The Mello Millionaire with Tommy Mello - The Business of Spectacle: Inside Vegas Entertainment with Damian Costa

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Damian Costa is a Las Vegas entertainment executive, producer, and entrepreneur shaping the next generation of live experiences on and off the Strip. A former Caesars Entertainment executive turned founder, Damian has led multimillion-dollar productions, developed hit shows, and helped reimagine how audiences connect with performance, hospitality, and brand storytelling. With deep roots in both the creative and business sides of entertainment, he’s built a reputation for transforming big ideas into scalable ventures that thrive in one of the world’s most competitive markets. Today, Damian continues to champion innovation in Las Vegas — blending artistry, commerce, and community to keep the city’s entertainment heartbeat strong.00:00:00 Damian Costa's Deep Roots in Las Vegas Entertainment00:02:45 The Evolution of Las Vegas Entertainment and Experiences00:06:19 The Human Transaction of Live Entertainment in Vegas00:10:28 Inside Jimmy Kimmel's Club and the Art of Comedy00:16:09 Nurturing Tomorrow's Stars in Las Vegas's Unique Scene00:20:55 Game-Changing Advice and Challenging the Status Quo00:25:34 Building Lasting Wealth and Understanding Scarcity's PowerCheck Out My Social Media:Tiktok  ⟶ https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymelloInstagram ⟶ https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello/Facebook ⟶https://www.facebook.com/thomasmello/My other podcast:Home Service Expert ⟶ https://open.spotify.com/show/4WHQ3ldGThHsP1cfzNF33GLive Q&A submission form:https://homeserviceexpert.com/questionsLearn more about Damian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damian-costa-86926756/

And it really is amazing how many people are out there to help you, and you don't know it because there's so many other people in front of them acting as if they are. Magnetic, electric, dynamic. Our guest today is Las Vegas Entertainment Royalty. No matter where you're at and what you're doing, do something for somebody else. Damien Costa spent over 10 years leading the entertainment operations at Caesar's Palace. There's certainly a lot of entertainment in Las Vegas. and what we're trying to provide is something that is a little bit more personable.

Today he's the co-owner of Pompei Entertainment, the powerhouse behind Jimmy Kimmel's Comedy Club, the Duomo at the Rio and the composer's room show lounge. And that's what it takes to be in the entertainment industry. You have to know a little bit of everything. Get ready. This conversation will take you inside the business of entertainment and the heart of Las Vegas.

All right, welcome back to the Mellow Millionaire. Today I got Damien Costa here. He's a co-founder of Pompey Entertainment, and he's a driving front. course for shaping modern Las Vegas entertainment landscape. Under his leadership, Pompey Entertainment has become a powerhouse creating stages where world-class talent thrives and the city's culture shines. Pleasure to have you, brother. Hey, thanks for having me. This is going to be good, man. I love Vegas. What is it about Vegas is so

alluring and what do you love most about the city? Well, I don't know that I have anything to have born and grew up here. So I say born and raised, but I'm not sure how much they raised us back when I was growing up. I used to just kick us out of the house and we had to fend for ourselves sort of a thing. But I think people come to Las Vegas because you can do anything here. I think that's what everyone, you know,

wants to get away from the daily grind. And what a better way to spend your time and spend your money other than a place where there are no limits, right? At least that's the perception, right? And so people come to Vegas for the same reason that I stay. There's so much opportunity and you can do anything. Your family has a lot of deep roots here.

Can you tell me a little bit about the heritage here? Yeah. So my grandfather on my father's side was a musical director. So he was what they call an MD. So he, you know, during the Sinatra and Dean Martin days. And then on the other side, my other grandfather, he was a horn player for a lot of the greats, a lot of up and down the strip.

He toured with Elvis. He's in all of the movies, Roy Orbitson, to Connie Francis. to Elvis Presley. So if you go to my restaurant, you'll see all of those pictures and the family heritage along the walls for many years. My grandfather opened Jubilee. He's the longest running a largest show in Las Vegas.

