Team Captain

Like many in our industry, Brandon Dardeau didn’t originally anticipate a career in casino operations. A native of Pine Prairie, Louisiana (pop. 700), Dardeau earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing at the University of Louisiana at Monroe in1999, and while he was pondering his next move, he thought of moving to larger pastures than Pine Prairie.

“I played golf in college, and my college golf coach was from the West Coast, and had a friend who worked in the casino business,” Dardeau recalls. “I grew up in a town of 700 people and went to college in a town of 30,000. I was looking for the big city, the big lights. I had visited Las Vegas one time, and so I decided to pack up and go for an adventure. I ultimately moved out there without a job.”

After a brief period of sleeping on a few couches while applying to casinos around Las Vegas, the first response he got was from MGM Grand, with a casino marketing position. It was not much glamor at first—Dardeau spent his work hours answering the phone and making reservations—but ultimately, he seized an opportunity in the slot department, where he worked as a slot attendant, and then slot supervisor.

From there, it was a pretty quick climb up the corporate ladder. He got the chance to move back to his native South as an assistant slot shift manager at Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi.

“My career took off from there,” Dardeau says.

Within a few years, he was the property’s director of slot marketing and became regional director of casino marketing for MGM Resorts International’s Mississippi Operations (Beau Rivage and Gold Strike Tunica) in 2007 and Gold Strike’s vice president of marketing in 2010. Dardeau was named Beau Rivage’s vice president of marketing in 2014, then served as general manager and senior vice president of MGM Resorts’ Southeast U.S. operations in 2020, and was elevated to president and COO of Beau Rivage beginning in late 2021.

This year, Dardeau’s role with MGM Resorts expanded, as he was named regional president of operations for the entire company. His oversight now covers not only Beau Rivage, but MGM Grand Detroit, MGM National Harbor in Maryland, Borgata in Atlantic City, MGM Springfield in Massachusetts, MGM Northfield Park in Ohio, and the Empire City Casino in Yonkers, New York.

While one may expect a learning curve to be imminent in taking on his new responsibilities, Dardeau says he has the advantage of property presidents in each location that are already at the top of their games. “I really see it as being captain of a team, because I do still have my oversight of a single property at Beau Rivage, but each of these properties is the market leader in its own right.”

Dardeau says his priority for 2026 is to tap into the strengths of each regional property to create a stronger whole.

“We are market leaders, but there are always opportunities for us to get better,” he says. “That’s the mindset I always take in working with leaders in any position. My role is to make sure we are taking the best from each and implementing it across all the regional properties.”

It’s what a captain does.