Vol. 3, No. 10, October 2006
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Going the Extra Yard
Iowa executive uses football analogies for inspiration
Frank Quigley always loved the numbers. Once, that meant rushing yardage, passing completions and touchdowns.
Now, it means revenue. Quigley, a Cape May native, former fisherman and 23-year Atlantic City gaming veteran, thrives in Sioux City, Iowa, as general manager of Penn National Gaming’s Argosy riverboat property. Sporting analogies remain strong to the executive who left three years ago as Showboat’s vice president of slot operations.
The former halfback and defensive back at Lower Cape May High School keeps score differently now, through finances. A touchdown can be an above-average economic quarter. An interception could mean stealing a competitor’s business. A Super Bowl team could be the organization he’s connected to. Penn National, which acquired Argosy and thus Quigley’s facility in 2005, is the nation’s third-largest gaming company.
Sioux City? That could be the equivalent of an expansion franchise. In any case, Quigley draws from the instincts of an athlete in order to run a property.
“Even as a kid, I remember being competitive in athletics, always wanting to win,” Quigley recalls. “Now, you keep score every day with numbers. Instead of reading the box scores, you read the financials. It’s very exciting. I’m ultra-competitive, so its’ fine that being a GM has more pressure than another position. Pressure is self-inflicted.”
And it occurs on his terms. Quigley enjoys the flexibility of PN Gaming, which allows local decision-making for its properties. The philosophy enables operators to avoid the one-size-fits-all approach some corporations have brought to gambling.
Quigley was allowed to embellish Iowa’s unique status. It doesn’t resemble the drive-in market of Atlantic City or the tourist drive-in base of the Las Vegas Strip. But it resembles Las Vegas another way.
“We are all locals here,” Quigley says. “The people who live here drive to your place today and you will see them in the supermarket tonight, or at the ballgame. You may sit on the same charitable board with these people. You approach everything a little differently. I’ve taken some of the pages out of the Station and Boyd properties (in Las Vegas) and try to mirror some of the things they do. I think you end up being more community-minded. That’s what I love about PN Gaming. You are free to do what you think is correct. You don’t have to execute something you don’t believe in.”
Quigley ought to believe in fate, because it brought him to the business. He was firmly embedded in the fishing community before a pair of life-altering tragedies occurred.
“A couple of my boyhood friends who were in the business drowned,” Quigley says. “That was really tough. I was married, young, had a new baby and I decided to get out of the fishing business to find a better way to live. I had grown up before the renaissance in Cape May, when fishing was all there was down there. Atlantic City had opened in1978, so I decided to drive up there and check it out.”
The drive turned into a new direction. Quigley joined Harrah’s on day one and glided through a promotional journey. He became skilled in human resources, casino marketing, running a junket program and then making substantial career leaps. Quigley became a manager, then a vice president of operations at Showboat before ending his long run here three years ago.
“Harrah’s was good about seeing potential in people and putting you into different areas,” Quigley recalls. “All of that helped me grow. I really did fall in love with the business. The first few years in, I was obsessed with it. It was such an intense environment and I burned out a little bit in the late ’80s, like a lot of people. What helped me stay was that I started a hardware store while I still had a job and it didn’t work out. It made me realize again how good the casino industry is.”
So is an Atlantic City diploma. Quigley evolved during the infancy of this market. When expansion revolutionized the industry, pockets of new opportunities awaited those who had been baptized under fire.
“Atlantic City is the big leagues,” Quigley says. “I had a 23-year education there with all the disciplines of the business. We saw a lot of action. We had 5,000 employees. We had slot machines by the thousands as opposed to the hundreds. If you can be an executive in the big leagues, you can be prepared to be a boss if you leave.
“I’m very proud to be part of that early generation of casino gamers. As you go around the country, you find out that it’s cool to say you were part of the beginning of Atlantic City. You can go to almost any property now and probably find someone who started back in the day.”
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