So in the day, it would have been compared to the sphere, right? It is what brought everyone to town. You know, we're having our freedom event here. A couple of billion dollars were the home service people. What do you think separates a good event from a great event? Yeah, it's right now and it's the thing. right, it's experiences, but not just the experience that you're having, but being able to let others know that you had it. And so that's been the shift in what we see in social media and how

people are using social media. It's to say, I'm doing this and you're not, not just I'm doing this. And so being able to create an event that is memorable that will never happen again seems to be what it is that makes the biggest mark and makes the biggest impacts. Last year was $800,000, under next year we want to do 3,000 and that continues to grow. Sure. And it's very specific. It's home service, home improvement. So we're not going to like open it up to anything else.

It's a market that's never going away either. No. Particularly here on the West Coast where it's outpacing almost every other industry. So you've seen Vegas entertainment evolve over the last years and really you've seen it reinvented itself every decade, I'm sure. Every day. I mean, look, I walked in, you know, on the strip. Every day I walk on the strip.

I see something new. There's a new restaurant. There's something that it's been an establishment is gone and it's something new and different. I really like that. I really like the fact that you have the ability to dream whatever it is that somebody thinks will work. What have I seen? I mean, we've seen the big shows get bigger. I remember when nightclubs were like these independently owned next to the casinos. And that's what a nightclub, you know, was. Well, Shaky Green reminded me nightclubs actually started in the lounges. And it was after 1 a.m. That's what they considered nightclubs.

Yeah. 60s, and then it turned into that era where it was in the, in a little side businesses. Then they went into the casinos. And then I remember for me, we produced these huge arena style. It was massive. You're like, how could you ever get bigger than this? And now you look at EDC. or Burning Man or any of these.

And it's like, that's basically what that is. So I think seeing the big stuff get bigger is what I see more than anything. I also believe that it always has. And the middle space always seems to be what suffers. Right. So like anything that is a new middle space because something has gotten bigger, like when the sphere was built, when the bigger stadium was big, If you're that middle space, that next tier down, I think it's very problematic.

And you have to be very inventive to be able to drive that business to a new successful horizon. Yeah, I was just talking about so private equities entering home service, home improvement like crazy. Sure. And what it made me think about was Barnes & Noble. So I started studying Barnes & Noble's in the late 90s and a lot of great companies came out of that. And a lot of them folded, like over 80% of the bookstores. But the ones that survived started like getting very involved in the community and started being just open up their doors to different ideas.

And everyone's forced to do better. It's actually a good thing. And I would say kind of survival of the fittest. So the people, the David and Goliath type story, when David came out, like there's a lot of David's out there, but they stand a chance. It's just a lot of people fold and they complain so much and they don't see a path for them to, they've got to change. And a lot of people don't change.

Not in this town. You have to change. You have to be ready to change. Re-invent yourself, change. Yeah. I mean, that's what I love. being in the comedy space because you know comedy is very reflective of criticism of the world around you or at least being able to laugh at the world around you um and i like spending a lot of

time in the magic space um i think music constantly evolves but um it's not it is also reflective of society but i think it's more the altar like whatever you have in front of you music escape you the opposite direction. I think comedy is exactly the opposite. Comedy says, okay, this is how the world is, and I'll sit here and laugh about it. And I think it's, I don't know, I find it refreshing. Who's, there's some giants here in Vegas. What would you say some of the people you look up to here and why? In some ways. I mean, a lot of the people that I believe have driven Vegas to, you know, be the, the mega resort destination that it is. The Gone family, you know, Michael Gone, I would have, I wouldn't have had a compass on how to navigate if it wasn't for the Gone family.

And, you know, the family now makes a big impact across the landscape. I've worked directly for Bob Bogner. Bob Boehner was Boyd Gaming. You know, he's the one who built Atlantic City, the Borgadne in Atlantic City. And then, you know, he called me and asked me to help him build echelon, which is now Resorts World, right? because the 2008 housing crisis collapse. We suspended that. So I think those guys like that and like Steve Wynn and Phil Ruffin,

I think those are the guys that have really set what's in motion right now. Those are the guys that I look up to. The visionaries, Pat Christensen, who said, why don't we take this arena that doesn't have a sound system and terrible acoustics and put guns and roses and Metallica and put on these huge rock concerts? because there was not a rock venue. So why not take the basketball stadium and do it,

or basketball arena? And so I look up to visionaries like that. I look up to guys that took a chance in a really, really big way. And in Vegas, it usually tends to work out. You know, I was looking at the internal rate of return for a hotel restaurant, not in Vegas, but it's really low to invest. I mean, you think about it, you're at like a 7.5% return. maybe you get to 12 and a half from what I've been researching.

