As the gaming industry expanded dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, Gary Royer provided his casino managing, auditing, and accounting expertise to hundreds of corporations, casinos, and regulatory agencies in the United States. As a consultant and auditing agent, Royer created extensive research files that researchers can now peruse to gain insight about the expansion of gaming in the US in the last fifty years. Researchers interested in the development of gaming policy, changes in casino management and operational control procedures, and the corporatization of the US gaming industry will find a wealth of information in the Gary W. Royer Collection on Gaming. The Royer Collection is housed in the UNLV Libraries Special Collections and Archives and a detailed inventory of the collection is available online.
The Royer Collection contains extensive research files that include statistics, advertisements, manuals, reports, and a variety of other documents. The materials pictured above were collected by Royer for a research project about Laughlin, Nevada. Royer’s company, Casino Control Corporation, compiled data that documented the economic performance of Laughlin gaming establishments in the mid-1980s. In the 1970s and 1980s, smaller towns in the Southwest, like Laughlin, embraced gaming as an economic enterprise after seeing the profits gained in nearby Las Vegas.
The Royer Collection (dating from 1950 to 2009, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1970 to 1995) contains research files, legal files, reports, and manuals about gaming written and collected by Gary W. Royer. The collection includes research and regulatory files collected by Royer while he worked at the Nevada Gaming Control Board that document the legislation and regulation of gaming in Nevada as well as other states in the US and some international locations. Regulatory files include statutes, codes, regulations, revenue reports, and tribal-state gaming compacts. Also included are research files about casino, racetrack, and sports betting facilities that include data on organizations, monthly revenue reports, occupancy rates, management and operational control manuals, annual reports, policy and procedure manuals, and profile sheets collected for consulting purposes in Royer’s role as President of Casino Control Corporation (CCC). Also included are subject and research files, vendor advertisements, catalogs, and reports; gaming industry publications; conference materials; audit guides; and a comprehensive collection of newspaper articles that document the US gaming industry in the second half of the twentieth century.
Researchers will find rare gaming industry newsletters in the Royer Collection. The newsletters detail the expansion and diversification of US gaming in the 1990s and document a variety of topics such as riverboat gambling, revenue statistics, and the state regulation of gaming.
Gary W. Royer is a Reno, Nevada based Certified Public Accountant (CPA) who served as an auditing agent, supervisor of internal control for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and President of the Casino Control Corporation. In the 1970s and 1980s, Royer worked with the Nevada Gaming Control Board as an auditing agent and in a supervisory position within the Audit Division. In the late 1970s Royer founded Casino Control Corporation (CCC), a management consulting firm that focused on researching and creating management and internal control procedures for facilities and corporations involved in the gaming industry, particularly in Nevada and New Jersey. CCC provided management services to casinos, manufacturers, distributors, and regulatory agencies involved in the gaming industry both in the United States and internationally.
These tokens found in the Royer Collection were manufactured by Van Brook of Lexington, Inc. in the late 1970s. Van Brook anticipated more international gamblers would visit US casinos as the gaming industry drastically expanded in the 1970s and 1980s. International customers could exchange their non-US currency for tokens and easily gamble in cities like Las Vegas, NV and Atlantic City, NJ.
The project to process and make the Royer Collection more accessible for researchers is part of a larger initiative funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) titled “America’s Great Gamble: A Project to Promote the Discovery of Sources About the Expansion of Legalized Gambling Across the United States.” Researchers interested in the Gary W. Royer Collection on Gaming will find a guide to the collection on the UNLV Libraries Special Collections and Archives website. For an overview of this grant-funded project, see "America’s Great Gamble." Preferred citation for photographs of collection material used in this blog post: Gary W. Royer Collection on Gaming, 1950-2009. MS-00658. Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada.
