbacks rarely make NFL headlines, but keep your eye on Ryan Fitzpatrick. He’s a Bengal and was the first Harvard quarterback taken in the draft in 24 years when he was selected by the Rams in 2005. Other Harvard notables include Matt Birk, who became an all-pro center with the Vikings, and Pat McInally, who spent his career as a Bengals wide receiver. He was twice an All-American at Harvard.
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