What do you think the science behind making it into Vegas is and why they keep reinvesting because they've got to tear stuff down. You know, you can build, you can bring in all the restaurants you want, you can put as many hotel rooms in as you want. But unless they're coming here to be entertained, that stuff falls away. Yep. That stuff becomes a necessity.

You need a hotel room to stay in. If I kept you out late enough and you had enough fun, now you need to go to a hotel room. Yep. And same thing with restaurants. And now restaurants are becoming entertainment in their own. So, yes, your rate of return on a restaurant has always been low. I mean, it has always been difficult because it's such fixed margins, right? You're dealing with something you must do, which is eat. Now, how much can you get a premium on a person for the experience? Everyone is nibbling at that on the way. By the time you got a burger to the customer, it's like, how can you? you charge $22 for a burger, it's like, I hope to make two bucks. There's everyone else that has gotten this burger to me as a restaurant that makes it difficult. Very different in entertainment, right? Entertainment is the one thing that is, it's all a human transaction from the experience that you're trying to sell to the person that is putting on the performance

to the person that is experiencing it. And I think that maybe that's why I'm hooked on it. The one human experience that tonight will not happen again. It is only tonight. So you oversee Jimmy Kimball's Comedy Club, among other venues. What inspired you to launch Pompeii entertainment after years at Caesars? We wanted to do it different. I see that the strip is always going to be the strip, but the strip makes decisions based on what works, not what might work. And so what I believe Pompeii is really setting out to do in one segment of, at least one of the pillars, is to go try things before they're ready for a strip property. And that will drive what ends up happening even off the strip. So we may come into a show that we really like and it makes sense and people

really like it, but it may not be right for the rest of the world as they're touring and coming into a stay at a property. We want to create that industry. We want to be a part of those that are creating that industry. You have a number of things off the strip now, like Area 15. There's a number of different areas that are now looked at as being entertainment centers off the strip. So we want to feed that.

And we want to help feed the evolution of on the strip and off the strip kind of at the same time. Jimmy Kimmel's Comedy Club You would know if you You know Jimmy If you've met Jimmy You would know instantly It's somebody you want to be working with He's just the great

The best guy to be in business with We Absolutely admire being able to drive his brand That's the reason that we created Pompey Entertainment Is to really help drive The Future of Entertainment And obviously to do that

You have to take a big step back And we did You know I was running some of the largest venue in the world and to now running a number of under 500 seat venues. But there's something special about that. We love comedians. Like, it's the best time. Like, it lets off so many endorphins and serotonin all the stuff dopamine.

What's it like working around all these comedians? I mean, what have you found that you liked and don't like? It's a very human business. You have to remember backstage in these, any of the venues, it doesn't matter if you have somebody that just got off in an award show or, or if you have somebody who's going on stage for the first time, it's just a living room. It's a conversation.

Everything is very conversational, very friendly, and maybe that's just the way that I run my venues. I think the thing that I like is that that's what it is. That there's never a, hey, sign this, hey, you know, make me part of your life. Yeah. Like, that's not what it is. Having these real personal connections and to know somebody where everyone gets to know them somewhat super,

superficially because they have a barrier. I never have. Like, I've always had access to talk to somebody as if we've been friends for a long time, or we're just getting to know each other. And I've never taken that for granted. I think that's part of one of my secrets to success is to never take somebody else for granted. And I don't know that there's anything that I don't like. I think for an entertainer, I think the toughest part,

is that they can't have a bad day. No. And I, and I used to, I want to do a deep conversation. I think it was with Donnie Osmond once about, like, I admire what you do on stage because I can't do that. Like, I can go into a meeting and have a bad meeting. I can, I can have, you know, a bad financial. I can have a bad interaction with another executive.

