A Hartford native, Milton McGregor is the owner of the Birmingham Race Course and VictoryLand in Shorter.
McGregor, who lives in Montgomery with his wife, Patricia, is known as Alabama’s gambling guru. He opened VictoryLand in 1984. It began as a racetrack but added electronic gambling in 2004.
McGregor, who is a successful entreprenuer and businessman, studied business while a student at Troy University. He later served in the U.S. Army in the 1950s during the Berlin Crisis. He then came back to Alabama to work as a civilian at Fort Rucker but left that job in 1981 to begin a career in the amusement industry when video games were becoming popular.
What many people may not know is that McGregor was among a group of American businessmen belonging to Global Trust Partners, which financed in 2005 the All Russian Electronic Lottery System — a $300 million venture. Around that time, he and two others traveled to Moscow to accept medals of honor for their efforts to promote economic development between Russia and the United States, Mobile’s Press-Register reported.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been any more excited about a business project,” he told the Press-Register about the lottery system.
Recently the Press-Register reported that McGregor sits on the board of directors of the bank that lent $500,000 to gubernatorial candidate Ron Sparks for his campaign. He also is a personal campaign donor of Sparks.
McGregor has given large sums of money to PACs that donated heavily to several campaigns around the state. He also employs several lobbyists to influence legislators’ votes on gambling.
But what people probably most associate with McGregor is the 2009 slogan on his VictoryLand commercial, “Come on down and you can be a winner, too.” (TAB)
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