Sugar Creek Casino Voted “Best Casino for Entertainment” by Oklahoman Readers

Sugar Creek Casino's Event Center is known for hosting many types of fights-boxing, mixed martial arts, steel cage matches, Toughman competitions and even professional wrestling. Yet this summer, Sugar Creek Casino was in a fight of its own. In this case, it was in the octagon with four other venues, vying for theOklahomanReaders' Choice "Best Casino for Entertainment" award.

The competition was full of heavyweight tribal casino contenders-the Citizen Potawatomi Nation's Firelake Casino and Entertainment Center; Cherokee Nation's Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tulsa; Riverwind Casino and WinStar World Casino and Resort, both Chickasaw Nation venues. In the end, Sugar Creek was the only one left standing and declared the winner on August 26, 2018.

"We were much honored just to be nominated for the top five," said Sugar Creek Casino's general manager, Glen Coleman. "We are blown away that our customers would take time out of their busy lives for them to do this for us, and it is amazing that there were so many of them that they could outvote the premier casinos of Oklahoma. The story was truly a David and Goliath win for us."

According to Jerry Wagner, theOklahomanaudience sponsorship manager, the process to select the Readers' Choice winners includes an open call for write-in candidates in multiple categories, which takes place in May. Ballots are then submitted by both mail and website. In June, the top five nominations in each category are then selected, giving readers a chance to vote for the finalist. By August 1, winners are then notified, with the official announcement by the statewide newspaper taking place by the latter part of August.

This year was the 25th year for theOklahomanReaders' Choice Awards. This year, Wagner said there were over 24,000 different voters, 23,433 different businesses nominated, 227 different categories and 326,770 total votes.

The specifics on the Best Casino for Entertainment category was a very close race, Wagner said, with Sugar Creek getting 29.2 percent of the vote, with the approximately remaining 70 percent being divided among the other four casinos.

Coleman attributes the success of their venue-whether it be fights, music or other forms of entertainment-to "our customers." The formula, Coleman said, is straightforward.

"Listen to what the guest wants and give it to them," Coleman said. "Obviously, we aren't large enough to have the current huge artists, but guests like us because we are consistent. We have the artist that our guests can afford, and we try to treat them, as well as the artist, fairly. The radio DJ's started calling us the place 'Where Legends Come to Play,' and it stuck."

In addition to classic country and R & B acts-as well as the multiple types of fights-that make a stop at Sugar Creek, other events make the Event Center a well-rounded venue. This includes arm wrestling championships, volleyball, children's indoor fun fairs, flea markets, gun shows and an upcoming free hunting and fishing expo. Recently, movie nights were also added.

"Our guests, our production company and sometimes even our competition tell us we always have something going on," Coleman said.

The Sugar Creek Casino manager said that the 1200-seat Event Center was designed with the customer in mind. This will help them to defend their Readers' Choice title against any challenger.

"We don't have a bad seat in the house," Coleman said. "While classic country is what our guests like the most, we do strive to have other genres like R & B, rock and Motown occasionally. We don't want to be a slot parlor. We want to be our guests' entertainment destination."