He can't have a bad day on stage. He has to be perfect. He has to nail everything all of the time. And I just, I really think that's something special and maybe something we don't give enough recognition to for somebody who puts themselves so out there. Anyone who's willing to get on stage as a megastar to put themselves out there and expose themselves every moment that they're on stage. I think it's a special quality that they have and one that I couldn't do.

I've seen some comedians at the improv in Tempe and they don't even, they get on, they have a drink. and they're like, what do you do for a living? And they just know exactly. I don't think necessarily I've ever seen any of them have a bad day because it's always funny. And even if they weren't famous, like super, super famous, that's always funny. Well, I mean, you don't have to be, that's a beautiful thing about Las Vegas. You don't have to be famous to be funny.

In fact, I think I did this news article where they're asking me all these questions about comedy and why is comedy so big in Las Vegas? And I actually started to develop this opinion that Las Vegas may be the one town that you can be a professional comic and that's it. Like you don't have to have another job. You don't have to, you know, also log online and sell widgets anywhere. You can just be a comic. I think if you wanted to have a career as a comic, not also on TV and also the movies, because obviously you have to go different places for that. But if you wanted to just be, not just be, if you wanted to be one of the world's best,

stand-up comedians, you can do it in Las Vegas. And yeah, something special about that. There is nothing like seeing those jokes that you saw online or that you may have seen, you know, on special of the past, to see it live because you see everyone else validate what you laughed at independently and privately to hear everyone else laugh about the same thing. Yeah.

We just need so much more of it. We need everyone to be in the room to say, yeah, I can laugh about that. If somebody is keeping very much to themselves, I tend to think that maybe they're not in it for the greater good of what of this small community, Las Vegas is. So this is the wedding capital of the world. Look, we leaned into the wedding capital of the world.

It's a funny story. I was called for the third time. And I have this weird rule about the third time. if it ever comes about the third time, I should probably go ahead and go and take the plunge, whatever that is. And so I get called the first time, hey,

the county clerk, Lindquai, who's great, she's a fantastic person and politician here in Las Vegas, wants, you know, talk about, she's put this group together,

and we all meet all the time and wanted to get a celebrity involved in this. And then that's where I start to, okay, so we just need to call a celebrity, get them involved in something, not my thing. And that happened twice by friends that I really respect. And then I get a call from a former lieutenant governor and said, look, you really should probably listen to what it is that

they're trying to do. A lot of the money from wedding licenses goes back into the community and does really good things. And I start learning about all of this. And I'm like, okay, fine. I'm in. How do I So we actually produced a large event here in town that celebrates the over five million love stories that have been started in Las Vegas. Over five million couples have been married here. And we're a very young town. So that's kind of surprising. And it's not only is it a major business, a major tourism business.

It is also something that gives back to the community. So there's a lot of good that goes into the community from people getting. married in Las Vegas. I find that people like to talk about it. So if you can bring back one legendary Las Vegas performer for a Pompeii stage, who would it be? And what would you have them do? I'm a big REM fan and I don't think they're ever getting back together. So I'm like REM Nirvana, somewhere in that area. Like it would just be fantastic to have that concert again where, you know, everyone that was creating all this, this weird sounds of the night. We're trying to get out of that 80s.

You know, everything was very cookie cutter. And if I could put on a show, I think it would be, you know, all of those great bands that were making new sounds and put in the new music. And you think about the lyrics of the 90s. I don't think any of it made any sense. But for some reason, it built who I am. But I will take it to comedy. and I would say, see Carlin, see Carlin in his early 30s

would just be, would just be, I think, mind-blowing. Me and Brian over there used to, I just remember getting in his dad's bus and we listened to Dave Chappelle for the first time. This was like 20-some odd years ago when he came out of the show. It was so amazing, groundbreaking. Tell me Pompeii's entertainment mission

using three, just three words. I would just say, We want to be accessible, fun, entertaining. Let's tell me about the restaurant. The restaurant is something I never thought I would be doing. We call it a restaurant, but really it's a live entertainment venue. It's an incubator. So the goal after being through, you know, I'm from the arena and stadium world.

