36 | FORBES ASIA NOVEMBER 2016

How the Seminole Tribe of Florida went from being

a band of outcasts living in the Everglades to the

multibillionaire owners of an iconic global brand.

BY LAUREN GENSLER

J

im Allen has been up since 3 a.m. leaving voice

mails for himself at the oice and is now weav-

ing through the flashing slot machines and black-

jack tables on the floor of the Seminole Hard Rock

Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida. With a re-

porter in tow, he is recounting how a Native American tribe

managed to beat out 72 bidders, including private equity gi-

ants and multinational hospitality companies, to acquire the

rock ’n’ roll restaurant, hotel and casino company a decade

ago under his direction. “At first the tribe thought maybe I

had lost my mind and gone crazy,” Allen says.

Crazy like a fox. The hard-charging 56-year-old has

helped create unimaginable riches for the 4,100-person Sem-

inole Tribe of Florida as chairman of Hard Rock Interna-

tional and chief executive of the tribe’s gambling operations.

What’s immediately clear when you meet Allen is that he’s

unapologetically hands-on. Walking through the hotel, one

employee points out a large black octopus chair in the lobby

bar and jokes he can’t believe Jim wanted that there. Allen

shrugs this of and brags that he’s behind every design de-

tail down to the “admit one” tickets on each new roll of toi-

let paper in the rooms. He explains that his late arrival that

morning was due to a spot check of the men’s bathroom, after

which he was asked to look into an employee squabble that

took him out to the parking lot.

“I’m serious as a heart attack,” says Allen, who’s actual-

ly had two heart attacks and bypass surgery in the past three

years and still routinely pulls 16-hour days. “Some people talk

about it, some people make excuses, some people get it done.

I prefer the latter category.”

Though he doesn’t have a drop of Seminole blood in his

veins, Allen may well be the single best champion of indig-

enous peoples since Franklin Delano Roosevelt enacted the

Indian Reorganization Act in

1934, which sought to con-

serve and develop U.S. tribal

lands and culture. But Allen’s

improvements are purely the

result of the pursuit of profit.

At the behest of the Seminoles

he presides over an expand-

ing, privately owned global

business that spans 71 coun-

tries and boasts 168 Hard Rock

cafes, 23 hotels and 11 casinos.

Including franchisee sales, sys-

tem-wide revenue is slightly

more than $5 billion. Another

25 Hard Rock hotels are in the

pipeline—from Dallas to Dubai

to Shenzhen—and the com-

pany just acquired the rights to the flagship Hard Rock Las

Vegas. In November New Jersey voters will decide whether

Allen can build a Hard Rock Casino adjacent to MetLife Sta-

dium in the Meadowlands just a few miles from Manhattan.

And though the Seminoles are guarded about the infor-

mation they share with outsiders, their rapid expansion in

the hospitality and gambling industry under Allen’s steward-

ship has created a money machine that generates operating

profits estimated at $1.5 billion per year. That’s enabled the

tribe to send revenue-sharing checks to the state of Florida

amounting to more than $1 billion over the past five years.

And for the Seminole people? Today every man, woman

and child in the tribe receives biweekly dividend payments

totaling about $128,000 a year. Indeed, by the time a Semi-

nole child turns 18, she is already a multimillionaire, thanks

The Alligator

Wrestler and

the Casino Boss

FORBES ASIA

SEMINOLES