Walk the Strip and you read a skyline of brand names — Bellagio, Caesars Palace, the Venetian, MGM Grand. Almost none of them tells you who actually owns the building. A modern Las Vegas casino is really a stack of two or three separate companies: the operator that holds the gaming licence and runs the floor, the real-estate owner that owns the land and collects the rent, and the ultimate parent above them both. This wiki maps all three layers for 65 casinos, 31 operators and REIT landlords, and 22 tavern brands. The finding underneath it is blunt: Las Vegas is far more concentrated than its three-dozen Strip marquees suggest.
For any property, three questions get three different answers — who runs it, who owns the dirt, and who controls the operator. Twenty years ago those were usually one name. Today they rarely are. The modern Strip runs on an “OpCo / PropCo” split: an operating company runs the casino while a real-estate investment trust (REIT) owns the building and leases it back. The Venetian is the clean case — the brand is Venetian, the operator is Apollo Global Management, the land belongs to VICI Properties, and Apollo pays VICI roughly $250 million a year to stay there. Three companies, three layers, one sign over the door.
Strip ownership family tree. The 13 operating companies and the 34 Strip casinos they run. A dotted box outline means a REIT owns the land underneath (VICI Properties on 23 of them); a solid outline means the operator owns its own real estate. Every box links to its wiki page. Generated directly from the wiki’s entity data, verified as of May 18, 2026.
Colour the Strip by who owns the land instead, and one name swallows the map: VICI Properties. VICI is a REIT — it runs no casino floors — spun out of Caesars’ 2017 bankruptcy, and it now owns the real estate under 23 Strip casinos,[3] including Caesars Palace, Bellagio, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay and the Venetian. It grew through three landmark deals: the 2019 Bellagio sale-leaseback ($4.25B), the 2022 purchase of MGM Growth Properties ($17.2B) and the 2022 Apollo–Venetian transaction (about $4B for the dirt) — the full thesis is in VICI Properties — the landlord nobody mentions. A few operators still own their own land — Wynn, Genting, Ruffin — and three smaller landlords hold the rest: GLPI, the BREIT-led consortium under the Cosmopolitan, and Koch Real Estate under Fontainebleau. The territory map plots every property in its real position along Las Vegas Boulevard.
Strip territory map. Every Strip casino plotted by street address along Las Vegas Boulevard, north to south, coloured by operating company. The southern MGM wall and the central Caesars cluster are the two dominant colour blocks; Rio and Westgate sit just off the Boulevard.
The locals market — two companies
Off the Strip the pattern repeats with different names. The valley’s neighbourhood casinos — the ones locals actually play — are dominated by two operators: Station Casinos, the public company Red Rock Resorts controlled by the Fertitta family, and Boyd Gaming. Between them they run 18 of the 31 off-Strip and downtown casinos. Station’s stronghold is the affluent western valley — its Red Rock Resort in Summerlin and the new Durango in the southwest — while Boyd holds the Boulder Highway corridor (Sam’s Town) and three downtown properties. The family tree below maps the off-Strip market the same way as the Strip.
Locals ownership family tree. The 11 companies — plus one unaffiliated casino — behind the 31 off-Strip and downtown casinos. Station Casinos and Boyd Gaming run 18 of the 31 between them.
The remaining third is genuinely fragmented — and that is the real difference between the two markets. Michael Gaughan owns South Point outright; the Stevens brothers built Circa and run two more downtown; Sartini, Majestic Realty, the downtown independents and one unaffiliated casino split the rest. Even the locals market is drifting toward the REIT model, though: VICI’s April 2026 purchase of the Golden Entertainment real estate added The STRAT and both Arizona Charlie’s casinos to its rent roll. The valley map shows who controls each geographic zone.
Vegas Valley territory map. Off-Strip casinos plotted by neighbourhood and coloured by operating company — Station’s Summerlin / west-valley stronghold, Boyd’s Boulder Highway corridor, the Henderson cluster and the downtown core.
Why the as-of date matters
Ownership in Las Vegas turns over fast. In the last 24 months the Mirage closed and began its rebuild as Hard Rock; the Tropicana was demolished for a Major League Baseball stadium and a planned Bally’s tower; the Cosmopolitan’s operations moved to MGM; Golden Entertainment was taken private. Every page in this wiki carries an explicit “verified as-of” date because any ownership claim about Las Vegas has a shelf life. The two family trees and two territory maps above are the snapshot as of May 18, 2026. Click any box in any graphic to open that entity’s detailed page — operator, landlord, history and footnoted sources.
Sources
Ownership and licensing of record — Nevada Gaming Control Board gaming-licensee registry.
Operator scale and room counts — U.S. SEC EDGAR 10-K annual filings: MGM Resorts (MGM), Caesars Entertainment (CZR), Boyd Gaming (BYD), Red Rock Resorts (RRR), Wynn Resorts (WYNN), Penn Entertainment (PENN). sec.gov.
REIT real-estate holdings and transaction values — VICI Properties 10-K and investor materials (Bellagio sale-leaseback 2019; MGM Growth Properties acquisition 2022; Apollo–Venetian transaction 2022) and GLPI filings. VICI investor relations.
Per-property detail — each casino and operator page in this wiki carries its own footnoted sources, including the press release or news report dated to each transaction.
Corporate histories and recent deals — Wikipedia, The Nevada Independent, and CDC Gaming Reports.
Browse the wiki
Every casino, operator, REIT and tavern brand has its own cross-linked page with a “What links here” panel. Search, or pick a category below.
This is a living reference, not a finished report. It began as a longform report published May 18, 2026 and was restructured into a cross-linked wiki — 65 casino pages, 31 operator and REIT pages, 22 tavern-brand pages and a set of longform articles, every one carrying a “What links here” backlink panel. Companion to Curio Wiki and the Bitcoin 2026 — Vegas Dispatch.