So, you know, back when the college football team was playing out in the middle of nowhere at San Boyd Stadium, beautiful stadium, but it was really far out of town. And seeing how big entertainment. can get and then and then being a part of putting so many shows on the strip, I started seeing kind of like the lack of evolution of who's next, at least not being created in Las Vegas. And when you look at Siegfreen Roy or Circtus Olai or Penn & Teller or Danny Gans, you know, you look at all of these brands that really absent and Spiegel World, you really look at the brands that are the really big entertainment conglomerates to have a mainstay in Las Vegas. I don't know that they were necessarily

created here, but they were certainly cultivated and found their mark here. Blue Man Group, another great example. So I said, well, why don't we start to curate in a very, you know, an incubate the artists of tomorrow. And it may be, you know, a year from now, it may be 10 years from now, but let's really get in front of it. And that's what this restaurant does. What's a piece of game-changing advice you wish you knew in your 20s? Oh, I think in my 20s, I thought I knew everything. The things that I wish I knew is how many people are out there working against you with a smile.

And it really is amazing how many people are out there to help you, and you don't know it because there's so many other people in front of them acting as if they are. And that's one of the most difficult things, as I have kids in their 20s now, helping them get through is to understand, you know, who is just selling you a bill of goods and who's actually trying to help you advance with a mutual goal. I love that. What are your millionaire habits that set you apart from everybody else? I don't say you get up earlier than everybody that's played out. No, I probably go to bed later because we, you know, we usually settle shows and do settlements at 2 a.m. You know, I'll give you a little bit of just, you know, my compass on it,

which is, you know, to begin with, I believe you have to accomplish something every day. Start by making your bed. And I tell this to new employees. I tell this to employees that have known me for a very long time. I'll just use it as a philosophy. Look, we got to make the bed. We have to make sure that we accomplish something. Stop trying to go after the most difficult task.

Go after the task that matters. And to start off your day, do something that you can accomplish without any, like it's not up to anybody else. It's just up to you. We say to say yes if and not no because. So it's something that changed my life is to just say, yes, can you do that? Yes. Are you available? Yes. And so we just try to adopt in my life and in my team, we try to adopt this yes if mentality. And I think it's one of the biggest things that I've brought to most of my bigger jobs that I've somehow landed in changing the culture. We stop saying no. I love that because I hear no all the time and I'm like, if I gave you $10 million and 100 people, could you get it done?

And they're like, well, yeah. Like, then what would it take? I took this arena job. I became the director of operations. And they said, you know, you need a day and a half to be able to go from a hockey to a concert. I said, that just doesn't make sense to me. Like, you have to build a stage and you have to take down the hockey rink. It seems like you should be able to get that done in four hours.

And the reasoning was, well, no, we only have six people that work here. I said, well, we need 60 people that work here. They only need to work here for two hours. Right. And sure enough, that arena went from, I think we were scheduled to do 65 shows a year, and we did well over 200, 200. And a lot of people got to work because of it. A lot of people actually had a better life and had a better lifestyle because we were able

to make decisions based on yes. Can you do it? Yes. Do you have that song? Yes. Do you have a singer? Yes. And if you can give me till noon tomorrow, I can have that solved.

Yeah, I was just listening to Steve Jobs back in the day and he had this foresight to go against what everybody thought was possible. People want to say, you're crazy if you don't accept the normal. norm. And sometimes you are crazy or sometimes you're brilliant. And you have to hit a lot of crazy to be able to get the one that's brilliant. Well, we were talking about Uber earlier. And there was a lot of problems with Uber even existing. I mean, a lot of problems. Think about a medallion. I don't know what they cost in Vegas back in the day, but in New York, there were five, six, seven hundred. Yeah. And think about the people that were driving them. I mean, most of it,

with the, the cabs that used to screw. I just remember every cab I've ever taken was not, necessarily a good deal. I was like, why are we going this way? I know where I'm going. And it was always like kind of shady. Or you go to the same place three times and never it's the same way. Right. I love HOA's because people don't have couches in their front yard. Sure. But some regulations really handcuff getting things done. I'm a believer in that we are all kind of in the ecosystem that we created. I know that a lot of people view that we're part of a community that somebody else created. I just don't, I don't adopt that. Okay, I understand this is the way that it is. because we all decided it's this way.

