The Caesars Story: How a Jewish Kid From Missouri Built Vegas's Most Famous Brand — and Lost It Twice
Jay Sarno borrowed $10.6M from the Teamsters pension fund to build Caesars Palace in 1966. The empire that name spawned has been bankrupt twice, traded between three private-equity firms, and is today owned by a company that 10 years ago was a tiny Reno operator.
Caesars Palace was built in 1966 by Jay Sarno on a $10.6M Teamsters loan. The original company was sold to Starwood, then Park Place, then Apollo + TPG (who took it private in 2008 and rode it into a $25B bankruptcy). In 2020, tiny Reno operator Eldorado Resorts bought the entire Caesars empire for $17B and kept the name. The current Caesars is essentially Eldorado wearing a famous suit.
If you walked into Caesars Palace in 1966 — opening week — you would have seen a single building with 680 rooms, an 800-seat showroom, and Frank Sinatra headlining for $100,000 a week. There was no Forum Shops. No Colosseum. No Garden of the Gods. The fountain that everyone photographs today was a small reflecting pool.
The man who built it was Jay Sarno, a hotel developer from Missouri who had read everything ever written about ancient Rome and decided that Vegas needed a casino with that aesthetic. The Teamsters Pension Fund — under Jimmy Hoffa — gave him $10.6M. Sarno spent every dollar.
The Sarno Era — 1966 to 1969
Sarno's design instinct was the opposite of what most casinos did at the time. The fashion in 1966 Vegas was Western-themed (Sands, Sahara) or low-rise motel layouts (Flamingo, Stardust). Sarno gave Caesars Palace marble, columns, togas on the cocktail waitresses, Caesars and Cleopatra costumes for the doormen.
The casino floor design was also revolutionary. Sarno laid the slot machines and tables in a curving pattern with no straight aisles, no clocks, and no windows. Every casino floor in America today still uses Sarno's "labyrinth" principle.
He sold the property in 1969 to Stuart and Clifford Perlman for $60M — a 5x return on the build cost in three years. Sarno took the cash and built Circus Circus next door.
The Perlman / Holiday Era — 1969 to 1995
The Perlmans took Caesars public in 1969 and ran it for two decades. Holiday Corporation (the Holiday Inn parent) bought it in 1995 and spun off the casino business as Caesars World, then Park Place Entertainment.
This is the era when the brand expanded beyond Vegas. Caesars Atlantic City opened in 1979 (the second casino on the boardwalk). Caesars Tahoe in 1980. Caesars Indiana in 1998. The "Caesars" name became a national licensing asset, not just a single Vegas property.
Park Place + Harrah's — 1999 to 2008
Park Place Entertainment merged with Hilton's gaming division in 1999, then was acquired by Harrah's Entertainment in 2005 for $9.4B. Harrah's was a Tennessee-based regional operator that suddenly inherited the most iconic name in Vegas.
Harrah's renamed the parent company "Caesars Entertainment" in 2010 — a marketing decision because "Caesars" was a stronger brand than "Harrah's." This is why the modern Caesars Rewards program covers properties branded Harrah's, Horseshoe, and (until 2020) Bally's: they're all owned by the same company that used to be Harrah's.
Apollo + TPG — The Bankruptcy Years
In 2008, private-equity firms Apollo Global and TPG Capital took Caesars private for $27.8B — one of the largest leveraged buyouts in history. Then the recession hit. Caesars carried $25B in debt into a market where casino visits were collapsing.
The company filed for Chapter 11 in 2015. The bankruptcy lasted 28 months and produced $10B in legal fees alone — a record. Apollo and TPG were sued for asset stripping. The whole thing wiped out a generation of bondholders.
The 2008 LBO of Caesars is taught in business schools as a case study in how not to do a leveraged buyout. The fund that did it lost $1.5B of investor money.
The Eldorado Takeover — 2020
Here is the part most people miss. The "Caesars" you see today is not really Caesars Entertainment. In June 2020 — in the middle of the pandemic — a small Reno-based operator called Eldorado Resorts bought the bankrupt-emerged Caesars Entertainment for $17.3B.
Eldorado was founded by the Carano family in 1973 as a single Reno hotel. By 2019 they had grown into a regional operator with about 23 properties — but a fraction of Caesars' size. The Carano family essentially reverse-merged into the Caesars name, kept the Caesars brand (because it was worth more than Eldorado), and folded their own properties into the Caesars Rewards loyalty program.
Today's Caesars CEO is Tom Reeg — the former Eldorado CEO. The company has roughly 50 properties under brands including Caesars, Harrah's, Horseshoe, and Tropicana. They divested Bally's Atlantic City to Bally's Corporation, which is why that property is no longer in Caesars Rewards.
What this means for players in 2026
Caesars Rewards covers more properties than any other US loyalty program — 50+ casinos in 18 states. That breadth is the legacy of the Harrah's merger and the Eldorado takeover. If you play in multiple regions, no other program competes.
But the breadth comes with a cost: the average comp rate at a Caesars property is 28-32% of theoretical loss, lower than MGM Rewards (32-38%) and dramatically lower than boutique programs at places like Wynn or independents.
The lesson of the Caesars story is that the brand has survived four ownership groups, two bankruptcies, and a 60-year evolution from Roman fantasy to publicly traded conglomerate. The togas are gone. The labyrinth floor design is still there.
For the most up-to-date Caesars Rewards offers we're tracking: /multipliers. For our take on whether the program is worth it for occasional players: how casino comps actually work.
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- caesars
- history
- vegas
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