Dreamscape Out as Majority Owner of Rio, Executive Shake-Up Ensues

By Scott Roeben, on April 03 2026
3 min read 2 comments
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Some serious changes have been happening at the beloved Rio Hotel & Casino, including a change in ownership and an executive purge, and nobody’s talking about it.

That’s why you have us. And several days from now, the feckless Las Vegas Review-Journal. Don’t get us started.

A company called Kennedy Lewis Investment Management has quietly taken over as majority owner of Rio Las Vegas. Dreamscape Companies, which purchased Rio from Caesars Entertainment in 2019, is now a minority owner. A previous minority owner, longtime casino executive Bill McBeath, was bought out by Kennedy Lewis and no longer holds an ownership stake. And that’s just the part of the story above the photo.

Rio has one of the greatest Las Vegas marquees of all time, a radial explosion of fireworks that never stop fireworking.

Since taking over Rio, Kennedy Lewis (which we’re going to use as shorthand for Kennedy Lewis Investment Management because we would like to avoid having carpal tunnel syndrome) has quiet-fired a number of top executives, while bringing on others to try to help the sputtering resort.

We love Rio, but it faces serious challenges. It’s sputtering, trust us.

Anyway, Kennedy Lewis has cut a number of executives loose. Not “fired,” per se, but their contracts aren’t being renewed, so definitely fired.

Michelle Engstrom, VP of Marketing, is no longer with Rio. She’s been replaced by Vincent Lentini, previously with Affinity Gaming, Hard Rock Biloxi and Caesars Entertainment.

Chief Financial Officer Christopher Balaban is no longer with Rio. Balaban now works for asshat Alex Meruelo at GSR Reno. Good luck with that.

Laurae Clifford, Vice President of Sales (they do events and groups), is no longer with Rio.

These are obviously key leadership positions, and more contract non-renewals are expected during this purge. Sorry, vision realignment.

The popular President and CEO of Rio, Patrick Miller, has been in the industry long enough to see the writing on the wall. We trust Miller has a golden parachute in place, because he’s going to need it. The over/under is 60 days.

We hear Miller has already been largely sidelined by executives being brought on board by Kennedy Lewis, which means he had plausible deniability for boneheaded decisions like charging for valet parking. Which is happening. At an 0ff-Strip casino. There’s a chance such misguided decisions in the future will be referred to as “pulling a Kennedy Lewis.”

So, who’s steering the ship at Rio under new ownership?

Our understanding is the answer is twofold: Lloyd Nathan, Chairman of the Board of something called Rio Real Estate Holding Company LLC, and longtime Caesars Entertainment executive and recently gun for hire, Pavan Kapur.

Kapur was brought in by Dreamscape and has held a number of impressive titles at Caesars Entertainment, including Chief Commercial Officer, SVP Commercial Operations and VP of Revenue Optimization & Enterprise Analytics.

Nathan and Kapur have already made quite an impression on the Rio team, and by that we mean the jury is still out, but everyone has big ideas for how to “fix” Rio.

Word is Pavan Kapur has been boasting he’s the next president of Rio, despite the fact there’s already a president of Rio. Way to win hearts and minds.

Any time there’s a change in ownership of a casino (or any company, really), gird. New leadership brings their perspectives and strategies and favored support staff to help execute their respective visions.

Kennedy Lewis is a private equity firm. And if it’s one thing private equity firms are known for, it’s their warm and fuzzy cultures and compassionate treatment of executives, and by that we mean they’ve been fairly shitty to the folks they’ve recently let go.

On the bright side, new blood can mean new ways to try and solve persistent problems.

Rio’s biggest problem isn’t really solvable, however. That’s the location.

Rio’s neighborhood is replete with competition, specifically, Gold Coast and Palms.

All three have to juggle a mix of locals and tourists, and the competition is fierce.

We’re curious what Rio’s new leadership team will bring to the table beyond replacing key staff who sadly won’t get to see if their initiatives pay dividends.

There’s no indication new ownership at Rio will result in additional staff reductions, so there’s that.

We’re rooting for Rio. The video poker is awesome, they’re opening new restaurants, it’s pool season, they have Penn & Teller and self-parking is still free.

We’ll be watching.

A special message for editors and writers at the Las Vegas Review-Journal: It’s standard practice at reputable news organizations to provide attribution for original reporting. This involves language along the lines of this completely random example: “This story was originally reported by Vital Vegas,” along with a link to the source. That link isn’t just a courtesy, it’s beneficial to your own search rankings and credibility. Attribution isn’t optional. It’s a foundational element of ethical journalism, particularly for institutions that consider themselves papers “of record.” We trust this clarification is helpful and look forward to its implementation, but we aren’t holding our breath.