What if we have to tweak that? Why don't we just make a little change? And if we can get enough people to say that, yeah, we should make that change or because times have changed or whatever it may be, then you just have to get enough people to agree to that. And I think that's why we're, you know, in the city that we're in, right? At some point, you weren't allowed to build a tower as tall as we're in right now. There's lots of, I guess I would call them flash in a pan millionaires.

And then there's the ones that actually make it here and create true wealth. What are the differences between the business men and women that actually make it here versus I'm going to go to Vegas and try to create a name? Being that I've seen so many people come through and see the city grow so rapidly during that period of time of my career, I think it's very easy to tell who is here for a quick buck and who is not here for the Vegas lifestyle. You know, you can tell when somebody is doing things the right way when it becomes less selfish, because there's so much opportunity in Las Vegas.

If you make it all about yourself, then you can tell that you're probably quick to not be here very long. When somebody wants to be a part of the community, and you can see that, not just in philanthropy, but just being involved, just showing up and being at other people's events, You know, there's all these stories about how Sammy or Dean and Frank would all, like, have to fill in for one another. So this is just rapid fire as we close out here. I'm going to name some of the bands that I like, and maybe you could hit me back with a quick Vegas story. Enkubis played a really big New Year's Eve concert last year, and I've heard them doing, possibly becoming a resident.

They'd be a great, they'd be a great resident. in Las Vegas, mainly because nobody's really done a show like that, a show that Incubis could do. So I think that would be fantastic. What about Colplay? Yeah, as long as they don't bring their cameras and their video screen, anything it's going to be... What do you think about Morgan Wallen? Obviously, Brie loves Morgan Wallen. Yeah.

Take it on a liking for him. Look, I mean, huge. Like, there's nobody that doesn't want to go see Morgan Wallen. And I thank him and the team for, you know, the ticket prices that they're able to get. It's just fantastic the amount of tickets at the time. they're selling. And I really look at Wallen as being somebody who is really bringing back that live concert experience that's as big as any of these. Like we talked about the night clubs and stuff like that going into arenas and stadiums. And it's such a big way. I feel like

he's doing it with such might. And knowing his personal story and how he treats people, at least what I hear, it's pretty inspiring. I'm going to let you close us out. Anything that we haven't talked about, I'll let you kind of just wrap us up, anything you want the audience to hear about. Don't think about that Las Vegas is any different than it's always been. I think that we are bringing experiences that nobody in the world can bring. And you can go from one experience to the next experience. It's completely, you know, you'd have to go to a different part of the world to be able to have. And we kind of do it all within three zip codes.

Yeah. It's kind of a special thing. And I thank you for what you're doing and your story that you're sharing. you know, and I really think you embody the working hard or not always, it doesn't always have to just be, let's sit around and try to outthink things. Let's actually get out there and get it done. I was listening to your story about how you would have to go meet quotas. Like you would have the rest of the team go working and then you had to actually go meet the

quota to be able to pay the bills. And it's stories like that that keep me going because, you know, it's not always, people look at people look and they assume that they know the results they don't they don't understand how much work went in to get there they just want what it is that you have and so you're sharing those stories and bringing other stories to light like that is very special i would say everyone wants the views but no one wants to take the hike that's so true and and the view is worth it you appreciate the view if you do take the hike well you're the man damien thank you i really appreciate this this is great thank you thanks so much for listening to this episode like

always, we're going to close it out with the Tommy Truth, which is a little slice of wisdom from me to you that can help guide you in whatever you're striving towards right now. Let's just talk real quick about scarcity. It's the ultimate power move for driving action. So in 1975, there was an experiment done with a psychologist that he took two jars of cookie, same size jars, but in one there was only two cookies and the other one there was 10. People overwhelmingly preferred the jar with two cookies. The fear of missing out made them more desirable and more trustworthy. And that's the scarcity effect.

In the real world, events with fewer spots left or products with limited time offers drive action because scarcity taps into urgency. It's about creating opportunities people are excited to act on. And when businesses use this correctly, it's not about manipulation. It's about helping people recognize opportunities they'd regret missing out on. And that's it, guys. We'll talk to you next week.